Stop the Killing: A Sun-Times Editorial
We can't stop trying.
The problem is guns. No, it's not about guns.
(Keith Hale/Sun-Times)
The problem is bad parents. No, we can't make bad parents good.
The problem is drugs. No, we can't stop the drugs.
The problem is jobs. No, we can't bring back the good jobs.
The problem is our schools. No, we can't ask our schools to solve all the problems that flow from broken families and broken neighborhoods.
But we can't stop trying.
In a dramatic gesture, Mayor Daley has called for a summit at City Hall today to search for solutions to the bloodbath of violence -- almost all of it involving guns -- that has swept across Chicago's neighborhoods in recent weeks.
Daley is calling in all corners of the city -- the cops, the teachers, the preachers and the parents -- to see what a determined and compassionate city can do.
A city like Chicago.
A city that doesn't dare stop trying.
Just three days ago, this newspaper all but begged Chicago to rise up and take action against the bloodshed on our streets, especially the shootings of children. We drove home our point by reversing almost every word on the front page of our Tuesday paper, saying, "We cannot turn our backs." We called for a civic campaign to stem the violence.
We were concerned, we will admit now, that our attention-grabbing front page might be ridiculed by some as a gimmick, a grandstanding way to sell newspapers. But we meant every word when we wrote: "Chicago must confront the carnage."
And you, our readers, responded as we had hoped and believed you would. You wrote and called to say you stood with us, to say you stood with anybody -- from the Sun-Times to Mayor Daley to the Rev. Michael Pfleger -- who was serious about getting rid of the guns, stopping the killing and protecting our children.
When we wrote that first editorial on Tuesday, the weekend body count was seven more dead and 29 shot but alive.
Now, horrifyingly, the week's tally is 12 dead and 40 shot, five of them in a single massacre in a Chatham home.
Daley has called such a summit before, back in 1992 when a sniper killed a 7-year-old boy, Dantrell Davis, outside a public housing complex. Little Dantrell became a symbol for all that remains wrong in a society that prides itself on fairness, wealth and opportunity.
What good did that summit do then? The Sun-Times in the coming weeks, as part of our campaign to save our children, will attempt to answer that question.
But we know this: Daley was right then, and he's right now.
We can't turn our backs. And as Daley pushes forward, we'll have his back.
