The Article Below Speaks For Itself

On a list of the most dangerous things to do in Chicago one would not expect to find attending public school on it, but after seeing this headline and article today, that hope is shattered as this year has been a particular disgrace for this city that needs to be addressed. Put above the Olympics, the Cubs, the Sox or just about any other thing I can think of on the things to do starting yesterday list.

Year of violence, grief: 27 city students slain

Chicago Tribune: "At Avalon Park Elementary School, the 8th graders in Room 104 still wrestle with the pain.

It's in the eyes of the young man who cannot bring himself to talk about last month's brutal stabbing death of his classmate and best friend, 14-year-old Quinton Jackson. It's in the tears of the girl reading a poem about missing Quinton's smile and his mischievous antics. It's in the unsettled voice of the child who recounts recent nightmares of dead bodies and coffins." Upstairs, in Room 301, the pain exists, but it's harder to see.

The teacher sees it, however, in the quiet temperament of the little boy who sits alone in the cafeteria because his best friend, Quinton's 12-year-old brother, Marquise, is no longer there to eat with him. Marquise, too, was stabbed to death in an attack last month. But his friend sits there, alone, in the lunchroom, as if waiting for Marquise to show up.

This is how the violent death of a student unhinges a school.

Whether the kids were attacked at home, like the Jacksons, or shot on a bus, like Blair Holt, the deaths damage the community inside the school walls.

So far this school year, at least 27 Chicago Public Schools students have been killed. That's one young life every 10 days. read more

And that statistic is sickening and unacceptable, but missing from the mix are the so called leaders of the community who I name just about every other day on this blog, one of them who happens to live right here in Chicago. Guess who that is? You got it, good old Jesse, once again AWOL.

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