Our View: Youth violence deserves our attention
Last week’s decision by the International Olympic Committee to award the 2016 Summer Games to Rio may have been what snuffed out the Olympic Spirit in Chicago, but there’s evidence to suggest the flame was barely flickering even before IOC members cast their votes.
The Olympic Spirit, after all, is about inspiring youth and promoting tolerance and understanding. And if ever there were a place where youth needed to be inspired toward tolerance, it’s Chicago.
The highly publicized beating death of Derrion Albert, a 16-year-old student at Chicago’s Fenger High School, turned the city’s attention away from the disappointment of not hosting the Olympics, and toward the more serious issue of youth violence.
Albert’s death was hardly unique. In fact, he’s the fifth Chicago Public School student killed this year. But his beating was captured on cell phone video, which in turn helped capture the attention of people everywhere, including former Chicagoans in the White House.
On Thursday, Education Secretary and former Chicago Public Schools CEO Arne Duncan was in Chicago along with U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder, who said the video was a “call to action” for the Obama Administration. The Department of Education pledged $500,000 in an emergency grant for Fenger High School, and the administration announced plans to include $25 million in next year’s budget for community-based crime prevention programs.
But it’s going to take a lot more than money to cure what ails violent youth. So more than the money, we welcome Duncan’s call for a national conversation about values and teen violence. Holder said youth violence is not just a Chicago problem, and he is right, with Duncan pointing out that students have been killed in recent incidents in Tulsa, Philadelphia, Seattle, Miami and New Orleans.
But it is also not just an urban problem. Albert was killed on a city street in a fight that involved more than 50 teenagers. In February 2005, nearly that same number of young people were led to rural Plato Township for a fight that resulted in the death of Nicholas Swanson, a 20-year-old St. Charles North graduate.
What begins in urban areas very often migrates into suburban and rural areas, whether it’s rock ‘n’ roll music, drugs or youth violence. The number of fatalities among youths have shot up over the past two years, and it’s time to give this issue a higher priority.
Chicago officials may have lost their bid to celebrate youthful competition at the Olympics, but if their attention can instead be diverted into stemming the tide of the growing problem of youth violence, then they will have done something much more important.
