Michael Pfleger, pastor at St. Sabina church in South Side Chicago, attributes the dire circumstances Chicago is facing to a “perfect storm” of joblessness, poor education and guns.
Pfleger said violence occurs in neighborhood where there are “high unemployment rates.”
“You have poor education, poor schools, infrastructure that has been withdrawn; you have mental health centers that have been closed up. And where’s there a lack of businesses, you create a perfect storm for violence,” he said in the “Murder to Excellence: Life & Hip Hop in Chicago” documentary.
Plefeger explained there is easy access to guns in downtrodden Chicago neighborhoods.
“Then you have the whole gun issue. We have more guns than computers in our neighborhood,” he said. “And you have easy access to guns that the NRA and gun manufacturers realize that more access to guns the more money they make. So they can care less about what the result of it is. They can care less about the carnage in the streets. But they’re making money.”
Plefeger said urban Chicago resident are living in a “desperate situation.”
People in a desperate situation, he said, are going to make desperate choices.
“The perception is it’s the fault of individuals rather than what brought them,” he said. “I’m not taking anything away personal responsibility for the decisions a person makes, but unless you are also taking away personal responsibility for the decisions a person makes, but unless you are taking a look at the things that are creating that perfect storm, it’s only part of the picture.”
Pfleger said many of the brothers on the streets want better for themselves, but aren’t valued in the eyes of others.
“Part of the other reason is we have written off some of these brothers on the streets. Every Friday night we’re are talking to some of the brothers here and these are brothers who want better, who want better opportunities, who want jobs, who want education,” he said. “They feel like they’ve been told ‘you’re disposable.’ If you’re consistently told you are not valued, you begin not to value yourself or anybody else.
“We gotta see every life as valuable. Every single life. I hate when I hear the media talk about ‘Well, the police say he was gang-affiliate.’ As if that’s some kind of okay that he was shot and killed,” he said. “Nobody deserves to be shot, nobody deserves to be killed. We can’t get used to yellow police tape and yellow teddy bears and sirens at night like that’s the norm. That’s not the norm. That’s not a normal community.”
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