Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by Doug Haynes on July 17, 2012 at 4:12pm

Actually skip what I said before...

How about this 'O'; how about you, as somebody who not only doesn't even live in the city proper or have to traverse the areas in question but refers to it as a 'murder capitol' shut the hell up and leave the discussion of Chicago's bad neighborhoods to the people who actually live in and around them?

Answer me some questions 'O'

1) When was the last time you were out in the West Side of Chicago or any of the other areas people generally consider to be bad?  If you have not been through any bad area, especially after dark, shut the hell up because you have zero frame of reference; sad but true reading articles on the internet does not make you an expert on the bad parts of Chicago.

2) Have you ever lived in a truly shitty area?  One where people are getting shot on a regular basis?  One where people are selling crack on the corners?  If not shut the hell up because you once again have no idea what you are talking about.  I know people who live in shitty areas and have lived in them myself in the past; not calling a shit hole a shit hole does not somehow make things better.

3) Why don't you live on the West Side?  Baring your reasons being valid for not living there if it made sense otherwise would you choose to live there?  Would YOU be willing to go live in the middle of Austin and be a force that works towards making it better to live there? 

Permalink Reply by Far'arned Retrogrumpalunkus #63 on July 17, 2012 at 4:19pm

I think your image is broke, Jim.  Funkyjunk.com is not playing nice with with the link:  

http://static2.fjcdn.com/thumbnails/comments/another+didnt+read+.gi... 

Jim S said:

Permalink Reply by Lanterne Rouge on July 17, 2012 at 4:35pm

Weird. It shows up fine when I'm viewing it. 

I mean, not that I'm adding anything of value to this fine thread, anyhow.

Permalink Reply by Zoetrope on July 17, 2012 at 4:48pm

lol.  This thread sucks bad.  

Permalink Reply by Zoetrope on July 17, 2012 at 4:50pm

Permalink Reply by Far'arned Retrogrumpalunkus #63 on July 17, 2012 at 4:51pm

This thread is not fungible.

Permalink Reply by Vilda on July 17, 2012 at 5:30pm

http://www.randomshit.com/

i like this ;-)

Permalink Reply by Duppie on July 18, 2012 at 2:14am

You say you want others to respect the forum community. Fine. I think those are generally admirable thoughts. But why don't you live by your own rules? From the Chainlink forum rules:

"Do not ramble. In general anything over a few paragraphs should be very, very interesting and well written in order to be useful to the larger community."

Your ramblings are neither very, very interesting, nor well written.

O said:

This is what I would like to see happen:

• Stop treating the ChainLink as if it were a bathroom wall. In short respect yourselves and others. You however cannot respect yourself if you cannot respect the opinions of others. Using profanity often enough it loses it shock value and becomes as inconsequential as the word "the". Calling people names is akin to the same sort of thing young gang bangers do. They call your Momma a 'Ho and dare you to respond. The verbal equivalent of this goes on here pretty much weekly and frankly it gets tiresome. Everything you write here lingers much beyond the heat of the moment. It becomes an embarrassment to those who are visiting for information and real networking.
• Stop the cyber-bullying routine. In neighborhoods where the adults fail to take control adolescents take over. They gravitate towards gangs. And in the process they learn to disrespect authority figures and the system. They instead adopt the mores of a different set of authority figures who do not necessarily have their best interests at heart. Kids in high crime areas learn to either avoid the gangs or find themselves swept up into them. That is exactly how this forum is functioning. Couple this with a tendency to have face-to-face encounters revolve around alcohol and you have a very tenuous situation.
• Be thoughtful in your messages. Too often I read about someone who is belittling another person on this forum for trying to approach a topic using good sentence structure and ordered thinking. There is generally a tendency to ridicule people who are trying to be cogent in their explanations. The point of attack on them is that they are being snooty, when in fact they are hopefully trying to function in an adult fashion. There is no need for anyone to have to rename a thread to warn others than a given individual is there and is being disrespectful of others as if that were "cool".
• Stop Being Flippant, It Is Not A Sign of Intelligence. Once in a great while a person like Steve Colbert or better yet Jon Stewart comes along and can make you laugh as they hurl zingers at their foes. But these guys are really rare. Most of the Jon Stewart wannabes on this forum are either entering a single word like "giggle" or trying to be ironic when it seldom works.
• Respect The Forum Community. In areas where lawlessness is rampant it is generally the case that gang members begin to have scorn for non-gangmembers. In fact you can tell who is in the gang because of the "colors" they wear. Girls in high school often are enamored with gang members because these are the guys with cars and money. But gangs are generally dismissive of anybody who is not in their membership. They disrespect the police and the community members as well. It takes men like Rev. Corey Brooks and Father Michael Pfleger to help turn the tide. If they don't stand in the gap then chaos prevails. If the adult members of this forum do not provide pushback this will become exactly what folks like Gabe describe as communities like Woodlawn and Lawndale, a "shit hole".
• Grow Up. In that thread I cited having to do with the L.A.T.E. Ride Audit one of the respondents probably said more succinctly than anyone else could that their intention was never to grow up. I know it was meant in a flippant and dismissive fashion but that is essentially what has overtaken much of this forum. People who rant about police being abusive and threaten to report them to the Internal Affairs office and then afterwards decide that this probably won't take place. Why, not? If you really and truly had something to report then report it. Otherwise think before you get the forum community into a lather and then wimp out later on. Act on this forum as though your eight your old son or daughter were going to have this forum be part of their school "show and tell". Is what they are likely to read here exactly what you would want them to see? Could you sit through a public hearing while someone was reading your words to the audience and the attendant representatives of the media?

h' said:

Eric, what exactly do you want? If there's an "ask" in there somewhere, maybe if you just come out and say "this is what I'd like to see happen" you may be pleasantly surprised?

Permalink Reply by O on July 18, 2012 at 2:34am

Believe me that the last thing in the world I would ever want to be happy to do is pronounce Chicago the "Murder Capitol of the Midwest". But should you check the thread in which that term was used it was in an effort to show the urgency with which we should treat every opportunity to invite visitors into our city to try and dissuade them viewing us as that. But the press accounts and now the nightly news has picked up on the story and it has become an issue which Mayor Emmanuel has had to address.

As for your challenge to which of us has had to live in a dangerous area, I'll offer these observations:

My wife and I come from a long line of folks who have lived and worked among residents in the poorest areas of this city. I don't wear that as a badge of pride, it just happens to be a fact. I have taught classes in desktop publishing in a classroom in the old Cabrini Green high rises while gun shots were being fired. You learn to try and not flinch because all the others there are doing the same.

My wife spent many summers with a Mennonite family who pastored a church on the west side not far from what is now Little Italy. Like the Cabrini Green buildings these have all been torn down. In fact we were there a couple of weeks ago just to get reacquainted with the area. She reminded me of the night she spent sleeping on their couch while gun shots were audible.

Now if I tried to tell my two nephews about these brave exploits they would probably smile knowingly and look over at one another. That is because my nephew Bryan just returned from living at the prison in Afghanistan where suicide bombers blew up several CIA officers a few years ago. He was there then and knew of the tragedy first hand. Before that he spent time in Iraq helping the CIA get around the city of Baghdad in his armed convoy. Before that he spent time in the hills in Afghanistan where another CIA operative was bitten to death during an interrogation. And before that he was in Sarajevo at the height of their war. In fact most of the time he has been in the Army he was unable to tell me the exact nature of what he was doing because it would have meant compromising his mission.

My other nephew was living on the base in Texas when a psychiatrist opened fire on fellow soldiers and killed a few before being subdued. So he too would find my war stories about being in dangerous Chicago neighborhoods a bit wimpy.

My personal experiences of what depths people can sink to include being at the casket of Emmett Till (his mom was a member of our church) and seeing his mutilated body before his burial. I was probably 10 years old at the time and it made a very deep impression on me. It is probably because of that experience that to this day I abhor the kinds of physical and even verbal violence humans inflict on one another.

You would think that a forum would be a peaceful place. But we ChainLinkers have managed to ruin even this with our willful disrespect of one another, our callous verbal treatment of police officers, our willingness to attend interfaith bicycle rides and yell out "An ale house seems like a house of worship to me, right?" while riding alongside devout Muslims.

When I taught it was a privilege after school to take my Chess Team to VA hospitals. It was here that I first learned that there were places we sent our soldiers that were more horrible than the neighborhoods Chicagoans found themselves living in. Its kinda difficult to whine about the gunshots you hear around you at night when a wounded veteran is back from a war where he suffered nearly total 3rd degree burns over his body. Or to play chess with a guy who cannot move the pieces because he has lost both hands. I made certain that the members of my chess team (all 7th and 8th graders) got a chance to see somebody whose life had been severely altered so that the next time they complained that their parents were ruining their lives they might have some perspective.

In fact trying to match bad places to live is demeaning while there are men and women in combat overseas on our behalf who volunteered to live in real "shit holes". It's not simply gun shots that they hear but mortar shells. They have to worry not whether a couple of kids are about to knock them off their $400 bike but rather whether the next kid that greets them is wearing a suicide bomb vest.

You might want to try and get ahold of that policeman your bosses thread spotlighted the other day and find out his perspective on dealing with life on the mean streets of Chicago. I will defer to his experiences any day. I have not had to face down a gang banger with an uzi automatic.

I'll add one more wish to that list of mine (which is evidently too long for some of our respondents to read without tiring) and that would be:

• Make Critical Mass Purpose Driven

This ride really does not need to be in a demonstration march format. It could easily be an opportunity for a few hundred riders to fan out to visit hospitals, shelters and nursing homes. There are literally thousands of war veterans who have returned from battle with alcohol and drug addictions. You have places here in the city where you stop and enrich not only the lives of the people living there but your own as well. Harbor Light might be a good start.

For those who are able to cope you might want to visit the cancer wards for children or the burn wards here in the city. It might open our eyes and hearts to some real suffering. I have a brother who suffered some pretty bad burns as a child and to this day that is the one injury that I cannot see without emotional upheaval. But I do so because the soldiers who suffered for me deserve my respect.

There are prisons where you could visit that have youthful offenders who need to know that there is something more to life than being in a gang. If groups of bicyclists came to see them and even were able to arrange a bike ride (with suitable protections) it might be life transforming.

And as I offered before there are ministries in Woodlawn, Lawndale and many, many other spots that need the publicity that a Critical Mass ride could provide. It is not necessary for that ride to be an excuse to get drunk and be a hooligan. You could even arrange to visit one or two police academies or stations to meet actual officers who can educate you about what makes their world turn.

They in turn could listen to your concerns and perhaps it would end up being a learning experience for everyone. This does not have to be a world in which we end up trying to "out ghetto" one another. Some of the most desperate lives are being lived in gated communities along the North Shore. We don't need another kid from a wealthy family coming down on a Sunday morning to score crack cocaine or more likely heroin on the West Side.

On my drives into the city to ride my bicycle (or on those occasions where I ride the entire length on my own) I have noted with some surprise and a great deal of sadness a white kid walking across 55th street obviously debilitated from very strong drugs. There is a gait that they have which is unmistakeable. I never ever have felt the need to share that sort of thing with anyone as a way to earn their respect. It is too pitiful to even think along those terms.

Finally, why not have a chance to bring Critical Mass to schools? We need to reach our children. They need to know that each and every child in each and every neighborhood is welcome to ride along with all the cool people who meet at Daley Plaza. But if we are to bring them along then there needs to be a format that does lead them to some of our bad habits when riding.

We need to reinforce the notion that stop for red lights and signs is cool. That riding in single file is safest when in traffic. And that signaling our intentions is best. All of these sorts of things are purpose driven. It makes Critical Mass less about me having a good time and more about giving back to the community.

Why does not someone suggest that one of the Critical Mass rides be to a location where bike maintenance and safety checks be conducted on any bike that people are riding. It could be a place where folks learn about how to dress to ride and how their bike should be equipped with lights and reflectors and such. Heck, you even teach folks how to ride in really cold weather to get to work.

Critical Mass could be a great vehicle for helping the poor learn about an alternative to public transportation for getting to and from work. There would be a good chance that bikes could be donated to anybody who needed one and the ride could focus on how to care for that "new" bike. You could even demonstrate safe routes for them to follow in getting from their neighborhood to the loop, etc.

The focus here should not be on ourselves but on others.

notoriousDUG said:

Actually skip what I said before...

How about this 'O'; how about you, as somebody who not only doesn't even live in the city proper or have to traverse the areas in question but refers to it as a 'murder capitol' shut the hell up and leave the discussion of Chicago's bad neighborhoods to the people who actually live in and around them?

Answer me some questions 'O'

1. When was the last time you were out in the West Side of Chicago or any of the other areas people generally consider to be bad?  If you have not been through any bad area, especially after dark, shut the hell up because you have zero frame of reference; sad but true reading articles on the internet does not make you an expert on the bad parts of Chicago.
2. Have you ever lived in a truly shitty area?  One where people are getting shot on a regular basis?  One where people are selling crack on the corners?  If not shut the hell up because you once again have no idea what you are talking about.  I know people who live in shitty areas and have lived in them myself in the past; not calling a shit hole a shit hole does not somehow make things better.
3. Why don't you live on the West Side?  Baring your reasons being valid for not living there if it made sense otherwise would you choose to live there?  Would YOU be willing to go live in the middle of Austin and be a force that works towards making it better to live there? 

Permalink Reply by Far'arned Retrogrumpalunkus #63 on July 18, 2012 at 3:47am

Represent!

h' said:

Representative images added (too bad threads can't have their own custom avatars):

 

Permalink Reply by Doug Haynes on July 18, 2012 at 4:30am

Ah, your one of the idiots who want CCM to have some great purpose and wish to heard the kittens.

Never mind then you are simply not worth arguing with.

O said:

Believe me that the last thing in the world I would ever want to be happy to do is pronounce Chicago the "Murder Capitol of the Midwest". But should you check the thread in which that term was used it was in an effort to show the urgency with which we should treat every opportunity to invite visitors into our city to try and dissuade them viewing us as that. But the press accounts and now the nightly news has picked up on the story and it has become an issue which Mayor Emmanuel has had to address.

As for your challenge to which of us has had to live in a dangerous area, I'll offer these observations:

My wife and I come from a long line of folks who have lived and worked among residents in the poorest areas of this city. I don't wear that as a badge of pride, it just happens to be a fact. I have taught classes in desktop publishing in a classroom in the old Cabrini Green high rises while gun shots were being fired. You learn to try and not flinch because all the others there are doing the same.

My wife spent many summers with a Mennonite family who pastored a church on the west side not far from what is now Little Italy. Like the Cabrini Green buildings these have all been torn down. In fact we were there a couple of weeks ago just to get reacquainted with the area. She reminded me of the night she spent sleeping on their couch while gun shots were audible.

Now if I tried to tell my two nephews about these brave exploits they would probably smile knowingly and look over at one another. That is because my nephew Bryan just returned from living at the prison in Afghanistan where suicide bombers blew up several CIA officers a few years ago. He was there then and knew of the tragedy first hand. Before that he spent time in Iraq helping the CIA get around the city of Baghdad in his armed convoy. Before that he spent time in the hills in Afghanistan where another CIA operative was bitten to death during an interrogation. And before that he was in Sarajevo at the height of their war. In fact most of the time he has been in the Army he was unable to tell me the exact nature of what he was doing because it would have meant compromising his mission.

My other nephew was living on the base in Texas when a psychiatrist opened fire on fellow soldiers and killed a few before being subdued. So he too would find my war stories about being in dangerous Chicago neighborhoods a bit wimpy.

My personal experiences of what depths people can sink to include being at the casket of Emmett Till (his mom was a member of our church) and seeing his mutilated body before his burial. I was probably 10 years old at the time and it made a very deep impression on me. It is probably because of that experience that to this day I abhor the kinds of physical and even verbal violence humans inflict on one another.

You would think that a forum would be a peaceful place. But we ChainLinkers have managed to ruin even this with our willful disrespect of one another, our callous verbal treatment of police officers, our willingness to attend interfaith bicycle rides and yell out "An ale house seems like a house of worship to me, right?" while riding alongside devout Muslims.

When I taught it was a privilege after school to take my Chess Team to VA hospitals. It was here that I first learned that there were places we sent our soldiers that were more horrible than the neighborhoods Chicagoans found themselves living in. Its kinda difficult to whine about the gunshots you hear around you at night when a wounded veteran is back from a war where he suffered nearly total 3rd degree burns over his body. Or to play chess with a guy who cannot move the pieces because he has lost both hands. I made certain that the members of my chess team (all 7th and 8th graders) got a chance to see somebody whose life had been severely altered so that the next time they complained that their parents were ruining their lives they might have some perspective.

In fact trying to match bad places to live is demeaning while there are men and women in combat overseas on our behalf who volunteered to live in real "shit holes". It's not simply gun shots that they hear but mortar shells. They have to worry not whether a couple of kids are about to knock them off their $400 bike but rather whether the next kid that greets them is wearing a suicide bomb vest.

You might want to try and get ahold of that policeman your bosses thread spotlighted the other day and find out his perspective on dealing with life on the mean streets of Chicago. I will defer to his experiences any day. I have not had to face down a gang banger with an uzi automatic.

I'll add one more wish to that list of mine (which is evidently too long for some of our respondents to read without tiring) and that would be:

• Make Critical Mass Purpose Driven

This ride really does not need to be in a demonstration march format. It could easily be an opportunity for a few hundred riders to fan out to visit hospitals, shelters and nursing homes. There are literally thousands of war veterans who have returned from battle with alcohol and drug addictions. You have places here in the city where you stop and enrich not only the lives of the people living there but your own as well. Harbor Light might be a good start.

For those who are able to cope you might want to visit the cancer wards for children or the burn wards here in the city. It might open our eyes and hearts to some real suffering. I have a brother who suffered some pretty bad burns as a child and to this day that is the one injury that I cannot see without emotional upheaval. But I do so because the soldiers who suffered for me deserve my respect.

There are prisons where you could visit that have youthful offenders who need to know that there is something more to life than being in a gang. If groups of bicyclists came to see them and even were able to arrange a bike ride (with suitable protections) it might be life transforming.

And as I offered before there are ministries in Woodlawn, Lawndale and many, many other spots that need the publicity that a Critical Mass ride could provide. It is not necessary for that ride to be an excuse to get drunk and be a hooligan. You could even arrange to visit one or two police academies or stations to meet actual officers who can educate you about what makes their world turn.

They in turn could listen to your concerns and perhaps it would end up being a learning experience for everyone. This does not have to be a world in which we end up trying to "out ghetto" one another. Some of the most desperate lives are being lived in gated communities along the North Shore. We don't need another kid from a wealthy family coming down on a Sunday morning to score crack cocaine or more likely heroin on the West Side.

On my drives into the city to ride my bicycle (or on those occasions where I ride the entire length on my own) I have noted with some surprise and a great deal of sadness a white kid walking across 55th street obviously debilitated from very strong drugs. There is a gait that they have which is unmistakeable. I never ever have felt the need to share that sort of thing with anyone as a way to earn their respect. It is too pitiful to even think along those terms.

Finally, why not have a chance to bring Critical Mass to schools? We need to reach our children. They need to know that each and every child in each and every neighborhood is welcome to ride along with all the cool people who meet at Daley Plaza. But if we are to bring them along then there needs to be a format that does lead them to some of our bad habits when riding.

We need to reinforce the notion that stop for red lights and signs is cool. That riding in single file is safest when in traffic. And that signaling our intentions is best. All of these sorts of things are purpose driven. It makes Critical Mass less about me having a good time and more about giving back to the community.

Why does not someone suggest that one of the Critical Mass rides be to a location where bike maintenance and safety checks be conducted on any bike that people are riding. It could be a place where folks learn about how to dress to ride and how their bike should be equipped with lights and reflectors and such. Heck, you even teach folks how to ride in really cold weather to get to work.

Critical Mass could be a great vehicle for helping the poor learn about an alternative to public transportation for getting to and from work. There would be a good chance that bikes could be donated to anybody who needed one and the ride could focus on how to care for that "new" bike. You could even demonstrate safe routes for them to follow in getting from their neighborhood to the loop, etc.

The focus here should not be on ourselves but on others.

notoriousDUG said:

Actually skip what I said before...

How about this 'O'; how about you, as somebody who not only doesn't even live in the city proper or have to traverse the areas in question but refers to it as a 'murder capitol' shut the hell up and leave the discussion of Chicago's bad neighborhoods to the people who actually live in and around them?

Answer me some questions 'O'

1. When was the last time you were out in the West Side of Chicago or any of the other areas people generally consider to be bad?  If you have not been through any bad area, especially after dark, shut the hell up because you have zero frame of reference; sad but true reading articles on the internet does not make you an expert on the bad parts of Chicago.
2. Have you ever lived in a truly shitty area?  One where people are getting shot on a regular basis?  One where people are selling crack on the corners?  If not shut the hell up because you once again have no idea what you are talking about.  I know people who live in shitty areas and have lived in them myself in the past; not calling a shit hole a shit hole does not somehow make things better.
3. Why don't you live on the West Side?  Baring your reasons being valid for not living there if it made sense otherwise would you choose to live there?  Would YOU be willing to go live in the middle of Austin and be a force that works towards making it better to live there? 

Permalink Reply by Duppie on July 18, 2012 at 4:40am

If 'O' wants to herd the kittens, he may want to start by watching this.

notoriousDUG said:

Ah, your one of the idiots who want CCM to have some great purpose and wish to heard the kittens.

Never mind then you are simply not worth arguing with.

O said:

[...]I'll add one more wish to that list of mine (which is evidently too long for some of our respondents to read without tiring) and that would be:

• Make Critical Mass Purpose Driven

This ride really does not need to be in a demonstration march format. It could easily be an opportunity for a few hundred riders to fan out to visit hospitals, shelters and nursing homes [...]

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