[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 160 (2014), Part 9]
[House]
[Pages 12151-12152]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                          VIOLENCE IN CHICAGO

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of 
January 3, 2013, the Chair recognizes the gentleman from Illinois (Mr. 
Danny K. Davis) for 30 minutes.
  Mr. DANNY K. DAVIS of Illinois. Mr. Speaker, I would be pleased to 
yield to Mr. Rush.
  Mr. RUSH. I want to thank my friend, Congressman Davis.
  Mr. Speaker, I just want to say that in the central business district 
of Chicago, or The Loop as it is known far and wide, there is a close-
in circle around The Loop. They have created three communities. One is 
called the Near North Side, where public dollars and enormous 
investments have occurred. This is the area that used to house Cabrini-
Green, the Near North Side.
  In recent times, we have had gentrification occur in the Near West 
Side. When I was a young man growing up in Chicago, there was never 
such a community, never such a time, never such an identity called the 
Near West Side.
  And, Mr. Speaker, there is now something called the Near South Side.
  All of these are gems of gentrification. But if you go further west, 
further south, you see a stark difference in Englewood and Garfield 
Park. You see a stark difference in capital investments in these 
communities, where hopelessness and despair dominate the lives and the 
thoughts and the culture.
  That is where the violence emanates from. Unless we deal with these 
issues, we will never, ever be able to deal with the violence and the 
increasing murders that are everyday news in the city that I love, the 
city of Chicago.
  Mr. DANNY K. DAVIS of Illinois. I thank you, Mr. Rush, for calling 
this Special Order this evening to put a different kind of light on the 
whole question and the whole issue of violence in Chicago, which is 
really the center point of America.
  Those of us who live in Chicago say that: So goes Chicago, so goes 
America.
  When I came to Chicago, it was known as the jobs capital of America. 
Everyplace that you looked, there were help wanted signs. You could 
find a job. As a matter of fact, the word was that if you couldn't find 
a job in Chicago, there were basically no jobs for you.
  And so I agree with you, Representative Rush, that the absence of 
hope is a part of the formula for violence. And if you never ask the 
right questions, of course, you never get the right answers.

                              {time}  1900

  There are those who talk about law enforcement, more police officers. 
I have even heard people talk about bringing in the National Guard and 
bringing in paramilitary outfits. Those are not really the solutions. 
The solutions are to provide people with hope because, if they have 
hope, then they don't find or feel the necessity for certain kinds of 
action.
  There used to be so many businesses in the district that I represent. 
Over the last 50 or more years, we have lost more than 100,000 good-
paying manufacturing jobs. When Representative Rush talks about 
disinvestment, when business and industry decided to leave--Sears, 
Roebuck; Hotpoint, Motorola, General Electric--what is now Navistar--
International Harvester, Allied Radio, Spiegel, Montgomery Ward--all of 
those entities were in the neighborhood where I lived and worked. I 
could just walk down the streets and see them. Western Electric was not 
far from where I lived. You could see hundreds of people going to and 
from work every morning when you woke up. Of course, things split off, 
and all of that changed.
  Chicago used to just beckon people and jobs to come to Chicago. As a 
matter of fact, blues singers would have songs of going to Chicago. 
``Sorry, but I can't take you.'' They were like the pied piper--people 
were coming. Then, as so many people came and as communities and 
neighborhoods began to change and as some people began to leave and 
others would come, there were levels of deterioration. I remember the 
riots that occurred after the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King. 
Many of those areas that suffered the aftermath of the riots have never 
been rebuilt. They are the same today as they were in the 1960s when 
the riots occurred. Nobody has been willing to invest in the 
redevelopment of those communities. Not only did housing deteriorate, 
but the social service structure that existed also left.
  When Bobby talked about disinvestment, there was every kind that one 
could imagine. In some of those communities, it is hard to find a Boy 
Scout troop. It is difficult to find the resources for a Girl Scout 
program or for activities that individuals can be engaged in after 
school. Yes, there is a level of violence, but there is an even deeper 
level of hopelessness. Without hope, it is like people being pressed up 
against the wall--pressed up against nowhere--trying to figure out how 
they get out.
  I can tell you that, wherever darkness exists, there is light that 
comes, so I think that there are, indeed, solutions. What are the 
solutions? Job creation. Job creation. Job creation.
  If we look at history, when times were difficult during the 1930s, 
there was the utilization of the Federal Government as a resource to 
create work opportunities, with the understanding that, if people are 
working, they are reinvesting because they are paying taxes, they are 
spending money, they are exchanging services and goods with each other. 
That also gives a boost to the economy. I never take the position that 
wherever we are that that is where we have to be.
  Gun control legislation. Let me tell you that the people shooting 
don't necessarily make the guns. People who are shooting don't 
necessarily sell the guns. The people who are shooting actually acquire 
the guns from someplace and somebody else. If we could take away some 
of the opportunities for the guns to exist--I remember a song I used to 
listen to about a place called Black Mountain, and part of the lyrics 
said: ``I am going to Black Mountain with my razor and my gun. I am 
going to find that man of mine, shoot him if he stands still and cut 
him if he runs.'' If you have got to run after somebody, that is a 
little more difficult than being able to have an Uzi with which you 
drive by and mow him down. I don't know when we are going to get really 
serious in this country about diminishing the number of guns that 
people have access to.
  I was disappointed when the Supreme Court said that people could 
actually carry weapons. That is one thing in some communities, in some 
places, but I can tell you that is another thing in other communities 
and other places. I would hate to go into a situation where I felt that 
everybody there who wanted to was carrying a weapon because he had the 
right to carry a concealed weapon.
  I used to be on the Chicago City Council, and many of the people 
there were former police officers. Plus, you could carry a gun anyway 
because you were considered law enforcement. Sometimes, when you would 
go to lunch, you would see a number of people who might take their 
jackets off, and you would see a number of guns and weapons. You almost 
might be too afraid to eat. It would kind of take away lunch because 
all of these weapons were around.
  I would urge our country to be willing to make the kind of 
investments that you must make. They are not spending. There is a 
difference between spending and investing. If you just spend, you don't 
necessarily get a return, but when you invest wisely, you expect a 
return. We need to invest in education. We need to invest in more 
social development activity, and we need to reinvest in urban 
communities like those on the southwest side and near-north sides and 
suburban areas of Chicago.
  Congressman Rush, I thank you again and commend you for calling for 
this Special Order, but I have got a feeling that, where there is life, 
there is hope, and I have a feeling that we will arrest the violence 
problem, not only in Chicago, but in other places throughout America. I 
am pleased to join with you this evening and share a few moments in 
talking about the issue.

[[Page 12152]]


  Mr. RUSH. Thank you so much, Congressman Davis.
  I know that you have a response to what I am going to say because I 
am sure you share the same feeling.
  I talked about discrimination earlier, and there is one aspect of 
discrimination that is probably of little notice. You have these 
youngsters in your community and in my community--in your district and 
in my district--and they are shepherded, to a great extent, to these 
prisons across the State. Most of these prisons are located in small 
towns, and these prisons are the economic engines for these small 
towns.
  Mr. DANNY K. DAVIS of Illinois. They are part of the economy.
  Mr. RUSH. So young people inside the city of Chicago, in your 
district and in my district, are actually the raw material of a 
lifestyle--a middle class lifestyle--for these small towns that 
surround these prisons because they are in the prisons, and their 
families and parents are working for the prisons. Their college 
educations are paid for by their salaries from the prisons, as are 
their homes, their mortgages. So they are creating an economic boon for 
these small towns, but we are suffering all of the issues.
  Mr. DANNY K. DAVIS of Illinois. There is no doubt about it. I took 31 
children to see their fathers in prison on the Saturday before Father's 
Day, and I can tell you that it was one of the most emotional 
gatherings that I have ever participated in.
  We have got to put a stop to it, and we have got to start counting 
individuals not in the places they are imprisoned but in the 
communities that they come from so that the resources go back to those 
communities and not to the places where they are imprisoned.
  Again, I thank you for shedding light this evening and for my being 
able to join you. We will just have to keep working on the issue, and I 
think we will get to the bottom of it.
  Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the courtesy of giving me the opportunity 
to acquire time that had not been acquired before, and I yield back the 
balance of my time.

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