For Chicago’s Next Mayor: How to Make Chicago as Safe as New York
by Steve Sewall (updated 1/20/19)
2/7/19 This piece frequently rethought/revised — read the latest version!
It can happen. Chicago, the I Will City, can make itself as safe as New York.
And it will happen when Chicago has a new, digital way of doing politics.
A trust-building way to break the trust-depleting stranglehold of the old, industrial-age Chicago Way (see above), whose blizzards of fear-mongering, mind-numbing election-time TV attack ads utterly deprive Chicago of the trust and strength needed to address social problems like violence effectively: as a city of involved citizens and responsive leaders.
So how to counter citywide mistrust in a digital age?
How about prime-time public forums, televised citywide, that Chicagoans and their leaders can see and participate in?
Forums that give all Chicagoans an informed voice in the government decisions that affect their lives. That make Chicagoans and City Hall responsive and accountable to each other in shaping Chicago’s best future in full public view.
Forums where Chicago’s next mayor can challenge Chicago to accomplish great things like making Chicago as safe as New York.
Sound impossible? A pipe dream? It’s not. It’s entirely feasible. And a single, dynamic TV program — call it Chicago FIXIT — suffices to launch it.
FIXIT is riveting. It’s reality TV for real. It’s fun, exciting, informative and empowering. It puts Chicago in touch with itself in productive ways that keep Chicagoans of all ages, races and backgrounds on the edge of their seats.
It’s clean, rule-governed and 100% transparent. It’s impartial, non-partisan, issue-centered and completely outcome-oriented.
Its rules earn the respect of Chicagoans and City Hall alike. They bring out the best in Chicagoans and their leaders, not the worst, as we often see in media. And FIXIT’s outcomes, selected, developed and approved with citywide input, win citywide support.
Once it airs, interactive FIXIT transforms Chicago politics overnight. It’s a major Chicago event, the talk of the town, a likely turning point in Chicago history.
So Chicago’s media cover and critique its proceedings as they cover and critique the championship seasons of Chicago’s beloved sports teams.
Regarding violence: FIXIT solves violence by tapping deep into Chicago’s most powerful anti-violence resource: the voices, experience, intelligence, wisdom and enormous energies of the people of Chicago, including the young people without whose involvement violence cannot possibly be solved.
Ignoring this massive resource, Chicago mayors for six decades have instead poured billions upon billions of taxpayer dollars into desperate attempts by vastly undermanned police and public health professionals to reduce violence: to prevent, contain, curb, or crack down on it.
The result? In the early 1990’s, mayor Richard M. Daley boldly asserted that “Chicago has lost two generations of young people to gangs and drugs”.
Today, the total is three generations lost. And counting fast to four.
In 2018, a person was shot every two hours and 57 minutes:
To this human catastrophe, add endless depressing media stories about lives lost and things gone wrong:
And what you have is a great yet demoralized city that’s come to accept wartime levels of man-made violence as natural facts of city life.
Like brutal Chicago winters.
Chicagoans seem not to care. That’s the problem. Chicago’s next mayor can solve it.
In challenging Chicagoans to make Chicago as safe as New York, he or she can also challenge Chicago’s second most powerful (and equally neglected) anti-violence resource — Chicago’s media — to pitch in, too.
Here’s more about Chicago FIXIT reality TV.
Who foots the bill for FIXIT? Socially-responsible Chicago corporations rush to sponsor FIXIT and its huge, citywide/region-wide audience.
That’s it. A way for a disconnected, post-industrial-age I Will City to address violence as a connected, digital-age We Will City.
And a 21st-Century way for Chicago to realize the vision of Daniel Burnham, whose monumental, 20th-Century Plan of Chicago incorporates his core belief that “Good citizenship is the prime object of good city planning.”
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- This four-part Medium post makes the full case for Chicago FIXIT.
- Our Chicago FIXIT Information Page goes even deeper into the FIXIT concept.
- Let’s talk! Email Steve at sewall2020@comcast.net.
Steve Sewall, Ph.D., is a Chicago educator, media entrepreneur and Director of Chicago Civic Media.
