How Chicago Can Solve Violence and Make Itself Safer Than New York (Part II)
by Steve Sewall, Chicago Civic Media. Updated 6/27/18.
From Part I. To Parts III and IV. And here is Has Violence Reduction Failed?
Part II: Make a Rule-Governed Game of It!
Chicagoans love games.
So we created ChicagoWRKS— a season-long contest for best solutions to violence, televised citywide — to empower Chicagoans, including City Hall, to do the seemingly impossible: solve violence.
With the input of its young people. Because young people are the primary victims (and perpetrators) of violence.
ChicagoWRKS is a voter-driven, digital-age version of the great game of voter-driven representative democracy.
It has winners and losers. It’s fun to watch, thrilling to participate in.
The stakes to win are high. In fact, Chicago can’t afford to lose. Because losing, among other things, invites the nation’s media to pillory Chicago as the poster child of America’s urban violence. As they’ve been doing for years.
So the eyes of the nation will be on Chicago as Chicagoans play the ChicagoWRKS violence-solution game. That’s a big incentive for Chicago to win.
The bar of making Chicago safer than New York is one high bar.
Because New York is a safe city. But its perfect because it rouses the competitive instincts of Chicagoans eager to put Chicago’s Second City label behind them. And it puts a premium on their ability to cooperate with each other to get the job done.
What’s more, this bar is quantifiable: crime and safety data from both cities are readily comparable.
A single season of ChicagoWRKS won’t make Chicago safer than New York. What counts is progress towards safety. Continuous improvement, as the great systems engineer and founder of Total Quality Management W. Edwards Deming would say.
ChicagoWRKS puts to a fair test the ability of 2.7 million Chicagoans and their leaders to solve violence as a city. It also tests the ability of nine million Chicagolanders to solve violence in their communities as a region.
So you ask: how can a mere TV show help Chicago accomplish what decades of effort and billions of dollars have failed to accomplish?
Consider the opening of paragraph of media pundit Shelly Palmer’s seminal book, Television Disrupted: The Transition from Network TV to Networked TV:
For more than 50 years, it [television] has been the best, most efficient way to communicate with the largest possible audience. This probably won’t change anytime soon. What is changing our definition of a large audience and the value we are placing on it.
Non-partisan, ideologically neutral ChicagoWRKS does what TV network owners have never done: it taps a large audience of all members of the Chicagoland community who want to solve violence.
ChicagoWRKS blends TV’s two most popular and ubiquitous formats — rule-governed pro sports telecasts and voter-driven reality TV — in ways that enable residents to achieve a goal whose realization will dramatically improve the quality of life throughout the Chicagoland region.
But why reality TV? Why make ChicagoWRKS a civic version of voter-driven Reality TV shows like American Idol and The Voice (details here)?
Because voter-driven reality TV is the most powerful vote-generating mechanism ever devised. Case in point: 750 million votes were cast during Season 10 of American Idol.
Producers of voter-driven reality shows cite two reasons for their vote-generating power. First, these shows enable viewers to identify with on-screen participants. Second, they give viewers a voice in the show’s outcomes.
On to Part III to see how Reality TV helps make ChicagoWRKS work.
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- Our ChicagoWRKS Information Page has more information.
- ChicagoWRKS is a localized version of America’s Choice, our 2006 treatment for nationwide, civic-purposed reality TV.
Steve Sewall, Ph.D., is a Chicago educator, media entrepreneur and Director of Chicago Civic Media.
