For Ald. Carrie Austin (34th), the violence that’s gripped Chicago this year is personal.
Over Memorial Day weekend, a college freshman home for the summer was shot to death just five doors down from Austin’s sturdy A-frame home in Roseland on the city’s South Side. He was a friend of her grandson.
“People say, ‘Well, you know they’re not gonna do all that around the alderman’s house,’ ” she says. “Yeah, you wanna bet?”
She's not the only one:
- Ald. Sandi Jackson (7th), whose South Side ward includes an area known as “Terror Town,” says she always double-checks to make sure no one with a gun is lurking before she backs into her own driveway.
And she moved her entire family to Washington DC.
- In Austin, Ald. Emma Mitts (37th) says she tries not to let fear get the best of her but knows that’s hard for her mother, who lives with her. So she hurries to get home before the streetlights come on at night to keep her mother from worrying.
But this one is the best:
From her front stoop, Ald. Toni Foulkes (15th) points to landmarks from her childhood.On that sidewalk she learned to ride a two-wheeler.
Under the street lamp she and her friends used to stretch a net across the street to play volleyball at 2 in the morning.
Really? Who in their right mind thinks that stringing a volleyball net over the street at two in the f#$%ing morning is normal? The cognitive disconnect is amazing.