On gun control listening tour, Eric Swalwell visits Chicago’s most dangerous neighborhood: finds activists want community reinvestment, healthcare
U.S. Congressman Eric Swalwell, candidate for Democratic nominee for President, visited Chicago’s most dangerous neighborhood on Wednesday as part of a countrywide listening tour on gun violence.
In the 72 hours before Swalwell visited, 4 people were shot and killed in Chicago, and 21 others were wounded.
Congressman Swalwell arranged the visit with anti-violence activist Tamar Manasseh, who founded of Mothers Against Senseless Killings (MASK) after 34-year-old Lucille Barnes was shot and killed in June 2015.
Swalwell stepped out of his car at around 11:20 a.m. on the corner of 75th & Stewart Avenue, in Chicago, just feet away from where Barnes was killed in 2014, and walked with Manasseh through a small neighborhood on the borders of Englewood and Greater Grand Crossing.
According to community trackers, Grand Crossing is the eighth most dangerous neighborhood in the city, with six homicides & 22 nonfatal shootings so far this year. Englewood is the most dangerous with 15 homicides & 52 nonfatal shootings.
Manasseh says she explained to Swalwell, “Because there are no mental health facilities, there is a lot of self-medication. So it’s almost to the point where they can’t come outside unless they are medicated. Because — think about it — if they’re going to have a surgery, they’re going to put you under. You’re going to get some sort of anaesthesia, something like that. Can you imagine — they come out prepared to get shot.”
“So if I get shot, I’m not going to feel the wound, just see it. I’m just going to sleep away. Because I’m so medicated and I’m so numb I can’t get hit by that. I’m just going to not wake up and it’s going to be over. But if they’re sober, they don’t really want to come out of the house. Because it’s scary. The fear lives in sobriety. It’s not in a place where I’m altered, where my mind stays altered. It’s not there. But if I’m sober, oh my god, I’m terrified.” she said.
“Because the thing is, if I know — I know that if I kill you, and I talk about it on social media, and I kill you on live, I kill you on camera, I know that somebody is coming back to kill me, some of your people are coming to kill me.” said Manasseh.
“And maybe I don’t have the courage to put the gun in my mouth and pull the trigger. I don’t. But I’ll sure be glad if you did it. That’s why people step in front of trains. That’s why they point guns at cops, they already know what’s going to happen. And I think that’s kind of what they do to each other. Because if you have no future, you have no hope. You have a record, you’re 20 years old, you have no education. You know — you don’t have any skills, what — how do you live? How do you live 60 or 70 years that way? How? It’s tiring running from the police, running from opposition gang members.”
In a press gaggle, Swalwell told reporters that the thing that struck him most was Manasseh’s statement that the killers are suicidal, not homicidal. “I know that the problem is deeper than that when people have a sense of hopelessness because of no investment in education or jobs or healthcare. You look around the streets here and you see liquor stores and payday lenders.”
In an interview after Swalwell left, Manasseh said “It’s hard not being the person that you dream to be when you were a little kid. It’s hard. How do you ever learn how to be somebody without any options? How do you ever learn to be that person? How do you ever get used to not having options? So at a certain point, it just grinds you down. It just wears you down. That’s how you’re 28 and an O.G. in the hood. That’s how that happens.”
Activists identify social media beefs as the short-term cause of the shootings: “Because their music is noisy, we don’t listen. Everything is in it. They’re explaining it — who they shot, how they shot them, who else they’re going to shoot, but nobody’s listening, even though that’s in [Chicago Police’s] budget to listen.” said Manasseh.
Swalwell asked Manasseh how a 15-year-old could get a gun. She replied, “Everybody’s got a guy. I know a guy. I know a girl. It’s not hard. It’s harder for me to find a ride to school than it is for me to find a gun.”
Kohmee Parrett, 44, from the South Side of Chicago, also met with Eric Swalwell. When asked about his impression of Swalwell, Parrett said: “He said something about block to block grants. I’m a grassroots organizer I believe that the problems have to be invested in and solved from the bottom up, not the top down. So I’m really digging that idea.”
Parrett also called on Former Vice President Joe Biden to come to this Chicago neighborhood next. “We wouldn’t be quite as gentle with Joe Biden. You have already have a reputation. We have to talk about your — your support. I’m sorry — your writing the crime bill that locked up a whole lot of black people and a whole lot of other stuff.”
“When we come to your policy history, there’s a lot of racism in there that nobody wants to talk about.” he said.
Manasseh also called on Elizabeth Warren to visit this Chicago neighborhood. “I like what she does with consumers and small businesses, and if we’re trying to encourage that in neighborhoods like this, I think she would be the perfect person to come have a conversation about that. How do we encourage economic growth in neighborhoods like this? How do we somehow feed that? I think she might have good ideas with that.”
This was Swalwell’s third stop on his countrywide gun violence listening tour, after visiting Parkland, Fla., Philadelphia, Pa., and Indianapolis, Ind.
