Another Chicago Murder - I Hate Writing These Stories

The senseless shootings and killing or Chicago young people continued this week. This time the young man killed was the son of Ra Joy,
a long time civic activist, who I've interacted with off and on since the early 2000s. The map below shows where the shooting took place just South of the University of Chicago campus, in the Woodlawn neighborhood.

I did not create a new map view for this story. Instead, I searched this blog for "Woodlawn" and found stories I've written since 2009.  I used one of those maps, and added an image from the front page of today's Chicago Tribune.

Look at some of the headlines from these past articles.

Crime down in Chicago. What about shootings? What's the rest of the story? 8-8-2009

Faith Leader Seeks Support in Area Teen Killed 12-5-2011

9-Yr Old Executed. Rage in Short Supply 8-22-2014

Go beyond marches to stop violence 7-19-2010

"The underlying issue here is racism and poverty" 12-18-2009

New look at how others can use T/MC maps 8-26-2009

Chicago SunTimes Oct. 1992

I started using maps in 1993, as part of a strategy designed to create more frequent stories that drew attention to neighborhoods where kids and families and schools need extra help and where volunteer-based tutor/mentor programs were trying to reach k-12 youth during non-school hours.

My goal then, and still, was to help existing programs get a more consistent flow of dollars, talent, ideas, technology, etc. so each could constantly improve  how they competed for the attention and participation of young people and volunteers so they could have growing impact on the choices kids make and their ability to move through school and into jobs free of poverty.

The maps show too few programs in many neighborhoods, including Woodlawn, so the goal was also to help business, faith groups, celebrities, media, universities and others connect with a library of ideas showing work being done in other places that could be duplicated in their own neighborhoods, helping new programs grow where none now exists.

Too few have responded to the newsletters and blog articles I've posted for the past 20 years so the full strategies I've outlined and have on the drawing board have never had nearly the support they need. Yet, I've developed a set of strategies and ideas that could be given new life by others, in Chicago and other cities, over the next decade, if just some people would step forward to offer help.

Maybe 20 years from now we would not need to be writing stories like this.

Read what I wrote about a "do over" back in March 2017.

How About a Do-Over? Oscars. Election. Tutor/Mentor Connection

What a Tutor/Mentor Connection "do over" looks like