An estimated 100-200 police provided security Saturday night for the extended Obama family as they visited their lovely Chicago home to attend the wedding of prominent aide Valerie Jarrett's daughter. Meanwhile, just a few blocks away, it was another typical Saturday night in Chicago for the district President Barack Obama (D) represented previously as a community organizer, state senator, a senator and now president. During the wedding festivities--and best wishes to the couple--within a few miles of the celebration there were "4 dead, 19 wounded in separate city shootings."
Four people were killed and at least 19 others wounded Saturday afternoon into Sunday morning across the city, from the near North Side, west to the Austin neighborhood and as far south as 107th Street.
This report is from an early morning analysis, they may have missed a few incidents.
The night before, as the Obama entourage arrived and pre nuptial celebrations were underway. "1 dead, 9 wounded in separate shootings across city."
A man was killed and nine other people were wounded in shootings across the city Friday afternoon into Saturday morning, police said.
Although Chicago has a strict gun control ordinance, effectively banning private gun ownership, pop pop, bang, bang sounds accompanied by death and injury are an ordinary, everyday occurrence in certain neighborhoods.
And who is at fault for this Father's Day week end violence? In a display of inter faith, inter religious co-operation, Reverend Jesse Jackson, father to at least one acknowledged child out of wedlock plus several with his wife and Catholic Reverend Michael Pfleger, adopted father to several black African-American boys, agreed-- it is not the shooters, the perps, it is not the local community filled with fatherless children, welfare mothers, teen aged parents, unskilled, unemployed, unemployable people, or violent schools. No! The fault lies with...the stores that sell the guns.
Saturday mornings usually are busy inside Chuck's Gun Shop in south suburban Riverdale.
But the only activity near the business this weekend took place outside the front door as the Reverends Jesse Jackson and Michael Pfleger joined 100 others in an anti-gun protest.
"Are you there?" Pfleger called out, standing near the shuttered gun shop. "We want to talk to you."
But no one answered. The owners decided to close the store during Saturday's demonstration. (snip)
Protesters called for gun manufacturers to "title guns, just like cars."
Jackson marched with Pfleger and dozens of people for more than an hour before ending with a prayer for the victims of gun violence, whose families came out in full force. Both men had been arrested for trespassing outside the shop during a 2007 protest, but the charges were later dropped.
On Saturday, Jackson called for the city to come up with a plan to end gun violence and help create more jobs: "Jobs in, guns out, not guns in, jobs out," Jackson said. "Stopping guns is one leg of the problem, creating jobs is the other. There's too much violence, too much pain and too much fear."
Pfleger said he has seen the rising tallies of shootings, and he's hoping that neighborhoods get angry and put up a fight.
"Communities got to rise up and take authority in their homes and on their blocks," Pfleger said. ". . . We've got to make sure that we get neighbors and neighborhoods to become strong and aggressive."
Store owners could not be reached for comment.
And so, with a few protesters--and lots of media--this diverse, multi cultural duo shut down a legitimate gun shop business in suburban Chicago so they could stroke their egos rather than doing the hard work of telling their communities to straighten up, take care of themselves and their children, get some training and get a job. Nope, so much easier to pull a publicity stunt, assured that this extortion will pull in some government dollars for their life style while innocents suffer.
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