Free Republic

Nineteen Chicago alderman are calling for an emergency meeting with Mayor Lori Lightfoot, demanding that she provide answers for the city's surging crime rates. Raymond Lopez, alderman for Chicago's 15th ward, told Fox News' Dana Perino on "America's Newsroom" that the city's leadership is not up for the job of keeping residents safe.

Residents in one Chicago ward are “giving up” on calling the police as the city fails to protect them from violent crime, according to one city council member. Alderman Raymond Lopez described the violence plaguing his constituents in the city’s 15th Ward and beyond, slamming Democratic Mayor Lori Lightfoot, whose law enforcement policies and focus on systemic racism, he said, are doing little to stop the mostly gang-related violence. “Generational gang life isn’t just something that’s encouraged. It’s almost revered in some neighborhoods,” Lopez, whose constituents are about 67% Latino and 22% black, told the Washington Examiner in an interview....

Helen Hudson will tell you what the 15th Ward was like when she was a girl. In the 1950s and early ’60s, the Syracuse neighborhood was home to thousands of predominantly black residents who had settled in the growing upstate New York city during and after the Great Migration. Those who remember it, like Hudson, describe it as thriving, self-sufficient community they were proud to call home. “Oh my god, the things we had,” she said recently, her voice softening with the distinct twang of nostalgia. “We had two bowling alleys. We had meat markets.” Charlie Pierce-El will tell you...