EDITORIAL: A Chicago alderman finally speaks truth to gang violence

May 10--"We need the people who live here to stand up and help us stop what's going on."

-- Chicago Ald. Raymond Lopez, 15th

There is gang warfare in Brighton Park and Back of the Yards, two Chicago neighborhoods under siege. Shootings and retaliations in the past week have left several dead and many wounded, including two CPD officers injured when their unmarked van was raked by high-powered rifle fire.

Residents of those Southwest Side communities are scared. The city as a whole is frustrated. And one alderman, Raymond Lopez, is angry enough to demand cooperation from the people who live on those blocks, who see the bad guys, maybe know them and could provide information to prevent a shooting or nab a culprit. If they're encouraged to speak up. If they dare.

"If you are hanging out with people who are recruiting 12- and 13-year-olds to join gangs and sell drugs, then you are part of the problem in this community," Lopez told a Tribune reporter. "We need to stop beating around the bush on this, and we need the people who live here to stand up and help us stop what's going on."

What Lopez said was emotional, honest, brave and, most of all, necessary for the community to hear. Because there is no way for Chicago to push back successfully against the scourge of gang violence without the help of neighbors, acquaintances and family members willing to share what they know.

This kind of intervention is not easy for residents to provide and impossible for authorities to demand. There are too many forces lined up against helping, starting with fear of the gangs and mistrust of the police. Residents need their neighbors' support, their city's support, if they are going to help combat Chicago's plague.

The city's aldermen, some of whom represent violence-racked neighborhoods, have the authority and respect to rally support for the fight against Chicago's plague of gang shootings -- if they take ownership. But they haven't. We've said for two years, as the city's gun death and injury toll mounted, that members of the Chicago City Council are failing at their opportunity to lead. We've urged them to insist that parents search their dwellings for guns, to organize neighbors to occupy hot intersections, to demand that constituents cooperate with police, to walk door to door with the cops to tell people that if they don't help, nothing changes.

Sure, aldermen are quick to make demands of the overstretched Chicago Police Department, quick to join in legitimate criticism of CPD failings, quick to call for the scalps of the same superintendents they've begged to promote their relatives and friends.

But own this fight? Speak truth to violence? No, too difficult. Timid aldermen don't provoke the gangs and don't demand much from their constituents.

In contrast, here is Lopez, elected to the council in 2015 to represent the 15th ward, which spans Brighton Park and Back of the Yards. He lobbied City Hall to invest leftover property tax rebate money in anti-violence programs and spoke out against a neighborhood grocery and taco stand he said were gang hangouts. The owners "need to be held just as responsible as the gang members and drug dealers" he told the Tribune in late 2016.

Then came the last week in Lopez's ward: Police investigating a gang-related shooting were wounded by members of La Raza. With that gang suddenly under pressure, rivals apparently stepped up activity. An alleged member of the Satan Disciples was found shot to death in the street before dawn Sunday morning. Hours later, at a makeshift street memorial for the deceased, two men armed with rifles stepped from an alley and began firing, killing siblings Michael and Adriana Williams and wounding eight others.

Attending an outdoor gang memorial at a time of elevated violence isn't safe for law-abiding citizens. Lopez sounded disgusted by the violence: "No innocent lives were lost," he declared.

That's his judgment, not ours. But we can't recall hearing any alderman speak so bluntly about gang violence and community responsibility to stop it. Lopez may be insulting a few people. His candor brings risks. Lopez received death threats and now has a security detail. Yet as he told the Tribune, "I was elected to defend my residents and will continue to do so."

Reducing gang violence won't happen overnight. Lopez won't make progress alone. He needs to be joined by many others willing to act, including aldermen and other civic leaders. All of Chicago needs to be part of the fight -- including citizens who live on streets the gangbangers think they own.

Remember: We need the people who live here to stand up and help us stop what's going on.

Join the discussion on Twitter @Trib_Ed_Board and on Facebook.

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