From top: A Chicago police officer in the classroom of Dan Boyle’s primary school where a 14-year-old shot the principal dead and wounded three others on January 17, 1974; Dan Boyle
We lived on Southside of Chicago, which Jim Croce had described as the baddest part of town.
The reality wasn’t nearly that bad. My parents were hard working folk who gave their family a basic, but comfortable standard for living.
And yet my Mother had an intuition that it wasn’t the place where she wanted to bring up her children.
Our main playground was a nearby open, unguarded railway line. Our biggest thrill was catching onto garbage trucks to enjoy the ride.
Once some older ‘friends’ encouraged me to break into a neighbour’s house. Not to steal anything, just for a sense of devilment. I was eight years of age.
My Mother’s intuition saw us move to Ireland to live in our Grandmother’s house in the early seventies.
It didn’t take long for my Mother’s intuition to take hold.
Two years after our family had moved to Ireland, we learned that the principal of the primary school my siblings and I had attended, was shot dead by a fourteen year old former student. Three others were also injured.
I remembered him as a kindly man. The eight year old me saw his whiteness (his hair) as his being an elder, someone approaching the end of life. He was fifty two years of age.
Whatever he was he certainly didn’t deserve that.
I have visited Chicago on a number of occasions since then. I have made it my business to visit the old neighbourhood. Each subsequent visit has saddened me further.
My first school, a place of which I had nothing but happy memories of, had been turned into a high security compound.
This sadness has been deepened as I read media reports of the most recent US mass shootings at El Paso and Dayton.
Most depressing of these was the contribution of Fox News (Irish American) propagandist, Sean Hannity. In his, as ever, worthless contribution, he argues that an already fortified society should become more so:
“I’d like to see the perimeter of every school in America surrounded, secured by retired police … have one armed guard on every floor of every school, all over every mall, the perimeter and inside every hall of every mall.”
This is what is what the Land of the Free has become.
Hannity is someone I am happy to wilfully ignore. The problem is that he seems to have the ear of the President of the USA. Not only the ear, but also apparently the space between his ears.
He is but one of the Trump apologists who have moved on from the now tired thoughts and prayers approach, to the pseudo psychology that mass shootings (by white people) should be reduced to a mental health issue, informed solely by an access to and subsequent prolific use of violent video games.
One thing that it isn’t, nor can it be, is the availability or excessive use of guns. The National Rifle Association (NRA) with its generous contributions to, mainly, Republican members of Congress, has assured that it cannot be so.
I hope again to visit Chicago. The city I want to visit is one that has finally left its gun culture behind. For culture is really where Chicago should be, what it should be talked about.
A culture of food, of music, of comedy, of theatre, of visual arts. There is so much more to Chicago than the gun. There is so much of the US that should be similarly acknowledged.
The temptation is to encourage the use of guns against those whose verbal violence has worsened a more enlightened USA to emerge.
But that would be hypocritical and contradictory. We, and they, have to be better than that.
Dan Boyle is a former Green Party TD and Senator and serves as a Green Party councillor on Cork City Council. His column appears here every Thursday. Follow Dan on Twitter: @sendboyle
Pic via Chicago Tribune archive
Now, lets see the nra supporters going at you on this one Dan
Of 300 murders so far this year over 93% had drug connection. Similar to tit for tat shootings in Dublin. A lethal combination.
Just wondering, but is “had drug connections” the US equivalent of being “known to the Gardaí”?
No, CIan. If we look at disappearances/gangland murders , attempted murders, drug and gun crime go hand in hand with these crime statistics.
Never understood why the USA has so many run-amok shootings. Aren’t the Swiss the most heavily domestically armed nation in the world and you almost never hear of similar mass shootings there.
America has too many nutters to allow gun ownership. All gun owners should take a mandatory mental health test.
Yep, give everyone a gun and whoever is still standing wins!
white guys read the lies on dangerous, irrational sites
The Boomtown Rats wrote a song about that.