Youre welcome.
Ive had a love/hate relationship with Chicago for 30 years. I work there now. Parts of it are amazing, beautiful, and truly world class. But thats in spite of, not because of, the political leadership.
And one has to realize that the gangs and the politicians are allies. The gangs provide the muscle and GOTV workers. In return the politicians provide protection to the gangs via a hamstrung police department.
The politicians keep getting re-elected, the Loop provides a functioning economy, and everyone turns a blind eye to the carnage on the south and west sides.
L
My understanding is that Newark has a similar issue; the municipal government is in cahoots with the gangs. Because so much of the city has been destroyed since it fell half a century ago, there is no “love/hate relationship”; there is nothing left to love. Attempts to woo back the productive people in the surrounding areas fall flat because they are the children and grandchildren of those chased out decades ago; they have no misconceptions about race relations, and in the highest-taxed state in the country they understand they are being enticed back to provide everything for a non-working hostile population (and companies understand the same dynamic). Economic activity is generally confined to the small downtown, and increasingly the surrounding towns - some of which aren’t in the same county so they can escape the county tax levies raised to keep Newark afloat. Law enforcement is largely a ceremonial display; it doesn’t exist for all intents and purposes outside of the sections where working people commute in every day (and must be out by sunset).
Newark is a small-scale demonstration of why the Founding Fathers restricted voting to taxpayers; they resented “taxation without representation”, and equally understood the dangers of “representation without taxation”.
Good summation of the disaster that is Chicago. The body count is the “cost” corrupt Democrat politicians don’t mind incurring to ensure they stay in power.
The Democrats stay in power.
The gangs stay in power.
The people die.