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The Chicago Blackhawks will be a terrible team in 2022-23. The main focus of the year will be following the prospect’s journeys throughout all the leagues in the world. A few of them have been on display in the preseason already.

On Wednesday night, the Blackhawks headed up to Michigan to take on the Detroit Red Wings. It was a great game for them as they beat them 4-2. Chicago mostly used their non-NHL players and went up against a Detroit Red Wings team with a lot of regulars playing.

The highlight of the game was the second goal for Chicago. At the time of the game, it put them ahead 2-1 which made it look like they actually could compete in this game which they did. The goal was scored by Lukas Reichel and assisted by Kevin Korchinski.

For the Blackhawks, this is the future of the team as of right now. They are certainly hoping to add a big piece of their future in the 2023 NHL Draft but these two are also very important.

The Chicago Blackhawks had a nice look into the future on Wednesday night.

Korchinski is a very gifted defenseman that can make amazing plays using his speed and offensive abilities. He found Lukas Reichel for a breakaway here and he didn’t miss on his opportunity. It was amazing to see these two connect for a great chance and a goal.

Korchinski is probably going to be sent back to the WHL soon. He may get into a few NHL games to start but he will play in no more than nine games so they don’t burn a year on his entry-level deal yet. He will dominate all season there and be ready for when the team needs him.

As for Reichel, the AHL is an option for him which can’t be said for Korchinski. Reichel already burned a year of his deal already, however, so there is no reason for him to play anywhere else but Chicago.

He is one of their nine best forwards so he should be playing. There will be growing pains but that is all a part of it. He has the skills to be a part of this team and help them grow back into a playoff team.

Aside from this beautiful goal, there is another young player to be excited about and that is goaltender Arvid Soderblom. He might be the best goalie in the organization and that means he could be the full-time starter one day.

However, there is absolutely no reason for him to play behind this horrid team in 2022-23. It would be in his best interest to play for the Rockford Ice Hogs with a few NHL appearances in there. On Wednesday, with his brother skating for the other team, he made 31 saves on 33 shots.

The Blackhawks have Alex Stalock and Petr Mrazek to take on the workload this season. That also probably makes them a worse team and we know that deep down inside, the lottery is the Blackhawks’ biggest concern this year.

All of these young guys are going to make 2022-23 worth it in the end. They didn’t have as bright of a future going into the offseason as they do right now which speaks to Kyle Davidson’s work as a GM so far. This win over Detroit was a look into the future and that’s exciting.

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CREDIT: ThoughtPoet

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The end of the Chicago Sky’s 2022 season came as quick as an end-of-summer downpour—unexpected, and, for fans, heart-wrenching. The team had carried a ten-point lead heading into the fourth quarter in a closeout game five against the Connecticut Sun, moments from securing a spot in the WNBA Finals. 

Instead, in a matter of minutes, the defending champions inexplicably crumbled. 

The sold-out crowd inside Wintrust Arena watched agape. A season ending in disaster may be a familiar feeling to many Chicagoans, but not to Sky fans, whose last two seasons have been marked by Candace Parker’s dominant return and a championship culture known across the league. As the seconds wound down, the realization rippled through the crowd, as Chicago’s veteran roster went completely scoreless for the final four minutes and 45 seconds of the game. In section 115, just behind the Sky bench, season ticket holders Crispin Torres and Kaaren Fehsenfeld felt their stomachs flip. 

“I just kept thinking: what happened?” said Torres, who had been ready to celebrate another Finals berth. 

Until those final four minutes, the Sky’s season had been electric. 

After the team’s 2021 championship run, “you couldn’t talk about women’s basketball without talking about Chicago,” said Sky head coach James Wade. The franchise took on that responsibility with pride.

In the summer of 2022, the team registered their best record in franchise history and hosted the city’s first-ever WNBA All-Star Game. Chicago—or Skytown, as fans call it—became the center of the women’s basketball world, and, game after game, thousands streamed into Wintrust Arena to watch the defending champs hit the court.

The Sky’s die-hard fan base is growing, and the culture is distinctive from traditional professional sports. “For a long time, I’ve felt very quiet about being a sports fan,” Torres said. “But the WNBA just feels so different. As a politically minded person, as a leftist, a queer person, and a trans person, it’s probably the most eclectic and open-minded group of sports fans I’ve ever been a part of.” 

This year’s WNBA season was bigger than basketball itself: it was the year this boldly political and often openly queer fan base was confronted with injustice of a new kind. Long before the first tip-off, through the regular season and playoffs, and even now, WNBA superstar Brittney Griner has been wrongfully detained in Russia, where she’s lived in a prison cell for over 220 days.  

For many in the Sky organization, Griner’s detainment is personal. A number of the team’s players have competed alongside Griner, including Courtney Vandersloot and Allie Quigley, who last saw their friend in Russia playing for UMMC Ekaterinburg. In February, Vandersloot and Quigley returned to Ekaterinburg after traveling abroad during a two-week break from the season. But Griner wasn’t there. Players grew increasingly alarmed as the reality of her detainment set in. 

On March 1, all remaining Americans were evacuated from Russia as its invasion of Ukraine intensified. Later Vandersloot would tell The Athletic magazine, “I can’t even explain the feeling that it was. We were all sick to our stomachs about it. It’s really hard to be there and know that your friend, your teammate, is in a situation like that and you can’t do anything to help her. It’s a continuous feeling.”

And so the Chicago Sky—its players, coaches, and front-office staff—kept Griner’s plight front and center throughout the season. “It gave us a perspective of the things that are really important,” said Coach Wade. He said the coaching staff even made the decision to relax rules around when players’ family members could be present. 

The franchise also used the WNBA season as a platform for fans to lift up Griner’s name, grieve her absence, and demand her return. 

Throughout the Sky’s season at Wintrust Arena, you could feel the collective outcry in support of Griner. On Day 78 of her ordeal—soon after Griner was officially declared by the Biden administration as “wrongfully detained,” a human bargaining chip arrested to leverage concessions from the United States during wartime—that Friday night, when the Sky dropped its first regular season home game in overtime, was also the debut of a floor decal that read “BG, 42” and would remain on the court all season long. On Day 143, the day of the WNBA All-Star Game in Chicago, when every player returned from halftime to honor Griner, every single one wore her jersey. Day 171, after Griner was sentenced to ten years in a Russian prison, fans at the Sky’s at-home win over the Washington Mystics brought T-shirts, pins, and homemade signs pleading for the return of the basketball superstar. 

Beneath Griner’s case is the alarming reality of inequity in professional sports, something Coach Wade pointed out as well. When Griner was wrongfully detained in Russia, she was in the midst of “making the ultimate sacrifice, spending time away from her family in order to provide,” Wade said. The reality remains that, for women’s professional basketball players, there really is no “off-season.” Instead, as of last year, nearly half of the WNBA’s players spent their time “off” playing abroad, earning up to ten times what they do in the United States. 

Perhaps the unresolved end to the Sky’s season in Chicago was appropriate, in some way: it forces fans, players, and coaches to grapple with a world bigger than basketball. As Coach Wade said, “We know this isn’t life or death. Griner’s situation gave us the perspective of the things that are really important.” 

On September 16, President Biden met with Cherelle Griner, reportedly giving her insight into what the White House is doing to bring her wife home. This kind of public display of assurance is somewhat unprecedented in wrongful detainment cases. And it may encourage families of the other more than 70 Americans wrongfully detained abroad to speak louder with renewed hope. Whereas the government has long urged wrongful detainment families to keep their loved ones’ story out of the public eye, Griner’s case helps to push in an opposite direction. Alongside efforts like the Bring Our Families Home Campaign, organized by the families of people wrongfully detained overseas, Griner’s case shows that making noise may in fact be a powerful force to help bring Americans home. 

In that sense, Griner is now a game changer for the issue of wrongful detainment. “She has literally elevated the issue more in the past six months than anyone in the history of the issue,” said Jonathan Franks, a wrongful detainment expert who has been part of several successful negotiations to bring detainees home. “And she hasn’t even gotten to speak for herself yet. Imagine what she’ll do once she has her voice.” 

As of publication, Brittney Griner has been wrongfully detained in Russia for more than 220 days. Credit: Haley Tweedell

When the Sky lost in catastrophic fashion on September 8, ending their season, it was Day 203 of Griner’s detainment. When the buzzer sounded, players and fans walked dejectedly from the court, but I couldn’t quite digest or make sense of this being the end: not for the Sky, nor for Chicago fans’ support of Brittney Griner.

So I decided to fly to Las Vegas for a Sky-less WNBA Finals and a last chance to grapple with the unknown.

I arrived in Vegas for game two between the Las Vegas Aces and the Connecticut Sun. Throughout the season, the Aces had snatched a few close games from Chicago, but now, I hoped to see them dominate the Sun. I wanted catharsis, at least on the basketball court. 

Mandalay Bay Resort and Casino, where the Aces play, is a world away from Wintrust Arena. To get to Michelob Ultra Arena within the casino, you must first cross a dizzying floor of slot machines, fine dining restaurants, and frozen slushie bars. Inside the arena, I scoured the crowds for a flash of Sky blue or a Candace Parker jersey, but there were none to be found. Instead, I bought an Aces T-shirt (all A’ja Wilson shirts were sold-out, of course, after she was announced as the league’s MVP a week before) and sat undercover next to a group of season ticket holders. 

The Aces had no mercy for the Sun, keeping them muffled throughout the game. Unlike the Chicago Sky, a team whose roster was built around the steadiness of its veterans, the Aces are a young team, an emergent force. They played with ferocious athleticism and a single-minded determination to bring the first-ever professional sports championship home to Vegas. And the crowd was ecstatic, absorbed in a show of smoke machines, a pyrotechnic display, and a halftime performance by Lil Jon. 

At the final buzzer marking the Aces’ win, the crowd screamed, and I screamed with them. It was an important reminder that, as a sports fan, every disappointing loss is followed by the potential for revival. A few days later, I spoke to Coach Wade, who echoed a similar sentiment: “The last game was very tough for me personally,” he said. “It’s hard for me to describe because I just want to make the fans happy. I know they’re ride or die for us.”

The Sky’s story is one of a powerful turnaround from years of low attendance to sold-out crowds. The coaching staff knows it, too. As the seconds dwindled down in that final game, Coach Wade and his staff turned to the crowd, thanking them. “As we were walking off the floor, they’re cheering us even though we lost one of the most disappointing games,” Wade said. “And they just cheered us like we were winners in their eyes. And that says a lot to me about the fans in Chicago.”

After the game in Vegas, amidst the stream of Aces fans, I ran into someone wearing a “Free Brittney Griner Now” pin, one of the very pins I had helped to pass out during All-Star Weekend.

“You were at the All-Star game in Chicago!” I said. 

“Yes,” the woman said, “how did you know?”

“I helped to pass out those pins,” I told her. “My friend Jade made them.” 

“I wear it all the time,” she said. “I wear it to every single game.”  

Our brief conversation reminded me of how effortlessly WNBA fans had come together around Brittney Griner. More than anything else, the season will be remembered for this: “It was the BG year,” as Sky fan Crispin Torres told me. “More than anything else, I think when people look back at this season, that’s what they will remember.” 

Back home after my quick trip to Vegas, I watched one last WNBA game in Chicago. For game four of the finals, I searched for a local sports bar willing to play the game with sound. I was nervous, a feeling I’m all too familiar with from years of being a WNBA fan in public. But far more quickly than I’d expected, a bartender at a Logan Square watering hole checked with their manager, then agreed. He was happy to play the game on the patio, sound on.

And so we descended upon the bar, ten or so Sky fans in total: my partner and I, along with Torres, Fehsenfeld, Skyhook Podcast co-host Chris Pennant, and a group of people who’d also called the very same bar asking if they too could watch the WNBA finals. Our city is now home to the kind of WNBA community that many of us have been waiting nearly a lifetime to be part of. 

Chicago Sky basketball is a success story, and it’s here to stay. But Brittney Griner is not yet home. Until she’s free, the women’s basketball community will keep wearing their “Free BG” merch everywhere. And we’ll continue to count the days, demand action, and hold governments accountable. 

“This is bigger than basketball,” affirmed Coach Wade. “We can’t let the message fall on deaf ears because our basketball season is over.” 

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CREDIT: ThoughtPoet

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The end of the Chicago Sky’s 2022 season came as quick as an end-of-summer downpour—unexpected, and, for fans, heart-wrenching. The team had carried a ten-point lead heading into the fourth quarter in a closeout game five against the Connecticut Sun, moments from securing a spot in the WNBA Finals. 

Instead, in a matter of minutes, the defending champions inexplicably crumbled. 

The sold-out crowd inside Wintrust Arena watched agape. A season ending in disaster may be a familiar feeling to many Chicagoans, but not to Sky fans, whose last two seasons have been marked by Candace Parker’s dominant return and a championship culture known across the league. As the seconds wound down, the realization rippled through the crowd, as Chicago’s veteran roster went completely scoreless for the final four minutes and 45 seconds of the game. In section 115, just behind the Sky bench, season ticket holders Crispin Torres and Kaaren Fehsenfeld felt their stomachs flip. 

“I just kept thinking: what happened?” said Torres, who had been ready to celebrate another Finals berth. 

Until those final four minutes, the Sky’s season had been electric. 

After the team’s 2021 championship run, “you couldn’t talk about women’s basketball without talking about Chicago,” said Sky head coach James Wade. The franchise took on that responsibility with pride.

In the summer of 2022, the team registered their best record in franchise history and hosted the city’s first-ever WNBA All-Star Game. Chicago—or Skytown, as fans call it—became the center of the women’s basketball world, and, game after game, thousands streamed into Wintrust Arena to watch the defending champs hit the court.

The Sky’s die-hard fan base is growing, and the culture is distinctive from traditional professional sports. “For a long time, I’ve felt very quiet about being a sports fan,” Torres said. “But the WNBA just feels so different. As a politically minded person, as a leftist, a queer person, and a trans person, it’s probably the most eclectic and open-minded group of sports fans I’ve ever been a part of.” 

This year’s WNBA season was bigger than basketball itself: it was the year this boldly political and often openly queer fan base was confronted with injustice of a new kind. Long before the first tip-off, through the regular season and playoffs, and even now, WNBA superstar Brittney Griner has been wrongfully detained in Russia, where she’s lived in a prison cell for over 220 days.  

For many in the Sky organization, Griner’s detainment is personal. A number of the team’s players have competed alongside Griner, including Courtney Vandersloot and Allie Quigley, who last saw their friend in Russia playing for UMMC Ekaterinburg. In February, Vandersloot and Quigley returned to Ekaterinburg after traveling abroad during a two-week break from the season. But Griner wasn’t there. Players grew increasingly alarmed as the reality of her detainment set in. 

On March 1, all remaining Americans were evacuated from Russia as its invasion of Ukraine intensified. Later Vandersloot would tell The Athletic magazine, “I can’t even explain the feeling that it was. We were all sick to our stomachs about it. It’s really hard to be there and know that your friend, your teammate, is in a situation like that and you can’t do anything to help her. It’s a continuous feeling.”

And so the Chicago Sky—its players, coaches, and front-office staff—kept Griner’s plight front and center throughout the season. “It gave us a perspective of the things that are really important,” said Coach Wade. He said the coaching staff even made the decision to relax rules around when players’ family members could be present. 

The franchise also used the WNBA season as a platform for fans to lift up Griner’s name, grieve her absence, and demand her return. 

Throughout the Sky’s season at Wintrust Arena, you could feel the collective outcry in support of Griner. On Day 78 of her ordeal—soon after Griner was officially declared by the Biden administration as “wrongfully detained,” a human bargaining chip arrested to leverage concessions from the United States during wartime—that Friday night, when the Sky dropped its first regular season home game in overtime, was also the debut of a floor decal that read “BG, 42” and would remain on the court all season long. On Day 143, the day of the WNBA All-Star Game in Chicago, when every player returned from halftime to honor Griner, every single one wore her jersey. Day 171, after Griner was sentenced to ten years in a Russian prison, fans at the Sky’s at-home win over the Washington Mystics brought T-shirts, pins, and homemade signs pleading for the return of the basketball superstar. 

Beneath Griner’s case is the alarming reality of inequity in professional sports, something Coach Wade pointed out as well. When Griner was wrongfully detained in Russia, she was in the midst of “making the ultimate sacrifice, spending time away from her family in order to provide,” Wade said. The reality remains that, for women’s professional basketball players, there really is no “off-season.” Instead, as of last year, nearly half of the WNBA’s players spent their time “off” playing abroad, earning up to ten times what they do in the United States. 

Perhaps the unresolved end to the Sky’s season in Chicago was appropriate, in some way: it forces fans, players, and coaches to grapple with a world bigger than basketball. As Coach Wade said, “We know this isn’t life or death. Griner’s situation gave us the perspective of the things that are really important.” 

On September 16, President Biden met with Cherelle Griner, reportedly giving her insight into what the White House is doing to bring her wife home. This kind of public display of assurance is somewhat unprecedented in wrongful detainment cases. And it may encourage families of the other more than 70 Americans wrongfully detained abroad to speak louder with renewed hope. Whereas the government has long urged wrongful detainment families to keep their loved ones’ story out of the public eye, Griner’s case helps to push in an opposite direction. Alongside efforts like the Bring Our Families Home Campaign, organized by the families of people wrongfully detained overseas, Griner’s case shows that making noise may in fact be a powerful force to help bring Americans home. 

In that sense, Griner is now a game changer for the issue of wrongful detainment. “She has literally elevated the issue more in the past six months than anyone in the history of the issue,” said Jonathan Franks, a wrongful detainment expert who has been part of several successful negotiations to bring detainees home. “And she hasn’t even gotten to speak for herself yet. Imagine what she’ll do once she has her voice.” 

As of publication, Brittney Griner has been wrongfully detained in Russia for more than 220 days. Credit: Haley Tweedell

When the Sky lost in catastrophic fashion on September 8, ending their season, it was Day 203 of Griner’s detainment. When the buzzer sounded, players and fans walked dejectedly from the court, but I couldn’t quite digest or make sense of this being the end: not for the Sky, nor for Chicago fans’ support of Brittney Griner.

So I decided to fly to Las Vegas for a Sky-less WNBA Finals and a last chance to grapple with the unknown.

I arrived in Vegas for game two between the Las Vegas Aces and the Connecticut Sun. Throughout the season, the Aces had snatched a few close games from Chicago, but now, I hoped to see them dominate the Sun. I wanted catharsis, at least on the basketball court. 

Mandalay Bay Resort and Casino, where the Aces play, is a world away from Wintrust Arena. To get to Michelob Ultra Arena within the casino, you must first cross a dizzying floor of slot machines, fine dining restaurants, and frozen slushie bars. Inside the arena, I scoured the crowds for a flash of Sky blue or a Candace Parker jersey, but there were none to be found. Instead, I bought an Aces T-shirt (all A’ja Wilson shirts were sold-out, of course, after she was announced as the league’s MVP a week before) and sat undercover next to a group of season ticket holders. 

The Aces had no mercy for the Sun, keeping them muffled throughout the game. Unlike the Chicago Sky, a team whose roster was built around the steadiness of its veterans, the Aces are a young team, an emergent force. They played with ferocious athleticism and a single-minded determination to bring the first-ever professional sports championship home to Vegas. And the crowd was ecstatic, absorbed in a show of smoke machines, a pyrotechnic display, and a halftime performance by Lil Jon. 

At the final buzzer marking the Aces’ win, the crowd screamed, and I screamed with them. It was an important reminder that, as a sports fan, every disappointing loss is followed by the potential for revival. A few days later, I spoke to Coach Wade, who echoed a similar sentiment: “The last game was very tough for me personally,” he said. “It’s hard for me to describe because I just want to make the fans happy. I know they’re ride or die for us.”

The Sky’s story is one of a powerful turnaround from years of low attendance to sold-out crowds. The coaching staff knows it, too. As the seconds dwindled down in that final game, Coach Wade and his staff turned to the crowd, thanking them. “As we were walking off the floor, they’re cheering us even though we lost one of the most disappointing games,” Wade said. “And they just cheered us like we were winners in their eyes. And that says a lot to me about the fans in Chicago.”

After the game in Vegas, amidst the stream of Aces fans, I ran into someone wearing a “Free Brittney Griner Now” pin, one of the very pins I had helped to pass out during All-Star Weekend.

“You were at the All-Star game in Chicago!” I said. 

“Yes,” the woman said, “how did you know?”

“I helped to pass out those pins,” I told her. “My friend Jade made them.” 

“I wear it all the time,” she said. “I wear it to every single game.”  

Our brief conversation reminded me of how effortlessly WNBA fans had come together around Brittney Griner. More than anything else, the season will be remembered for this: “It was the BG year,” as Sky fan Crispin Torres told me. “More than anything else, I think when people look back at this season, that’s what they will remember.” 

Back home after my quick trip to Vegas, I watched one last WNBA game in Chicago. For game four of the finals, I searched for a local sports bar willing to play the game with sound. I was nervous, a feeling I’m all too familiar with from years of being a WNBA fan in public. But far more quickly than I’d expected, a bartender at a Logan Square watering hole checked with their manager, then agreed. He was happy to play the game on the patio, sound on.

And so we descended upon the bar, ten or so Sky fans in total: my partner and I, along with Torres, Fehsenfeld, Skyhook Podcast co-host Chris Pennant, and a group of people who’d also called the very same bar asking if they too could watch the WNBA finals. Our city is now home to the kind of WNBA community that many of us have been waiting nearly a lifetime to be part of. 

Chicago Sky basketball is a success story, and it’s here to stay. But Brittney Griner is not yet home. Until she’s free, the women’s basketball community will keep wearing their “Free BG” merch everywhere. And we’ll continue to count the days, demand action, and hold governments accountable. 

“This is bigger than basketball,” affirmed Coach Wade. “We can’t let the message fall on deaf ears because our basketball season is over.” 

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Gun violence across the nation, and especially here in Chicago, seems to be all we see on the news.

Politicians like Darren Bailey, the Republican nominee for Illinois governor, would have you believe that gun violence is right outside your door. But gun violence is not evenly distributed across the entire city. Instead, it is concentrated in neighborhoods that experience many forms of disadvantage, from poverty to segregation, food and job deserts, and rampant unemployment. 

Would it surprise you to know that Illinois has some of the strictest firearms laws in the country? According to Everytown USA, Illinois is the sixth-strongest state for gun laws, due to its state-mandated background checks, laws keeping guns away from domestic abusers, and “red flag” laws. And the state’s firearm-enhancement penalties can add 15 to 25 years to sentences. I fail to see how our gun laws could get much tougher.

For decades, American policies have been driven by the idea that bad behavior is caused by bad people. This led to the tough-on-crime politics of the 1990s, which in turn led to the construction of the world’s largest prison system. The United States incarcerates more of its citizens than any other country. This legacy comes at a ruinous cost to our society, especially in Black and Brown communities.

In 2006, while sentencing William Lang to seven years for aggravated unlawful use of a weapon, a Cook County Circuit Court trial judge said, “I don’t understand what I or society gains by putting you in prison for possession of a weapon. If I thought it was going to deter you or anybody else, it might make sense. But I’m fully aware that what I do to you is going to be zero effect on anyone else out there carrying a weapon.”

In 2016, dozens of organizations signed onto a report entitled Building a Safe Chicago: Calling for a Comprehensive Plan, which noted, “In recent years, our state has increased penalties for firearm possession six times, instituting new mandatory minimum sentences. As a result, the number of Illinoisans incarcerated for possessing a weapon in violation of licensing laws tripled, while arrests remained flat. Consistent with research showing that sentence severity is unlikely to deter violent crime, homicide rates fell no faster here than they did in states which had not increased such sentences—and seem to have increased at a faster pace.” 

Obviously, being more punitive doesn’t work.

As a crime prevention measure, firearm enhancements are useless—and a colossal waste of taxpayer money. Harsher penalties are reactive, and they’re lazy politics. There is, however, a growing concern about what, if anything, can be done. 

Shootings are rare on the more affluent north side, but not on the poorer west and south sides. Black and Brown Chicagoans are most likely to be the victims of shootings, and poverty can explain part of the disparity. But make no mistake, individual poverty is not the full explanation. Exclusionary housing policies and discrimination have pushed Black and Brown people into segregated neighborhoods, and segregation remains significant in Chicago. Both the government and the private sector have neglected Black and Brown neighborhoods, leaving people without good schools, banks, grocery stores, and other neighborhood institutions.

The government tends to disengage from urban issues, and respond with punitive policies that exacerbate the problems therein. This approach is characterized by abandonment, disinvestment, and punishment. “That’s no coincidence,” says Alex Kotlowitz, author of There Are No Children Here, a 1992 book about the lives of two boys in the now-demolished Henry Horner Homes, and producer of The Interrupters, a documentary about violence-mediation workers. “That’s no coincidence. We’ve got to recommit ourselves to finding ways to fortify and rebuild these communitieseasy—all the obvious things, which is affordable housing, accessible health care, better schools, community centers. That’s the part that drives me crazy. All the things we already know but we’re unable or unwilling to address it in a really robust manner.”

In 2019, Mayor Lori Lightfoot announced the creation of a Memorial Day violence-reduction program called Our City, Our Safety, which she expanded in 2020 to year-round citywide gun-violence reduction. However, South Side Weekly reported that in May 2020, the Chicago Police Department began using the city’s gun-violence prevention center to surveil political demonstrations against everything from police brutality to gun violence itself, and since then the Our City, Our Safety initiative has apparently existed as little more than an online dashboard.

Our national urban policy cannot be neglect and disinvestment; it must be investment and help. You don’t often hear this from today’s politicians-—they take the easy way out and scream about punishment. Politicians love the status quo: it favors them, gives them a platform and agenda, while seemingly allowing them to actually accomplish next to nothing for their constituents. Punishment has been the most consistent response to the challenges of urban crime, violence, and poverty. All you have to do is look at your news every night to see that it has been a failure.

Harsh penalties such as eliminating parole, so-called truth in sentencing, and mandatory gun-enhancement penalties, combined with more aggressive policing and prosecution, trap more and more Black and Brown people into the criminal legal system.

Instead of punishment, the focus has to shift to the fundamental root causes—poverty, segregation, disinvestment, and the widespread availability of guns to people who shouldn’t have them.

I freely admit that I don’t come armed with all the answers to this complex problem. However, I have eyes, and even I can see that if Illinois’s tough gun laws do not help, punishment is a failed strategy. And I can also see some of the answers, such as addressing root problems like poverty and disinvestment, that could help. How is it that our elected officials can’t think of any answers to address one of the biggest issues in the state? 

We must demand real answers from those who want our vote. Stricter penalties do not work, as we can all plainly see. If politicians can’t come up with honest answers and solutions to the root problem of violence, don’t give them your vote! The status quo only helps them. We must demand more.

Anthony Ehlers is a writer incarcerated at Stateville Correctional Center who contributes a regular column to the Reader.

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