I like Father Pfleger.
(How to encourage more Chicagoans to work with police to solve murders,
August 8). I also have a lot of respect
for him. He sees his responsibility as
not only speaking to the people who come to his church on Sundays but speaking to
the whole society at large as well.
Having said that, I must say that I was greatly disappointed
in his recent article about helping the police to solve murders. His article covered a lot more ground than
simply public relations with the police.
He also went into what he saw as all the underlying problems in the
black community that contribute to the current violence so rampant there. And this is where he, and so many others, is missing
something, and a big something at that.
His list of problems in the black community was long. And serious.
But, he missed something.
Everything was somebody else’s fault. Everything depended on other people spending money
on programs, businesses, and monetary assistance for people in these
communities. Everything involved waiting
for someone else to ride in and rescue them.
I won’t deny that the city and some of those other people can
and should do more where they can to improve the lives of the people in this
community, but Pfleger said nothing about what the people themselves can do to
end this seemingly endless cycle of violence.
I won’t offer any suggestions here, because I am an outsider. But the first step in solving any problem is
figuring out what I can do before thinking about what other people can do.