change chicago style. - Page 2  

Some of us did research it, and found that neither the FBI nor the Department of Justice break the crime statistics down any further than the city level. For the people writing these blogs and articles to claim that all the crime is happening in communities that Obama worked in appears to be pure guesswork; or wishful thinking.

Apparently, you're not the only one that thinks so

Judge for yourself.

From http://findarticles.com/p/articles/m...g=artBody;col1 - areas BHO was an organizer in, and his associates/places of association

Reverend Alvin Love from Lilydale Baptist Church 649 W. 113th Street and Rev. Jeremiah Wright, Trinity United Church of Christ on 95th Street

http://chicago.everyblock.com/crime/...ipcodes/60628/

The Calumet Heights region--basically the farthest southern reaches of Chicago plus the suburbs in northern Indiana--

http://chicago.everyblock.com/crime/...lumet-heights/

Altgeld Gardens - Chicago's largest public housing project
http://chicago.everyblock.com/crime/...tgeld-gardens/

Are we lowering the bar? Bruce spoke of murders and "body counts";

There's not one murder on any of those links?

There is a strong implication in this thread that a community organizer is responsible for the crime rate in the areas that they work. No one has been able to post any information that would relate the 2 in any fashion.

Since I'm the one that posted a link to Wikepedia, I assume that this statement is directed at me. When asked what a community organizer does, I chose Wikipedia as one source for that definition. At least I tried as others that are bashing Obama haven't attempted to do. If that doesn’t meet your standards for information, then research it further. At least Widipedia is not biased.

I wouldn’t call a link to the American Thinker as credible.

Your first link, http://www.suntimes.com/news/metro/1...102408.article talks about the current crime rate in Chicago. It states that the murder rate has outpaced New York and L.A. It says nothing about Chicago being the unsafest city in America. I can’t find any links in this thread to support this assumption.

So I did a google search and the results are inconclusive. There is one site that has a map to the deadliest cities. St. Louis is listed as the worst (according to FBI data). This is consistent across a number of sites. Chicago isn't even on the list. http://www.mibazaar.com/unsafecities/

You made this claim with no supporting links so I googled "crimes in southside Chicago". Of course the Hudson murders are all over the place, but the crimes that came up were mostly the near south side, as I stated earlier in this thread. If you don't know the city very well, it's easy to leap to the conclusion that the entire south side is crime ridden.

Take that up with Bruce, I said crime, nothing specific.

It's come up more than once here in IMO about wiki, so don't take it personal. And yes they are biased, anyone who registers can add to the subject matter.

My last reply gives a little more detail about the areas BHO worked in, and their crime rates currently. Sorry, that's all I have for review tonight, will try and find some statistics for the years he was organizing for comparison some other time.

Oh, well then that gives us entirely new numbers. According to the Bureau of Justice, overall crime ratings doesn't even put Chicago into the top 25.

This info is on downloadable spreadsheets;

http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/bjs/dtdata.htm#City

According to his own words, Barack doesn't even know what a Community Organizer does. LOL
And he takes credit for other's work and gives the people that were working on problems no credit at all even though they were working on the problem before he came on the scene and after he left and the problem still has not been solved. The problem? Getting asbestos removed from a low-income apartment complex.
http://www.newsmax.com/kessler/Obama...15/112909.html

Taking credit for other's hard work, that is low in my book.

It seems that during the course of this thread, we really did lower the bar. We've gone from Obama creating the murder capital of the USA to failing to get the asbestos out

I love Chicago. I make at least 3 trips a year there just for the food.

I feel like Mccain and some of his supporters are doing anything they can no matter what it is to make Obama look bad even if it is unwarranted because Mccain is so far behind. Much of it is ridiculous accusations. Some people are falling for all the propaganda and spreading it even more. As far as me it really turns me off on how this is all going. Seriously many of us could make accusations about Mccain and some have. I chose not to get involved in Mccain bashing because I don't feel it does any good.

No one said he created the murder capital, just that his efforts to change things don't appear to be as obvious as one would think, being he plans to "change the world." One would sumise that he have a verifiable history of making things better in a significany way, but there's not much proof of that to be found, at least in Chicago where his efforts were concerted. Unless we go off to count home loans given to people in poor areas (which doesn't add up, since they live in housing projects still) and registered voters, not much I see of his "change."

In 1830, a young boy scratched a tiny trench from one bend in the Green River to the next bend with a sharp stick. The tiniest trickle of water followed his trench as he walked along. Today, the area between that tiny trench and the Green River is called "Boardcut Island"; because the river carved that tiny trench into a wide, shallow branch of the river. A community organizer is a boy with a stick. He can only bring the community together and point them toward a goal. His own actions are small and often eclipsed by the results. Sometimes the trench will fill with leaves and dirt and be forgotten. Sometimes, it will become the mighty river itself. It's up to the river.

As for the crime in those links; purse snatchings, fights, shoplifting and domestic violence occurs in nearly every community over half the planet. If the murder rate of his communities indicate his effectiveness, then we need Obama organizing communities all over the country.

Only here can a person be faulted for trying.

I don't think anyone concluded that the murder rates weren't just as high in the areas he organized in. Maybe that information isn't as readily available as regular crime statistics.

The point of the thread is that a city that BHO claims as home and has worked to better for the last 20 years is no better off this day. How can a man promise to "change this Country and the world" when he apparently can't even make a discernable difference in his own town?

Chicago is still rampant with crime AND corrupt politics, he never changed the status quo there either. He actually became part of it: his first political win was at the expense of someone he supported previously, by having people voting for her discredited.

But those that have concluded that the murder rates are as high are completely unable to offer any information supporting their claims. The City of Chicago is NOT a community, it is a city of 77 communities (I said over 70 before, have researched it since then ) A handful of communities can often account for the greatest number of murders, just as the highest number of fatalities from airline disasters can be found in only a couple of crashes with high numbers. If these statistics cannot be placed in those communities, then the author of that piece is simply spreading propaganda.

The City, as a whole, falls under the cognizance of the Mayor, and the Governor of the State of Illinois. Obama's Community organization may very well have made substantial positive changes in those communites, as there is no apparent evidence to the contrary. Then, when being elected to the Senate, his job was to represent Illinois in the US Government, not hang around Chicago doing the Mayor's job.

Just as I said in the last paragraph. Not his job. That's why cities have Mayors.

It looks as though the people of Alaska are feeling that Juneau is the same way now days

And if you do research into the community level crimes, you might want to rule out Calumet City as an anomoly. That area had the highest auto theft rate in the country for years and years because it was right over the border from Indiana and their notorious chop shops. I know 6 people that had their cars stolen from that area. And btw, Gary Indiana, right across the state line from Cal City, is in the top 10 crime rates. Hmmmm......

Come to think of it, a lot of the cities with the highest crime rates are close to the border from another state. St. Louis and Kansas City comes to mind.

If someone who was now running for president had been a beat cop, a detective, or a precinct chief from 1985-1988, I don't think anyone would view the crime in 2008 in the district that candidate had been in the 80s as telling a story about the candidate's success and ability.

The community organizer history of Barack Obama makes him look good among social activists of many stripes, and it can be seen as an experience that shaped who he is today. However, unless a community organizer makes a long term career out it, I really don't think "success" as a community organizer (which I'd be more likely to measure in the relationship between the black community and the group Barack Obama worked for, the existence or lack thereof of long term job-training sites, or afterschool programs, ect, instead of measuring success in terms of crime rate) is a relevant question. He didn't keep doing it, and he said himself "for the most part I would say I wasn’t wildly successful."

My impression would be that since he was community organizing more than a dozen years ago, the effects of his efforts should be becoming realized now, and a drop in crime in those areas he worked in should be reflected an effect of this. Getting an education, having more opportunities nearly a generation ago should have had at least some effect by now.

I know you don't like Wikepedia, but it gives a good map of the communities in Chicago.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Community_areas_of_Chicago

#73 - Washington Heights is where Rev Wright's church is located. Obama probably worked primarily in neighborhoods 46 - 55, but made contact with the churches in the surrounding neighborhoods.

I grew up on the border between neighborhood #72 and #73. Our primary shopping mall was in neighborhood #49, which he talks about in his book. My dad worked in #71 and ran a cub scout pack in #73. My mom taught school in #73. Yup, I was in the thick of things.

When I was doing some digging on community organizing the other day, I found a number of sites that talked about the specifics of what a CO does. It was interesting that the sites were founded by all types of organizations, from alcohol intolerance groups, to social programs groups, etc. The end game for a CO is not necessarily to reduce crime in an area, but to focus on specific problems within an area.

To use Altgeld Gardens as an example, Obama found a frustrated group of residents who tried to have their asbestos problem resolved for years without gaining any voice on their issue. He didn't solve their problem for them, but found people with previously unfound leadership skills in that community and mentored them on cutting thru the red tape. That had nothing to do with reducing crime. He knows intuitively that doing the work for them wasn't going to solve their long term problems. But if could groom leaders within the community and get the community behind them, that they would have success with other issues in their neighborhood. Community organizing is very grass roots oriented.

In that case, wouldn't you think his empowerment of them would have shown some positive effects by now? There's articles all over the Chicago papers about how bad the city looks in those areas, how poor the people still are, etc.

Maybe the funds should have been for more education, better afterschool care so kids aren't tempted to run with gangs or drop out of school, making their neighborhood something to be proud of. Surely would have been more effective than an annual "Juneteenth" celebration.

Either the residents didn't want to "learn to fish" or he wasn't a very effective teacher.

There was people working on the Asbestos problem before Barack came one the scene and people working on the problem after Barack
left the scene and there is still Asbestos in those apartments.

My brother works Environmental control and hazmat for a University. Asbestos is somewhat of a complex issue. If it is used in things such as floor tiles or drywall sheets, it is safe. It is when it is airborne (like sanding paint from walls) is when it is dangerous. So it depends on the form it is in.