Call Crime by Its Name

I have a prickly relationship with people whose go-to commentary on Chicago involves some variation of the term “urban street crime.” Many times, this is harmlessly intended as an awkward conversation-starter. (Imagine an elegantly dressed woman tippling a cocktail at an East Coast party saying, “Oh, Chicago, yes, I’ve heard about the crime. It sounds dreadful.” That one has actually happened to me . . . twice.) More frustrating, the idea gets rotely parroted back to you by fellow conservatives who are using the city as a punching bag that epitomizes all the failures of blue-city governance and life.

I object not so much to the critique of the city’s governance as to the critique of Chicago living. Chicago is the best big city in America, and we have such wonderful sights to show you. So, my typical response when I’m confronted with Chicago-bashing socially is to (1) point out that corruption, financial mismanagement, and warring special-interest groups are even bigger problems than crime and (2) demur and pull a Marty Feldman from Young Frankenstein: “Could be worse; could be San Francisco.”

It’s getting much harder to do that in recent months.

You may have heard, via social media or your personal grapevine (but less likely via national media), about the chaos that spontaneously descended upon Chicago this weekend: An enormous crowd of kids from the South Side, coordinating via social media, flash-mobbed the city’s downtown, the beating heart of the Magnificent Mile, and scenes of frank barbarism followed. The videos — which circulated on TikTok, because people who are amoral enough to participate in such crimes are often also stupid enough to record and publicize them — are traumatizing and will be suppressed by the mainstream press. If you wish to gaze into the maw of insensate mob horror, you can watch as one unarmed woman is swarmed outside her place on Wabash Street and — there is unfortunately no other way to phrase this — brutally gang-stomped into the ground by a throng of cheering teenagers. (Stalking through the crowd prominently after getting a few whacks in on the shrieking woman, one kid flashes a hoodie emblazoned “ANTISOCIAL SOCIAL CLUB.” Dispatches from my urban dystopia.)

The events coincided with unusually nice weather. Chicago last week experienced an unseasonable warm snap (temperatures in the mid 80s, sunny, breezy), which residents understand is a recipe for weekend crime spikes. But it felt apropos regardless because it confronted mayor-elect Brandon Johnson (a progressive Chicago Teachers Union activist who, two weeks ago, won the closest mayoral election in the city’s history) with a moment when the rubber truly met the road: Would he move on from his “defund the police” rhetoric of 2020 (in the immediate post–George Floyd era) and the “defund-lite” position he adopted during his mayoral campaign? What would his response be to this sort of wanton — a word whose meaning is underappreciated and entirely appropriate here — violence?

If you were expecting Johnson, being a new mayor, to suddenly get serious about the undesirableness of pop-up mobs that spread violence and hooliganry in Chicago’s downtown, well, then, my friends, you don’t appreciate what kind of pre-programmed progressive true believer Chicago has managed to vote into office. Johnson’s response this weekend was, practically speaking, “The kids are all right.”

And yet it’s an improvement on Johnson’s rhetoric from August 2020, when — as the city was being ransacked during the George Floyd riots — he placed the real blame on “corporate looting.” (Fair enough: I still remember when Target came to my place, smashed all my windows, fractured my skull, and emptied my closets.) He has evolved since then: Instead of squirming and refusing to condemn rioters and looters, he’s now willing to say, as a concession, that “in no way do I condone the destructive activity we saw in the Loop and the lakefront this weekend.” That’s mighty generous of you, mayor-elect. Then again, it’s understood that nothing before the “but” really matters, and with a throat-clearing “however,” Johnson instantly supplies us with his real view: “It is not constructive to demonize youth who have otherwise been starved of opportunities in their own communities.”

I have little difficulty “demonizing” — apparently a new dysphemism for what normal folks call “accurately assessing” — people who hurt others for kicks while asking friends to film their best and most pain-inflicting blows so that they may gloat about them later. Johnson continues in his statement: “Our city must work together to create spaces for youth to gather safely and responsibly, under adult guidance and supervision, to ensure that every part of our city remains welcome for both residents and visitors.” I also have little difficulty saying that it’s more important to create a cultural, civic, and legal incentive structure that discourages this behavior instead.

Unfortunately, this would involve police and vigorous prosecutors, as opposed to “community approaches.” Johnson’s cow-eyed inability to pivot even the slightest bit from memorized progressive cant in the face of obvious looming disaster (remember: A ruling on Illinois’s hastily passed and instantly regretted cashless-bail law awaits) is a terrible omen for the city. I understand that no politician can simply walk out to a podium and calmly explain to a panicked public that Chicago’s descent into random spates of frequently horrific lawlessness is the result of a combination of years of societal breakdown, the near-complete (and often self-inflicted) collapse of policing in Chicago, and the chaos-agent catalyst of social media. I don’t need a sociology lecture. But how pathetic is it when Lori Lightfoot, of all people, who squarely denounced this weekend’s events, comes across as a serious person compared with Johnson?

In the face of all this, the rhetoric of Chicago’s incoming mayor — and of its new ultra-progressive city council, its media outlets, and its activists — bespeaks an entire ruling class that has simply given up on the city and on the idea of its being anything but a broken sandbox to test academic ideas in. If you cannot call crime by its name, identify antisocial behavior for what it is, and hold those who engage in it properly accountable, then that’s the ball game for urban cohesion. And if even Brandon Johnson doesn’t believe in Chicago as a city, why should the city believe in itself?

I no longer think I know the answer.