A New Year is upon us. It is a time of reflection for most of us. I often use this time to reflect on my deeds in the past year. What did I do that served the people in the right way? Were my intentions, however good they may be, the right ones? Or did they hurt? What can I do to improve myself and those around me? How can I continue to strengthen my relationship with my Lord?

But this time of reflection always comes with a slap to the face if you’re a Chicagoan and work to serve the people like I do: the release of the murder statistics for the past year. These tragic numbers make national news to our shame and remind us of our shortcomings as humans and neighbors. Every one of the murdered were not abstractions but individual souls worth saving and could have been saved. But we didn’t.

In this past year, until December 18, 564 Chicagoans lost their lives to murder. This is 43 fewer victims when compared with 2023 and it is significantly less than in 2021 when 797 lost their lives. There are those like Mayor Brandon Johnson who might try to sell this as progress, but how is going from 797 murders to 564 progress? Especially when most of it was self-inflicted?

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When I first began my work in Chicago in the early 2000s, the murder rate was tracking in the 600s. After me and others began serious outreach efforts to youths and gang members, we got the murder rates to track mostly in the 400s for a good run of several years.

Then we had the rise of Black Lives Matter in the 2010s and the years after the death of Michael Brown saw a tremendous rise in the murder rate. It jumped from 425 murders in 2014 to 778 murders by 2016 — largely to the police pulling back due to the anti-police sentiment of activists and politicians.

Then came the death of George Floyd and the Defund the Police movement. In 2019, before the world had even heard of Floyd’s name there were 498 murders. Then 772 in 2020, the year he died, and 779 in 2021. We lost hundreds of Black lives to the Defund the Police movement that was formed in the name of saving Black lives but, in reality, only put more power into the hands of self-serving politicians. The tragedy here is that not one politician or activist will face justice for their recklessness with Black lives.

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Previous Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot supported this movement. Current Mayor Johnson supported this movement. Both claim to know the interests and lives of Blacks and they claim to believe that Black lives matter. If that is true, then why did none of the Blacks, who lost their lives as the lawlessness increased during the George Floyd aftermath, matter?

It matters to me and so many people in my community on the South Side and also the West Side, where most of the 564 murders took place. It matters because so many of those murdered were young and in the prime of their lives. Ninety-one of the deceased were between the ages of 0 and 19. One hundred and seventy-seven were between the ages of 20 and 29. One hundred forty-five were between ages 30 and 39. Four hundred and twenty of them were Black and 110 were Latinos. Four hundred ninety-four were males. Five hundred and five of them died by gunfire.

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The one good thing about George Floyd was that it exposed the immorality of politicians and activists who exploit Black lives for cheap power. Though we were foolish enough as Chicagoans to elect the worst mayor of my life, Johnson, into office, there are many of us from community leaders to concerned citizens that realize it’s all-hands-on-the-deck time now. 

We know that Black Lives Matter is a lie. We know that our politicians will not fix our failing schools — after all, what do you expect from a Mayor who refuses to return a $150,000 donation given to him by a rapper facing murder chargers? We know that the harm from Defund the Police movement still lingers.  We know that our youth grow up believing more in the U.S. government than Jesus.

Aside from that, we are battling the disastrous effects caused by 60 years of liberalism. We are fighting the culture of dependency that has been ingrained into so many families generation after generation. We are fighting a culture of hopelessness.

We are fighting on so many fronts in this war, but we are making progress. We are saving lives. What we’re doing here is not magic. We use old-fashioned American principles: responsibility, accountability, merit, etc. We preach belief in Jesus and, if they are of another belief, we still encourage them. Most of all, we stress that one must have belief in themselves.

These are the values that I always return to every year after I hear the demoralizing final tally of murders for the past year. I say my prayer for all those victims’ families and I say a prayer for the strength that we will need for the coming New Year to continue our work to reverse the political, cultural, and educational negatives in our culture and bring that murder rate down to zero. 

Call me a fool if you want, and if you do, answer me this: who deserves to lose their lives to senseless violence that is preventable?

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