*Chicago’s violence has climbed to incredible heights and affected a countless many of innocent people like 15-year-old Hadiya Pendleton.
A bright young and talented teen, Hadiya was gunned down Tuesday afternoon in a South Side Chicago park, not too far from the president’s old stomping grounds.
RELATED: Teen Who Marched in Inauguration Parade Gunned Down in Chicago
Obama expressed his condolences to the family of the victim Wednesday with a one lineer via the White House press. “The president and first lady’s thoughts and prayers are with the family of Hadiya Pendleton.”
He has yet to publicly and directly address her death or the Chicago violence in an aggressive manner.
As a result, members of the community are circulating a petition (created on the White House website), urging the importance of the president’s presence at the teen’s funeral.
Check out the petition here.
A member of the King Band drill team, she traveled to D.C. for the president’s second inauguration.
RELATED: President Obama Alone Can’t Stop Black Murder Plague
Family, friends, and community members have spoken out against the senseless violence.
The city’s mayor reacted, calling her death a loss to the city.
“She had dreams…And these – this gang-banger, this punk – took that away from [her mother] Cleopatra, they took it away from Hadiya and, in my view, they took it away from the city of Chicago…A child going to school, who takes a final exam, who had just been to inaugural,” said an emotional Emanuel. “And I think if anybody has any information, you are not a snitch, you’re a citizen. You’re a good citizen in good standing if you help.”
Read more about the tragedy here.
I simply don’t get it. Somebody is counting the words written to the deceased girls family. And judging? Why because she marched in the inauguration? I’m sure that makes sense to a certain type of person. Knee grows have been monitoring how long he holds a glance or smile to someone not of color!! PITIFUL PEOPLE!!!!
You need to call home and get your blacknesss back, not that you want it. I voted for Obama twice but, when do we stop voting black and giving passes based on skin color? I would have noticed this had it been Reagan or Bush. The killings in Chicago (His home base) have been going on for the entire term of his Presidency and on the watch of his former Chief of Staff. He spends a long period with the majority “white” children killed in Connecticut and expresses openly with long pauses and a tear that this bothered him. But he has treated this incident of a young girl gunned down a mile from his home in Chicago, 8 days after her marching for him with the same passivity he does NAACP gatherings. He stated that he will represent all the people and not be biased to anyone group, meaning blacks but he sure has gone out of his way for Gays. He has an all white cabinet and it looks a lot like Michelle is his ghetto pass for votes that would not be there had he married lighter. Have we been duped?
Yes!
Eddie, the headline/article is not the best written, but the overarching point made is legitimate. And you are being shortsighted to think this is “just about a girl who marched in the Inauguration.” This is the culmination of months if not years of a blood bath, a virtual annihilation right before our eyes. The irony that this is happening in this president’s self-proclaimed hometown and this girl is from his hometown is too thick to ignore! It’s as if the universe is BEGGING this man to pay attention to this! Yet…he sends a one-line generic statement of condolence. That is a metaphor for his action towards much of the issues in the Black community, this Chicago violence especially. The reason you are hearing more “kneegrows” (btw could you be any more insulting with that term?) speak out about it more is because the re-election is over and people are seeing the dire situation with little to no solution in sight. I’m wondering how all of this has escaped you Eddie.
Ironically, crime has only gotten worse under Rahm and the administration hasn’t made Chi-town’s violence an issue on either front…
Obama apparently cares more about allowing 11 million illegals amnesty than he does about the communities….
TGen, I just want to thank you for so eloquently correcting the previous poster. He did offer an extremely shortsighted remark, which makes you wonder if he even continued to read the rest of the article or just stopped at the headline. I notice, when reading posts on this board, that some people will find a word, a sentence, or whatever to harp on and eventally, it just goes off on the “harp” and ignores what the article was actually about. I hope this changes, as more people like you, TGen, offer intelligent, insightful, responses.
The reality of the situation is that Chicago’s homicide rate is substantially down and has been on the decrease until 2012, which was a violent year all over the country considering all the mass shootings that took place. In fact, in 2011, Chicago’s homicide rate was it’s lowest in more than 20 years at 435. Even 2012′s uptick is nowhere near the numbers that Chicago has experienced for decades and 2008′s was higher. Context matters. Yes, Chicago’s murder rate is high in comparison to other places, but compared to itself, Chicago is doing way better than in years past. There has not been a huge swell in violence in Chicago. All that’s happened is the black President is from Chicago, and anyway the media or whomever can try to tear him down, they use it. Even if facts must be entirely removed from context. Below are homicide stats as recorded by Chicago PD:
1965: 395[6]
1974: 970[7]
1990: 851[8]
1991: 927[9]
1992: 943[9]
1993: 855[9]
1994: 931[9]
1995: 828[9]
1996: 796[9]
1997: 761[9]
1998: 704[9]
1999: 643[9]
2000: 633[9]
2001: 667[9]
2002: 656[9]
2003: 601[9]
2004: 453[9]
2005: 451[9]
2006: 471[9]
2007: 448[9]
2008: 513[9]
2009: 459[9]
2010: 436[9]
2011: 435[9]
2012: 506[10]
WOW!!!!!!!!!! LOOK at all those murders, and they’re still going strong (er). People aren’t as stupid as you think they are.
Although I didn’t call anyone stupid, your comment does make me want to go there. Especially since the numbers don’t support it.
I swear something about my people just starts to disgust me everyday. My people kill me assuming that President Obama alone can change the senseless violence happening daily in Chicago, when their own parents and family can not control them. People stop looking to other people and the government to solve your problems. Is it just because President Obama is black. People President Obama is not God. He alone can not solve every problem the black community has. Problems that have existed WAYYYYYY before and will continue to plague our community long after he is no longer President. Problems that we ourselves don’t even want to talk about cause everybody is so worried about what the “white man” thinks about us. These same people that are speaking out about what he isn’t doing, I would like to know what the hell they are doing to help stop it. Everybody wants to criticize what isn’t being done, yet they do nothing themselves and offer no solutions of what could be done. I hear dumb news stories everyday or read articles about black people getting mad cause we are being stereo-typed wrong on BBW or RHOA (shows that many of our own people watch) or because some white person said this or did this to a black person, or if a white cop shoots a gang banger who has probably took many innocent lives, but yet when we have 500+ murders in one year committed by our own people against ourselves, people walk around as if it is normal. President Obama can make it illegal to have guns, he could live in Chicago and that simply is not going to change the fact that the ignorant people who commit these crimes have NOOOOOOOOO value for their own lives let alone another. So let me get this straight is this the President’s fault. Even if he was to speak out about it, what is that gonna solve?????? Ok, so he gave a general condolence, big effin deal. Is it gonna bring this innocent angel back if he spoke 100 lines, no, it would not. Is going to her funeral gonna end the violence in Chicago, certainly not. First off non-registered guns are already illegal, is that stopping people in Chicago from shooting each other up everyday, hell no. There are laws for many things that people break everyday, something being a law, stops no one. What our people need to be doing is raising our kids right. People are more concerned with their hair weaves, nails and toes or clubbin’ and let me not forget care more about what Rihanna, Chris Borwn or Kim Kardashian or whatever famous person is doing than they are about their kids. We need to start teaching our kids early the value of life and that they are special. We need to show them that there are better things in life than hangin’ on the streets selling drugs, gang bangin’ and all this other foolishness that parents know their kids are doing yet do nothing about it for whatever reason. There is something truly wrong with our peoples mindsets when you can take someones lives over the senseless things that people kill each other in Chicago for. The sad part is though, everybody wants to talk about it being a problem, but nobody wants to do anything to help. Everybody wants to put a band-aid on a wound, but nobody wants to do anything to stop us from getting wounded in the first place. However we can start a petition to stop a show from being aired about somebody and they 10 baby mamas, because it makes us look bad to the white man. Really???? This nonsense has to be handled starting from the home first, in our own communities. Hell I read over the summer how a shoot out happened right in front of a number of police offers standing right there, so for someone to say that if the government done something more, that things would change I don’t think that is the only solution. There could be a police officer hired for every corner in Chicago, but until the ignorant people who commit these crimes VALUE LIFE, sadly nothing will change and more lives will be lost. Main reason being is that we look to other people to solve our problems, instead of looking at what we ourselves can do first. We have to help ourselves. It’s like sending a crack head to a drug rehab. they can spend months and years being detoxed, but unless they want to stay clean themselves there is nothing anyone can do for them. The people who commit these crimes seem as if they can’t be or don’t wan to be helped, that’s what truly scares me. My heart goes out to this young angels family. I hope the monster who did this is caught.
He changed the Gay abuse. I believe a lot of white folk are writing under the disguise of being black. If not, they resemble the man portrayed by Samuel L. Jackson in Django.
Amen, lady….AaaaaaaMEN!!! And like….the “local officials” have NO responsibility, huh!??? Yo….the ones who blame Obie for EVERYthang?, are merely the haters & “the Stupid”! And/so remember!!……”even if they “DO” “look like you”?, they are NOT……your people!!! Chuuuuuuuuch!
I def agree- this is a problem from the past,present and the future unless the ones capable of being cold hearted murders continue on this destructive path. It’s all over the world-not just here in the USA. These culprits justify their actions by reasons of insanity..We pray for a better day. We send our condolences to Hadiya’s family-( I know it’s a one liner but in this tragedy,No amount of words would ease the pain)
To: T. Nicole, I admire your speaking out at a time when our people want to point blame on everybody else instead of accepting our own pitfalls. Many of our problems are self-hatred, low self-esteem, fathers in jail, on drugs, selling drugs, abandon the children for another family, sisters with bad attitudes from the burdens and pain from too many broken relationships and carrying the pain of her mama, grandmamma, and her ancestors. We must understand our powerful African history in order to develop pride, but also how our people were sold into slavery by our own people. We must understand the atrocities of slavery, how we were beaten, branded, men made into breeding studs like animals but not allowed to proclaim, provide and protect their women and children, women raped, children snatched away and sold to another plantation as we worked from sun up to sun down; taught to mistrust and dislike each other based on differences in whether we were house/field “niggers”, light/dark, straight/kinky hair, young/old, small/heavy, and young/old. In order to heal ourselves, we must understand how the past crippled many of us, just as many were determined to not be crippled. In understanding where we came from, we can better understand where we are and how we must heal ourselves. No, we can not expect others to heal us. The government can not legislate self love, can not make men out of boys who have no fathers, uncles, or mentors as instructors. The misplaced anger amongst our boys and men is oft times bottled up pain from confusion – not nurtured into manhood. Were our ancestors, beaten, lynched, parts of their bodies cut off; marched, and murdered for some of us to end up beating and murdering each other??? Yes, we are making ourselves look like fools before the whole world. Even our African people look at us with disdain, not knowing what happened to us after we left The Continent. I agree with you T. Nicole, our problems are much bigger than President Obama; our young men won’t even pull their pants up and stop calling themselves “niggers” with a Black man as president. But, we must not give up, each one teach one, seeking God for directions. We must believe that we can save our innocent children.
T. Nicole is no doubt white or gay. Obama is giving them far more support than blacks.
Ms. Nicole, I have to agree with you 100%. Until we deal with the evils that continue to plague our race, it won’t matter how many Presidents or Black Presidents or Semi-Black Presidents we have in office the same things will continue to happen. When we come together, black women and black men, and stay together for the betterment of our race, then and only then will change be exacted. Our black women will have to cease the hold we continue to have on broken relationships of the past that continue to be a major contributory factor in how we deal with not only the present relationships but also how we raise our children. Our black men will have to grow up and become the beautiful black men that I believe they can be in relationships with women and children. Until we realize that we are our own greatest enemy and we keep, pardon the pun, shooting ourselves in the foot, we will continue to stagnate ourselves and will soon find our race at the back of the line. There is no Superman (or Woman) that is going to swoop in and save the day. We are going to have to save ourselves. No time like the present.
@ T. Nicole, You hit the nail square on the head with every word of your comment. If those of you complaining haven’t demanded the same from previous Presidents why would you demand President Obama to do so much about murders that were happening years before he became President? What do you expect him to do? The way I see it, all he could do was what he did, express his condolences to the Family. If the President held a press conference, or gave a speech for every person who had a family member gunned down, he would have a press conference or speech to deliver every single day of the week. My heart goes out to the Family of this Young woman but for some reason some of you think because she was from the same area or City as the President he should drop everything and focus his attention on this one unfortunate killing, what about the person who was gunned down in Louisiana, Arkansas, or Tennessee, whose Family didn’t receive a “one liner” from the President.
T Nicole: You stated, “but until the ignorant people who commit these crimes VALUE LIFE, sadly nothing will change and more lives will be lost.” Do you realize how many unborn black babies are being murdered today due to Obama’s signature? Value Life? He sure doesn’t!!!
Here’s what T. Nicole said, “but until the ignorant people who commit these crimes VALUE LIFE, sadly nothing will change and more lives will be lost.” Obama doesn’t value life, and neither do you if you voted for him. Because of him, more babies than ever before are being murdered, and you know it. God is not pleased at all.
Obama is half white. He clearly shows which half of him he cares the most about. You’ve got to be blind not to see it.
President Obama is a man, men cannot have abortions. Babies were being aborted long before President Obama became the Commander In Chief.
I guess I don’t value life since I voted for President Obama. If he could be elected for 4 more years I would cast MY VOTE for him again.
Funny how a feminist, overaged college student named Sandra Fluke can get a call from the President to “console” her for being called a slut on the radio, yet I dont see and equal outreach to the black community on any issue besides some unproductive comments about Trayvon Martin. The President has no reason to care about the black communities day to day affairs. Trying to be all things to all people, leaves blacks in the back of the bus on his agenda once again. But dont fret, if you are gay, a feminist, or Latino, THE PRESIDENT WILL BE RIGHT WITH IN A MOMENT; everyone else he’ll call you in 4 years for your vote. Blacks folks gave up the cookies without commitment. He’s not going to call you again until he needs something. We got played. Sad state of affairs.
Praying that God takes lilttle Hadiya home with him.