PHOTO/SARAH JANE RHEE
CHICAGO, IL — The people of Chicago are being abandoned by state and local government, even as the city slips deeper into crisis.
If you go to the city council budget hearings where supposedly decisions are made that effect millions, you will be lucky to see five of the 50 aldermen even attending. The show hearings are nothing but a cruel farce. There is no democracy present.
What there is behind the dog and pony show is Money. Money distributed in such a way as to impact the lives of all the citizens but especially the poorest.
Perhaps the most outrageous betrayal by “city fathers” is the closing of the few mental health clinics and the privatization of the services. The Chicago Public Health Department is headed by a doctor, Dr. Julie Morita, who essentially is in charge of making the cuts and assuring the public “it will be alright—go back to sleep.” Her main job is to get the city out of the business of providing mental health and other services (such as HIV treatment) for the citizens who rely on them. Most of the decisions to cut these services were behind closed doors. Dr. Morita is just there to get you to swallow the bitter pill after the fact.
It is no accident that violence is escalating—from domestic to street to police—while services including education and health care are cut and privatized. The scientific correlation between poverty and every societal problem, including homicide, has been understood for at least 125 years. However, the federal, state, and local governments are controlled by millionaires and billionaires who are abandoning the pretense of caring, while literally abandoning the most dispossessed sections of society. There is no accountability to the public for the moves that the government is making.
Almost weekly there is a scandal in Chicago. Bribes and kickbacks lure one official after another to a “piece of the action”. Aldermen are an especially cheap bargain for scam artists who wish to start a “school” or “clinic”.
There were 12 poorly publicly funded mental health clinics serving Chicago’s poverty traumatized citizens. That has been reduced to six clinics with one full time psychiatrist for the whole city. Dr. Morita says that’s okay because the private sector will pick up the slack. But, of course, she can produce no evidence that they will do anything but bilk the city out of money.
Because persons with mental illness are mostly treated as criminals, the Cook County Sheriff admitted the county jail was the largest mental illness institution in the state. He appointed a psychologist to run it.
People are reeling as there is always plenty of money for any project the mayor and his cronies want including tax subsidizing a Star Wars Museum on public land. The situation is maddening and demeaning.
The only bright spot in this depressing picture is that people are beginning to wake up in spite of Dr. Morita’s assurances. We see that this government has no intention of representing us. We have to build organizations that will. The future is up to us.
