FBG Duck, GoodKidsMadCity, and Real Solutions to Gun Violence
In early October, five South Siders from the Parkway Gardens “O-Block’’ apartment complex were indicted on racketeering conspiracy charges. Federal prosecutors allege that these Chicagoans were responsible for a “pattern of violence” that includes the 2020 murder of Carlton Weekly, otherwise known as Chicago rapper FBG Duck. As reported by the Chicago Tribune and Sun Times, this “pattern of violence” is unexplained and uncontextualized, essentially taking the prosecutor and police version of events as fact. This does a disservice to the Chicagoans who are most affected by gun violence, which is a product of deeply complex and contextual cycles of trauma and poverty.
Further, this kind of stenographic reporting reinforces the status quo in Chicago, implicitly presenting police, prosecution, and incarceration as the only solution to the city’s violence. This is in spite of the last over a half-century of evidence that crime rates have risen and fallen irrespective of the city’s always-increasing police budget, according to an analysis by InjusticeWatch. Moreover, Illinois already incarcerates more people per capita than most other democracies on Earth, with Black and Brown Chicagoans being overrepresented in the jail and prison populations. We should not be doubling down on these failed mass incarceration policies.
Stenographic crime reporting also leads to the assumption of guilt, which is especially egregious in high profile cases like the FBG Duck murder because such cases are when CPD has historically used its most coercive and brutal techniques, including torture, under the pressure to close cases and improve their abysmal clearance rate. That is why Chicago is the False Confession Capital of the entire world. This system is not justice, and has repeatedly proven itself unable to meaningfully alter the conditions that produce intercommunal violence in the city of Chicago. It is long past time that we declare violence in Chicago a public health crisis — as Charles Jones wrote for South Side Weekly — and address it not with further violence and punishment, but with healing and transformation, and deep investment in the communities most impacted.
Responding to the announcement of the RICO charges against O-Block, members of the violence prevention organization GoodKidsMadCity said, “RIP Duck but this ain’t justice this shit a set up. The same system that creates the conditions for violence like colonization & poverty, that supplies the guns, that creates the culture & cycle of trauma & violence will pretend it’s working for you…. If we had real restorative justice & healing then interventions could’ve happened before Tooka & Odee was taken! But instead trauma stacked on top of trauma created a endless war that resulted in children lives being taken! Prison & police continue violence!”
This short statement is crucial for several reasons, but the main ones are that it focuses our attention on the larger structural violence that produces interpersonal gun violence, and it highlights the fact that police and prisons are inherently violent themselves. Intercommunal gun violence in America must be contextualized, because America is a settler-colonial country of endless war and the world’s number one arms dealer. Further, the American capitalist system is one of the most unequal in the entire world, and the United States has one of the most underfunded welfare states in the world. That means there are millions of people living extremely precarious lives and millions of easily available military grade weapons in the streets of America every day. Violence is inevitable under these conditions, and the only way to stop the violence is to transform the conditions that produce it. An example of what a step in this direction could look like is GoodKidMadCity’s proposed PeaceBook ordinance.
The PeaceBook proposal has been described as a “safety hub with easy access to therapists, social workers, crisis workers, rental assistance, food and financial security and reparations, among other necessities that would be coupled with programming” such as restorative justice hubs. GKMC has been laying the groundwork for the PeaceBook in their communities for years, holding resource fairs and peace walks, and encouraging young Chicagoans to take their “peace pledge.” However, GKMC organizers come from the very same disinvested neighborhoods where gun violence is most prevalent, so there is a lack of resources. Though even with their strained budgets, GoodKidsMadCity has been changing the lives of Chicagoans every day. That is why the PeaceBook is so crucial, because it would direct the city of Chicago’s resources into the essential work of GKMC. The proposal would redirect just two percent of the multi-billion dollar CPD budget towards GKMC’s real healing and peace work. While that certainly would be an encouraging start, Mayor Lightfoot has instead ignored the PeaceBook proposal and poured even more money into policing and incarceration. This will only further destabilize the very same impoverished neighborhoods that have been most devastated by gun violence and police brutality. This strategy will ensure that the violence continues.
