Hall event, anything . The cross hairs, from the South Shore Cultural Center in chicago, here is chris hayes. [ applause ] good evening from chicago, im chris hayes, i am thrilled to be here for a special town hall event in this incredible city. Its americas thirdlargest city and its special to me. But lately as someone here put it, its become the poster child for violence in america. This is due to a real surge of violence but also in part to the perception of this city as expressed so loudly and frequently by the new president of the United States. In chicago theyve had thousands of shootings, thousands and im saying where is this . Is this a war torn country . What are we doing . By the way, toughest gun laws in the world, chicago, and people are shooting themselves all other the place, okay . The problem is not that there are too many police, there are not enough police. Its worse than some of the places that we read about in the middle east. We have wars going on. Its so sad. Chicago has become so sad. Last month after apparently watching a news report about the surge in crime here the president took to twitter to threaten if anything doesnt fix the horrible carnage going only send in the feds. With chicago having become a president ial punching bag, we wanted to come to this city and give officials and activists and others who live here a platform toespond to talk about the real problems and the work towards real solutions. Perhaps the president will see this because we have a lot of choices in this room that deserve to be heard. I want to introduce a few right now. Joining me on stage, four of those voices, andrea zopp, deputy mayor of chicago, also former president and ceo of the chicago urban legal. I have also the superintendent suspect of the Chicago Police department. Thank you for being here. Good to be here. Amina matthews, someone who has a lot of experience in trying to interrupt violence that has happened in chicago. [ applause ]. And laurie lightfoot, chair of the Police Accountability task force. Good to have you here. [ applause [ applause ] deputy mayor, i understand why people in chicago dont want to get into a tweet war with the president of the United States and theres a shrug off t shoulders of these implications but to people watching right now who have a very narrow sense of what chicago is and what its experiencing what do you want them to know what . What do you want the president to know . I want the president to know this isnt a topic for tweeting. Its a serious issue. We have challenges here as we have across the country with rising violence. What i want them to know is that were working to address that violence. We have plans in place that were doing and well talk about that tonight. What i want them know that this is a city thats a lot more than just gun violence. We have people committed to the city, many of them are here tonight in this room. Do you feel, commission, like how do you feel as a person tasked with blissing this city and running a Police Department here, what is your response to invocations of violence in chicago by folks not just the president , by people generally out there. What i want people to know is that, listen, chicago has its challenges but lets frame it properly. When you look at Violent Crime across america, chicago is the only major city that saw an uptick. Per capita, we here in the middle of the pack in terms of Violent Crime, thats the one thing i want people to know. Do you feel like chicago, which i think is around nine in the homicide rate right now in of the 25 major cities, do you feel youre being unfairly singled out . Yes, some aspects because the violence in chicago, we have our challenges, thats no secret. But i want people to know the city as a whole is in good shape. Five districts out of 22 Police Districts in this city actually drive the violence. Out of those five, three two on the west side and one on the south side are the ones that drive most of our Violent Crime. Does that resonate with people in the room . Is that generally a feeling . I mean i was looking at some maps and one of the things about whats happening in chicago is an intensification of the inequality of violence there are huge swaths of the city that have homicide rates that are as safe as basically anywhere in canada. And then there are parts that have unbelievably high rates. How do you understand that inequality between the neighborhoods . Well, its hard for me to understand it coming from a gentrified family. I was the first black in an all lutheran school. So i cant understand the segregation in this city is that is so beautiful. And has his storally built by us, africanamerican, latinos loyer class, middle lower class, upper lower class and those communities you talked about thats like canada. So we need to come together and i dont understand what is the whole issue about if you dont we will. We have. We have taken the Community Even off the record, even off the clock. Weve made sure that, yeah, the numbers are unacceptable, however in our community theres people near have done amazing work and it has to be funded so if you want to put funding in our community make sure each and every one of our community activists, our humanitarians, our police, our cps, cpd is funded. So we can be able to maintain our own community. That gets to something about what the tenor of this is is like when the president talks about other folks, like what are they doing there . Like everyones just sitting around and no one it hasnt occurred to anyone here that the levels of violence are unacceptable, right . And that no one here is doing anything about it. Like, how does that hit you when you hear that . Well, i think whats most important is to focus on whats happening here and engage in solutions to solve the problems. The backandforth, the twitter war, that doesnt mean anything to the most Vulnerable People in the most crimeplagued neighborhoods that are also some of our most impoverished neighborhoods. What they look to leaders to do is to solve problems, not to paint them in a two dimensional figure but come in, roll up their sleeves and do the hard work of moving forward in a productive way. I want a show of hands on the question about solving problems and i want you to be honest. When you hear the president say hes going to send in the feds, raise your shand that sounds like a good idea to you. To do what . Raise your hand if when you hear send in the feds that feels ominous, like a threat. Someone is saying they should take over the Police Department. Whats your response to that . Listen, cpd, we have our challenges. And weve done things in the past that were inappropriate. But that was the past. My challenge is to fix the issues because when i look out in the audience a lot of these folks in the audience right now, ive worked with with since becoming superintendent to make it better. Those things didnt occur overnight and they wont be fixed overnight but we have to acknowledge them and move forward to correct the issues. [ applause ] yeah, give him a round of applause for that. Theres a thing going on right now in American Cities thats bigger than just chicago. Newly confirmed attorney general Jeff Sessions talked about this today when he made his way to the department of justice. [ audience reacts ] i get where you guys are coming from on the new attorney general Jeff Sessions. We have seen in the last two years, 2015, 2016, we have seen homicide increases in many of the major cities in this country and in some cases its been stark, places like st. Louis and baltimore which ive covered from the very start. This is after a long period of historic decline. Deputy mayor, what is your understanding . What is your theory of the case of what happened . Well, the question was really that easy to answer hopefully we would be farther along, its a tough question. I dont think theres an easy answer, we looked at the numbers. I dont think it came overnight. Thats the important thing. We have neighborhoods that have been disinvested in, weve had schools that have been disinvested in, we have lack of access to jobs and work. Were paying for that over time. That didnt happen yesterday or in the last five years. Wait, let me just get so i think those are some of the things we have to focus on. I want to circle back, though, to that federal resources question that you asked about because there are federal resources that we could use that would help. Take, for example, youth jobs. The feds have completely cut youth jobs. We have a huge Youth Job Program the city funds but we dont get any federal support. Federal Law Enforcement support. The u. S. Attorneys office here has the lowest rate of gun prosecutions of any u. S. Attorneys office in the country and so we could use theres significant federal support we could use to partner with to address this issue. Thats what were looking for. What do you say to people that say youre evading responsibility by pointing to the feds . Ive interviewed the mayor himself. Hes talked about federal gun laws and things like that. Ultimately that has been consistent over the period of time that were talking, right . So what do you think is changing in this city . Well, first of all, not true, for example, just on youth jobs. Thats been cut, but were not evading the issue, we havent stopped doing work, we have a plan, we ve a policing plan, weve invested in our officers, weve invested in technology, weve invested in training, the superintendent can talk to the details of how theyre adjusting and changing policing to address this crime. Were investing and mentoring for youth to disrupt young people going into gangs and were investing in neighborhoods, Economic Development and job creation for people to help address this lack of opportunity. So were not waiting for the feds. There are folks i want to get folks in the room. I know youve been through the wringer on this. Youre looking at me with a sort of im waiting. Anticipatory i could hear the murmurs in the room about investment. Let me just talk to this gentleman over here. Stand up for me, will you . Jedediah brown, right . Yes, sir. I saw a Youtube Video of you. I have a personal theory that part of the president s beef with chicago is that when he tried to come here and talk in the primary do people remember this . Theyre like, yeah, damn right we remember it. [ cheers and applause ] that is not necessarily the perception outside of chicago, i should say. There was a protest, he ended up not speaking. It got pretty gnarly and there were punches thrown on both sides as far as i could tell. You rushed the stage that the event. Why did you do that . Well, we saw what Donald Trumps campaign was doing all across the country. Weve seen black bodies being pushed around, people getting punched in the face and i didnt shut down his rally, chicago did. [ applause ] because we were not going to allow chicago does have its challenge but chicago is one tough city and we was not going allow donald trump to campaign in our city and be unchallenge and we stopped it. When you hear about what the deputy mayor is talking about in terms of investment, you were murmuring, i couldnt tell if that was asces assent or disse there are a lot of people that have the heart beat of this neighborhood and everything the deputy mayor is saying we have no clue about it because the Mayors Office has not engaged the communities that are [ applause ] the Mayors Office has not as far as, ill sayt like this. The Mayors Office has stopped reaching out to black voices ever thought he would get caught with the coverup for mcdonalds murder. We dont know anything about that. We cant back them up, we cant say its true because its not matriculating down to everyday people. I want to give the deputy mayor a chance to respond. I want to say this for the record while everyone watches this. Theres not a lot of cities that i could go to where the mayor would send anyone to this town hall. Im serious about that. Or the Police Commissioner so i want to be clear about the fact that we are having this conversation in this room because they are at the table. So, look, we dont agree on all things but the fact is weve had conversations with jedediah and people who represents. In fact, jedediah and i were in the streets marching to try to bring people together when we had a dispute in one of our neighborhoods around between communities of color. We sat in a room and talked with each other and other people. He has been in my office to talk about these issues. Have we fixed everything . Absolutely not. But the idea that were not talking to people in the community is i just disagree. Theres a lot of one of the things jedediah brought up, i know people have a lot of opinions. One of the things jedediah brought up was Laquan Mcdonald. That hangs over everything happened here. No, it just brought it to a head of what has been going on. So i want to talk about that. I want to what i want to do is take a brequick break, talk about the context that brought us here and well be right back. To president trump, come here to chicago, see what all of these folks in this room black, white, democrat, republican, city official, Civic Leaders are doing in this city. When you find something worth waiting for, well help you invest to protect it for the future. Financial guidance while youre mastering life. From chase, so you can. Mattress firmness . Fortunately theres a bed where you both get what you want every night. Enter sleep number and the ultimate sleep number event, going on now. Sleepiq technology tells you how well you slept and what adjustments you can make. She likes the bed soft. Hes more hardcore. So your sleep goes from good to great to wow only at a sleep number store. And right now save 50 on the ultimate limited edition bed. Go to sleepnumber. Com for a store near you. Our coverage of this special town hall event in chicago continues. Here again is chris hayes. The city of chicago has a long and rich history, here to talk about that, my friend and colleague tremaine lee. I had time to be with natalie moore, wbze reporter, she wrote a fantastic book called the south side. Its a look into how segregation shaped not just the south side but chicago. We talked about her neighborhood and the rich legacy of black chicago but struggles that isnt limited to gun violence, it didnt start and end with gun violence. Lets take a look. So this is a beautiful block. Yeah. This is where i grew up. I dont think people outside of chicago get to see this chicago. So many people its a war zone, its sh ees chiraq. Theres an incrisability of the black middleclass in this country. This is not an anomaly, this is not a special neighborhood. There cease many neighborhoods that were once white in chicago that turned over black and they maintained a middleclass identity. Why do you think that gets lost . Its not use. Its not sexy. Its not sexy. Hi, how are you . Hows your meal today . The issues we are dealing with in this city are not new. Something just didnt magically happen in 2006. Theres always been this struggle. When you think about the millions of people who fled the south, fleeing jim crow segregation to arrive in places like chicago, to help shape not just the culture of this city but the culture of america, on the other side of that coin, though, especially as of late its become dominated by this idea of violence how do we reck i dont know the two visions of anything . We have to remember that darker legacy didnt just start with conversations about the socalled blackon black violence. When black people arrived in chicago, they were greeted by a host of policies and laws that kept them contained to black areas. People call it jim crow of the north. You couldnt live in white areas, it was illegal to buy a home from somebody white that had a restrictive covenant. Black people were met with racial violence when they did integrate neighborhoods. There was redlining, banks didnt want to give you a loan if you were in a black neighborhood. Thats at the heart of residential segregation, disinvestment, lack of resources has been something that black people have been contending with for a very long time. Just last month in this block alone seven people shot. At a vigil memorializing another gun violence victim the mother is shot, teenagers are shot. How did we get to this moment . If we look around, like this block was a stable block and this area was stable but look how many boarded up homes are on this block. Look how many boarded up businesses are here. So all of that is connect ed. Theres that expression if america gets a cold, black america gets the flu. So the economic downturn is being felt here, the housing crisis is still being felt here. These communities havent climbed out of it the way we think the rest of the country has. How do we begin to address that or climb out of it . People say these communities have to lift themselves up. I guarantee there are block clubs all around here and people are doing individual things but these are larger structural issues. How do you recruit businesses and do neighborhood improvement plans . Thats when city officials, state, federal, all these different layers to come in and help. Chris, so often headlines are dominated by gun violence but one thing natalie talked about and so many people ive talked to before say the violence is spread beyond gu. Poverty is violence. [ applause ] hunger is real violence. The trauma folks are seeing inside the home but the repeated exposure to violence in the streets, people are wound up and traumatized and that is violence but we dont address that violence. One of the things that struck me about that, id like to see a show of hands, one of the narratives that happened in this election, interestingly enough, in those places in america that voted overwhelmingly for the president was about the same story that natalie was telling that the economic recovery has not actually recovered. That the devastation hit and it rippled and rippled and rippled and you could look at top line economic numbers and say were back to full employment. Do people feel like in their neighborhoods things are back . No do they feel like it has recovered . No. Let me talk to you, camilla. Tell me your name. Camilla williams. Youre