That's a hard prediction. It stems from fact that Chicago, well into the digital age, is (like all American cities) still transitioning from the industrial age to the digital age when to its uses of digital-age communications technologies and their profoundly disruptive impact, for good or ill, in the field public safety.

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Foremost among these disruptions have been uses (and abuses) of these technologies in Chicago's mainstream media in particular that over time have worked to immerse Chicago ever deeper into the mire of its violence, mindnumbingly so, with disastrous human, social and economic outcomes.

 

For all along Chicago could have used these very technologies, mindfully and constructively, to enable the people of Chicago and their leaders to step outside Chicago's violence in order to gain perspectives on it - racial, social, political, economic - that would enable Chicago to heal self from what public health professionals regard as fundamentally a medical and mental health problem. 

 

A problem, in order words, of replacing a fearful and despairing mindset that succombs to public violence with a fearless and healthy one that masters it. of and on the city's essentially violent police responses to the gang/gun violence began in the 1960's with the simultaneous rise in Chicago of a) heavily-armed, drug-dealing street gangs and b) network television news and its shock-value, if-it-bleeds-it-leads coverage of gang violence. 

 

which itself can only be fully understood and properly addressed in light of the inherently violence-amplifying uses of digital-age communications the unwitting creation of  understood .]beginning with the rise of heavily-armed, drug-dealing street gangs in the 1960's but expanding to the indiscriminate gun violence  that is seen in Chicago today -hard fact that ownership of cell phones and computers by virtually all Chicagoans now rivals or equals corporate ownership of the TV stations and newspapers in its disruptive power to impact Happily, two dominant realities of Chicago life make this partnership not just possible but entirely feasible. And long overdue.FIRST is the simple fact that the vast majority of Chicagoans and city leaders do not want violence.

 

They want safety! Even the Chicagoans who are most responsible for the city’s violence will, given the chance, choose safety over violence when safety - a chance for a decent, safe life - is a real option for them.Deep down, Chicago yearns for safety. For a city where you can go anywhere without fearing for your life. 

 

This yearning is the rock-solid basis for a citywide partnership of Chicagoans and their leaders to make Chicago SAFE. But it's more than that.  It's also the source of the enormous civic energies which, once intelligently mobilized, will work to make Chicago SAFE for all residents.Now let's see how Chicagoans and their leaders can be mobilized to make Chicago