By “voiceless”  we mean the vast majority of Chicago's 2.7 million citizens of all ages and backgrounds who want safety but whose ideas and energies have effectively been excluded from Chicago's antiviolence efforts.*

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An well-intended exception is languishing Chicago's Community Alternative Policing  Strategy (CAPS). Initiated in 1998, CAPS was designed to create new, citywide partnerships between citizens and police. But it languishes today because it has been underfunded and because it never got the media and political support that would give it citywide exposure and impact.

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Here's a digital-age axiom: Democracies can survive and flourish in a digital age only when their digital media are giving ALL members of communities of ALL sizes – cities, states and nations – an informed voice in the political and government decisions that affect their lives.