Tuesday, September 9, 2008

Where is the outrage?

Several others have alerted me to the fact that at least 125 people were killed over the summer here in Chicago. This report compares this figure to the reported 65 people killed in Iraq over that same time period.

I am wondering, where is the public outcry. People gather for big protests over a war in Iraq. Few people seem to notice when twice as many people are dying in our city as in a war torn country.

Why is this not a bigger deal to people? Where is the national outcry for all of the lost American lives?

3 comments:

Jesse Curtis said...

Yeah, I agree Kevin. Alicia and I were talking about how the social and political divide in our country is not just conservative/liberal, but rural/urban. It seems like there's a segment of the country that doesn't take any interest in the cities and sees them as dangerous places full of lazy people. Lost causes. Anyway. I agree that there should be outrage, but that statistic is also kind of an attention grabbing one that maybe sounds worse than it is. the 65 troop deaths are out of a military population of 150,000, while the 125 chicago deaths are out of 3,000,000 people. So the statistic is perhaps not quite as shocking as it may first appear. But it's still unacceptable.

KG said...

Jesse,
I knew someone would bring that up. You are like me, always asking "why do the stats say what they do?" I think that is a part of it, but it doesn't change the fact that 125 people is a huge number.

I think that you are right though that people who don't live in the city are often glad that it is not their problem and seemingly doesn't affect them.

Sarah said...

but I think the statistic is attention grabbing rightfully so because 125 people were shot in a city, living out their lives while the 65 were shot in a WARZONE where that type of violence is to be expected.
Again, thats 125 killed
247 that were merely wounded.