Okay, Chicago. Now’s your chance!

Now that we have lost the 2016 bid for the Olympic Games, perhaps we will focus upon some other – arguably far more important issues – such as, how do we keep our children safe? How do we provide them with a world-class education? How do we maintain, repair, and improve our crumbling roads, bridges, and train tracks?

Isn’t this just the opportunity we’ve been looking for?

All sort of forces mobilized to raise untold amounts of money and to put in untold numbers of hours in preparing the city for the Olympic Games. Well, we didn’t get the games, but there sure is a heck of a lot that needs work here in our city. Let us get to it, shall we?

When an honors student (and, frankly, it doesn’t matter whether or not he was an honors student) can get beaten to death in broad daylight outside of a school and it is filmed and put up on the web for all to see and no one (apparently) called either the police or 911, doesn’t that tell you something is rather wrong here? What’s more upsetting is that this is no longer surprising. Children have been murdered at astonishing rates in this city for many, many years. Victims of stray bullets or gang beatings or downright gang-ordered assassinations. When will the madness stop? When will our elected leaders – and I’m talking to you, Mr. Daley, and you, Alderman Vi Daley (no relation to the Mayor) – when will you at long last take action?

How many people have to die before we get serious about these problems? How long will we allow folks in poverty to languish in inadequate housing with inadequate, or no, health care? What really matters to us? That’s the question, isn’t it? Is it more important that we get a big influx of visitors from across the world in 2016 or that we create a city that everyone from across the world will want to visit?

Mayor Daley, the time is now: pick yourself up, dust yourself off, and announce a bold, new initiative to quell gang violence and create safer, more effective schools once and for all. Enough is enough already. Let’s all harness the energy that was created behind this Olympics bid and put it to use making our community safer, stronger, and more healthy, which will, by the way, make it more attractive to tourists from all over the globe. The time for action has come. The only question is, will we take it?

Namaste.