Oct 13, 2009 1:10 pm US/Central
Jackson Calls Teen Violence A 'State Of Emergency'
Reverend Rides Bus With Fenger Students
CHICAGO (CBS) ―
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The Rev. Jesse Jackson addresses reporters before he rides the bus from the Altgeld Gardens public housing development with Fenger High School students, to draw attention to teen violence.
CBS
As he prepared to ride a bus with students from the troubled Fenger High School, the Rev. Jesse Jackson called the teen violence epidemic in Chicago a "state of emergency."
On Tuesday morning, Rev. Jackson hopped onboard a bus and took students to the school at 11200 S. Wallace St. He took the ride to draw more attention to school safety in the wake of
the beating death of Fenger student Derrion Albert, 16, last month.
Buses left shortly after 7 a.m. Beforehand, Jackson held a news conference on South Ellis Avenue just outside the Altgeld Gardens public housing development.
Jackson blamed the closure of Carver High School, at 13100 S. Doty Ave. close to Altgeld Gardens, for the violence that has erupted at Fenger.
The fight that led to Albert's death was between Fenger students who lived in the Ville neighborhood around the school, and students form Altgeld Gardens. Critics have complained that these fights began when Carver closed and reopened as a military academy.
"This is a state of emergency given patterns of violence and patterns of killing," Jackson said in a news conference.
He suggested that unemployed adults in the neighborhoods could serve as community patrols for children walking to school, while police battle against the flow of guns and drugs.
"This is ground zero of the urban policy," Jackson said of Altgeld Gardens. "We need jobs, intervention for jobs, education, the safe passage of these children, and a sense of hope."
Albert's death has sparked a dialogue about safety in the Chicago Public Schools system that drew U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder and Secretary of Education Arne Duncan to the city last week.
But Jackson said Tuesday that he wishes Holder and Duncan would have gone to Altgeld Gardens. Instead, they met with Mayor Richard M. Daley and other officials at the Four Seasons Hotel on East Delaware Place.
In the interest of combating violence,
Mayor Daley has called for more communication between police and schools. He also said he plans to use $1 million from the city's parking meter revenue for an after-school jobs program that will pay for at least 500 jobs.
Jackson will also ride back to Altgeld Gardens with the Fenger students.
(© MMX, CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved.)
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