Ford Heights: Life in the Third World

Ford Heights: Life in the Third World
by David Masciotra

The Herald News: June 4, 2008

Every now and then a reality-detached, empathy-deficient shill for the crime and blunder that is the American occupation of Iraq will boast about the construction of a school in Baghdad and plead for support for allocating additional billions of dollars to police a foreign nation. Policing is what the unanimously and unthinkingly celebrated "surge" was all about --sending in more cops to quell sectarian violence.

Meanwhile, in the richest nation on the planet -- a superpower arrogantly willing to police the world when it suits its own needs --there are long forgotten portions of the country that struggle to survive and suffer from a visible lack of law and order.

Ford Heights, an impoverished south suburb of Chicago, has no police force. The three officers who formerly made up the barely existent Ford Heights Police Department sought transfers after their pay was cut to a mere $12 an hour. With no one to protect Ford Heights' residents or maintain some semblance of order in the high crime town, the Cook County sheriff's police have begun to patrol the streets.

Awful implications of this horror story should be obvious: Poor people in Ford Heights were left entirely vulnerable to the nefarious whims of gangs, drug pushers and thieves. In order to offer some protection, the Cook County sheriff's office must remove officers from important county business and crime prevention and place them in a town too poor and too neglected to pay police a livable wage.

Observers have raised the expected questions over whether or not Ford Heights should continue to call itself a village. Its schools are disgraceful, its services are absent, and it cannot police itself.

If the struggling town were to become unincorporated, the county would be required to manage not only policing but also the schools, fire prevention and other services.

County Commissioner Deborah Sims has expressed great resistance to that idea, which is perfectly understandable. Forcing the county to make up for the failures of national, state and local education and economic policies would not address the real causes of Ford Heights' fatal situation. It would merely place a bandage on a gunshot wound, and in the process cause financial and morale-damaging harm to the county office.

Certain adjectives like "ironic," "insane," and "insidious" do not effectively describe the predicament this nation finds itself in at the moment: We are dedicating obscene amounts of money and blood to occupying a Third World country for reasons that are at best foolish, and at worst, criminal, while parts of our country are declining into Third World conditions.

Ford Heights is not alone in America. Recall the images beamed across television from the lower 9th Ward of New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina. Consider that the Chicago public high school system, which has recently dealt with the murders of 22 of its students, has a dropout rate of 48 percent.

A recent study found that although poverty has declined in Will County since 1980, it has increased in Cook and DuPage counties.

While all of these modern, yet Dickensian tragedies are unmentioned or placed under cover, media elites measure patriotism by the presence of fashion accessories. Real patriotism means supporting the vital public institutions and support centers that grant opportunity, security and dignity to American citizens.

A massive revitalization program is needed to restore hope and equity to public schools, police departments and neighborhoods -- not only in Ford Heights, Chicago and New Orleans, but across this entire nation.

David Masciotra