"There was nobody to help. There was no time, really. We were surrounded it happened in one stop, and then they got off the next stop, at Lake,'' she said. 27 year old woman victimized on Forrest Claypool's CTA
Was it a 'melee' as the Sun Times reports? An altercation over smoker's rights? A 'wilding'? 'Flash Mob?
No, this was behavior rooted in the sad, secular, systemic mess we call public education. This was not a storming of the Bastille, or Bolivarista Peoples Revolution that is so much a part of 'elementary education expert' Bill Ayer's doctrine.
The kids were well-clothed, nutritionally robust, energetic, focused and more than moderately accoutered with the latest Apple or Microsoft entertainment and communication applications and devices that would make Jobs and Gates glow with appreciation. Both techno Edisons are icons of public education.
More so, from most accounts, these kids who look like the cast of a Disney series availed themselves of public transportation - the CTA.
The Sun Times feature leads off with the word melee, an innocuous sounding term for 'beating the supreme shit' out of another human being for no earthly good reason.
At least the Chicago Tribune account presented the facts of the attack as provided by the victim.
Now, a melee is a combat between two willing opponents - it is a term that arose from Middle Ages when knights and other men-at-arms squared off according to the rules of combat - most Catholic school kids know that.
The attack of a woman on the west side L smacks not of a melee -
A 27-year-old woman said she was returning home with her mother Saturday night on the Red Line after a dim sum dinner when a group of girls got on the train at the Monroe station and appeared to want to pick a fight.The attackers were teenage girls, who have been taught under an educational rubric of entitlement. I believe that these confused kids act out because they believe that they are entitled act out - after all they were encouraged to cheer on Occupy idiots, NATO bomb-makers and their teachers who abandoned them last summer. These kids have been taught, not the etymology and application of a word like melee, that personal empowerment is entitlement - what are they supposed to do?
"This girl started blowing smoke in my face, and she flicked her cigarette ashes at me,'' said the woman, who asked not to be identified. "I said: 'You need to put that out,' and the next thing I know there's all these girls that jumped on top of us.''
They began punching her face and then went for her hair. She believes their attackers had knives or box cutters and padlocks possibly placed inside socks."I put my head down between my legs so they would stop beating me in the face, but they were trying to pull my face up and hit me more,'' she said. "They ripped out chunks of my hair, and I've got a black eye and bruises on my face, and all over my back and shoulder.''
The 11 teenagers arrested in that incident at the CTA's State/Lake station in the Loop about 6:35 p.m. were among a total of 28 people arrested downtown Saturday night for disturbances that ranged from bumping into passers-by on sidewalks to the attack on the CTA train, authorities said.
What are you supposed to do? Move. Move out of Chicago. It is all about real estate, Neighbors. Real estate to be developed for green spaces, cultural entertainment and dining venues, fitness centers, and certainly no homes, apartments, or dwellings beyond the planned Urban Center Chicago Urban Center Chicago is not for Stash, Wanda, Tony, Maria, Nacho, Teresa, Paddy, Nora, Clifton and Carmesha and their damn kids. It is for Aprile, Dak, E. Morton and Misty Salt, Spencer and Seth.
When public safety has lost all meaning; when basic city services are denied, or diminished by executive fiat, when schools become training grounds for thugs, it might be time to move.
That is why public safety has been purchased at the hands of the G. Flint Taylors, Jon Loevys, Locke Bowmans and the GDS, Vice Lords, Four Corner Hustlers, Mikey Cobras, and Latin Kings, as well as a grant or two for Ceasefire, while any and all public confidence in Chicago Police has been eroded.
That is why more people are alright with Privatizing Sanitation with the Garbage Grid. Seth and Spencer want those over-paid snoring louts fired. Seth and Spencer would be perfectly happy if the Fire Department were hired out and those tubby Mc911 heroes would leave for Romeoville.
That is why an otherwise unemployable good like Forrest Claypool keeps popping up and handed the wheel and throttle of public transportation - he is about Bombardier purchases, Red Line contracts and Ventra Cards and not the safety of a young lady and her mother who foolishly believe that riding the L should be violence free.
Don't think for minute that Forrest Claypool* gives a fat rat's ass about CTA riders, otherwise the CTA would have addressed thuggery on public transportation long ago. Smart guy like Forrest could do just about anything to reform anything, if he really wanted to; at least that is what the news media always says.
That is why Mayor Rahm Emanuel can sleep nights after putting the bite on President Obama for a loan of $100 million buckeens to gussy up the Riverwalk, rather than hire more cops, improve their working conditions and really do something about melees by the kids.
He might even really try to improve public schools by demanding Vouchers.
Nope. It is easier to wait for the frustrated, the frightened and the families to move the hell away, while his cheerleaders in the media wring-hands.
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