Less than a month after I posted a piece on the violence in the Chicago Public Schools this story erupts in the national media. As well it should erupt. No matter what is written about the violence it can’t illustrate the problem like the video released today does. It is a vulgar display of the problem that plagues our school children and something has to be done about it.

The video below was shot at 342 W. 111th St. last Thursday and acquired by WFLD. They released the video in the hopes that witnesses would come forward and identify suspects at the scene. As of this post Silvanus Shannon, 19, Eugene Riley, 18, and Eric Carson, 16, have been charged with first degree murder related to the fatal beating of Derrion Albert shown in the video. My prayers go out to the family for their loss. The fact that Derrion was reportedly a good kid and an honor student only escalates the tragedy of this story

An article posted on Chicago Breaking News suggests that the melee was somehow related to a shooting outside Fenger High School earlier in the day last Thursday. Again I ask you, how many students will die during the 2009 – 2010 school year? How many senseless killings does it take for this city to be outraged enough to take action?

October 1st is the first day of the rest of my life. Seriously, if you did not know, October 1st is my birthday and this year marks my 39th. Staring down the barrel of the big 4-0 is a little uncomfortable for me and I need some time to reflect on where I have been and where I am going with this whole life thing. This year my birthday will be very special. More so than ever before. For those of you reading who know me personally, you know I have been wrestling with a sticky situation. I can’t comment on it just yet but I can tell you I finally have the answers I needed to move forward in my life! Yes, at this very moment the answers to “nine years of debate” are laying in an unopened envelope on my desk here at home. What better circumstances than for me to open the envelope and gain this enlightenment on an old fashioned road trip? Across the desert no less.

I have always envisioned myself in my twilight years, packing a couple weeks of provisions into an RV and driving out west to see the sights of the southwest. After planning out such a trip for shits and giggles I realized that sort of free time and access to resources are much harder to come by than back in the day. Undoubtedly going forward this sort of vacation will get even less practical. Rather than wait until I am an old wrinkled up wanna be traveler, I am taking this trip this year. Just in 2009 style, not shiny camper tied to a trailer hitch style of decades gone by.

I will be flying into San Francisco on October 2nd and renting a car with no real itinerary. The only deadline I have is to make it to Las Vegas by October 7th. I plan to stay in San Francisco for a few days taking photos and posting content, but the remainder will be a whirlwind road trip through LA and on to Las Vegas. What’s cool about this 2009 style trip is that I will be blogging, tweeting and posting photos and video all along the way.

My trip doesn’t end there. Because once I make it back to Chicago on the 7th I have to fly out to Tampa Bay with @amyeb25 to see our wieners and carbs pal (inside joke) Andrea. I image after five days in the desert I will come back to Amy all wiser and more eccentric than I already am. I invite you to follow along all next week at Twitter, Facebook, YouTube as well as here on BraxtonMedia.com.

The fall television season is back and I am excited to have new episodes of Fringe, Heroes and SNL on the DVR. I am even tempted to ignore the creepy feeling I get when I watch Dexter and add that back to the list of programs I record (there is something seriously wrong with a show written so well that it has you rooting for a serial killer).

All that being said, one of my favorite shows did not make it back this year … The Sarah Conner Chronicles. Sure, I knew it wasn’t coming back but I am no less disappointed. How could Fox cancel this show? It was successful in adding a whole new dimension to the Terminator continuum and did it well. Yes I am a fanboy for the Sarah Conner Chronicles (“The SCC”).

Up until last week all I could do was piss and moan about the absence of the show. That was until I found www.savethescc.com. The website is apparently run by a well organized group of fans who also feel that Fox made an error in judgment when canceling this show. The site has a calendar of events, and video clips geared toward demonstrating the rabid fan base that wants The SCC back.

I certainly support their efforts and hope they succeed. If you are a fan of the show and hang out at events organized by the site, you might see me around sometime soon. In the mean time check out the growing network of sites related to the show and bringing it back.

Save the SCC related links:

http://www.savethescc.com/
http://community.livejournal.com/save_scc/
http://operationsavesarah.wordpress.com/
http://thesarahconnorcommentaries.wordpress.com/
http://www.roxybisquaint.com/tsccomicals/
http://tsccsociety.proboards.com/index.cgi
Resistance2029

O.K. I know I have been slacking on the blog posting this past month. I have also been slacking on the fund raising for the American Diabetes Association’s Step Out to Fight Diabetes. That’s not cool because I am really passionate about this cause.

I can’t ask anyone to do what I am not willing to do so I visited my own page and made a donation toward the event. I hope you do as well. A donation of $5, $10 or any is greatly appreciated. Help us make our goal of $500 raised this year and help a worthy cause. The ADA is a 503(c) charity and all donations are tax deductible.

You can find a more detailed blog post about our Step Out to Fight Diabetes here and you can CLICK HERE TO DONATE!

Some lucky soul will get a call from the Chicago Bears organization tomorrow. The lucky winner will receive the news that they were selected as Captain of the 4th phase. The 4th Phase is the official Chicago Bears fan club and an extension of the team in a lot of respects. The Bears have been running a contest for the past month for this honor and a winner will be picked tonight.

As far as I am concerned I am the ideal pick for this honor. For weeks I have been talking about Chicago Bear history and what the organization has meant to this city, the game of football as a whole and for the men and women who have made up the organization since their beginnings as the A. E. Staley Company team.

I became a bear fan one Thanksgiving long ago. We had Thanksgiving at my uncle’s house on the south side that year. While playing Connect Four with my cousin I noticed what looked like the Dallas Cowboy’s on TV. I was instantly excited. I had become a big fan of what was “America’s Team” back then. My uncle turns to me and explains that the Bears were on TV playing the Detroit Lions not the Cowboys. Just as quickly as I perked up, I lost interest. I knew nothing of the Chicago Bears at that time except for they were lucky to end a season with a 500 record. Coach Armstrong had a tough run back then but did manage to lead the team to a 10-6 season in ’79.

Over the course of that Thanksgiving dinner I learned about George Hallas, Ronie Bull, Dick Butkis and Gale Sayers while I watch a young buck running back by the name of Payton run all over the Detroit defensive line. The glitz and glamour of the Cowboy’s success was set aside by the tradition and pride of the home town Bears. I have been a diehard fan ever since.

In the years that followed I watched Coach Armstrong give way to “Da Coach” Mike Ditka and celebrated the glory of Superbowl XX. That era faded away but I have never lost excitement over the performance of the Chicago Bears. I carry with me the example of hard work and determination that they have exemplified on and off the field.

Sure, I have been frustrated. I still don’t know why we didn’t win Superbowl XLI and I am reeling from last week’s loss to the Pack. Even so a football season is 17 weeks to start and there is a whole lot of football left to be played. To live it as Captain of the 4th Phase would be an unforgettable honor that I would take very seriously so Coach Smith, put me in… . I’m ready!

On October 2nd the IOC will announce the host city for the 2016 Summer Games. Tokyo, Madrid, Rio de Janeiro and Chicago have been selected as potential host cities. Of course we know this is Chicago’s bid to lose… and we are doing a great job at loosing it.

Enter No Games Chicago. The organization is self described as “a diverse group of citizens who have come together from across Chicago to oppose the city’s bid for the 2016 Olympics”. The organization raises valid concerns about:

• Long-term impact on public parks
• Displacement of poor residents in proposed Olympic venues areas
• Fiscal projections and unsecured funding
• Funneling of Olympic funds to city insiders
• Disclosure, disclosure, disclosure

These are all valid concerns and we are of like minds when it comes to the need for more disclosure in the process. Chicago certainly needs better hospitals, affordable housing, better schools, better transportation and an answer to the current crime issue. HOWEVER, we differ in our view of the tremendous opportunity that hosting the games represents for the city.  
I chose not to merely recognize the pitfalls that hosting the Olympics presents, tuck tail and run away from the challenge.  I and other forward thinking Chicagoans support the hard work and tough choices needed to make the games a success despite the troubles that the current Olympic cities of Vancouver(2010 Winter) and London (Summer 2012) are having.

We know the usual types are going to make money on the games, we know there will be budget over runs and the city may take a hit in the short term. However, think back to the uproar regarding the budget overruns for Millennium Park. The project was originally projected to cost $150 mm but final costs were upwards of $475 mm. Citizens were furious but civic and commercial leaders came together and got it done. There were naysayers then calling for the Mayor’s head but looking at the 24 acres of spectacular urban landscape I doubt anyone is unhappy with the results.

The year is 2009 and the games occur in 2016. The opposition to the games is obviously a vote of no confidence in local government. Whether we are selected to host the games or not, citizens have several elections between now and then to make changes in government leadership that will address their concerns. Why punt on this opportunity because of the current government when you have the option to make wholesale change in government while securing the bid as well.

As Amy would say, stop cursing the darkness and turn on the light.

I was at work on Sunday September 14, 2008. I was faithfully churning out pitch books for Merrill Lynch Pierce Fenner Smith & Co. while listening to Bob Brinker’s Moneytalk online. Americans had just been introduced to a new catch phrase “credit crunch” and AIG had become the too big to fail victim of it.

I was listening along online when news reports began to show up online that Merrill Lynch had been sold to Bank of America. What? Wait… sold? Wall Street elite had been meeting to discuss saving Lehman Brothers so it had to be a typo right? Not so.

I had worked at the IBK offices for about five years but had never been part of a takeover and neither had most of the associates and analysts in the office that day. Speculation swirled in anticipation of the hastily scheduled conference call for that evening. In my head I recalled legend that former CEO Stan O’Neal snapped up BlackRock in a casual conversation in a Time Square coffee shop/restaurant illustrating the deal on napkins (as a desktop publisher that irks me). These guys are wheelin’ dealin’ fast talkin’ summa ma guns so I imagined John Thain pulling Ken Lewis to the side and whispering sweet revenue laced nothings into his ears as Lehman Brothers executives kissed their hopes and their company goodbye.

After the conference call I was just as confused as before. I listened to the presentation and the following questions from CNBC types and other bankers alike. Diligence and familiarity with Merrill’s books, yeah, I didn’t have to understand anything other than Lehman Brothers was gone and my indirect employer would live to fight another day. Even if it would be as a wholly owned subsidiary of… gasp, Bank of America.

Here we are a year later and after all the TALFS and TARPS you could ask for the automotive industry, insurance industry and certainly investment banking sector will never be quite the same. My old Chicago workplace has gone through its transitions as well. A lot of old faces gone and new ones introduced. Kind of like the market in general no? I myself have moved on and can say it has been a very exciting and stressful time to live through. I can only hope we are through the worst of it.

September 8th begins a new year of classes for children attending Chicago Public Schools. It is hard for any student to say goodbye to the summer break and get back to the business of textbooks and homework. I have to imagine it’s even harder for Chicago students to concentrate knowing that 36 Chicago students were killed over the 2008 – 2009 school year, 27 students during 2007 – 2008 and 31 over the 2006 – 2007 school year [Source: CNN reports].
BraxtonMedia.com has been anticipating this day and attempting to speak to local officials regarding any new strategy and outreach put in place to end this type of violence. We contacted the Chicago Police News Affairs department for comment. Sergeant Yersetti returned our call but she couldn’t offer any information because most of the youths were 16 or younger. I can respect that.
We reached out to the Chicago Public Schools for comment and were unceremoniously rebuffed. A website with a few thousand visitors every month was apparently not important enough to warrant a response. I can even respect that. We may not have followed the proper channels of contact and with the start of a new school year the people we want to talk to are probably busy implementing the strategies we were trying to learn about.
Now for what I can’t respect. Eighty-four children have been killed over the last three school years and there is no public outrage. Parents pass the responsibility to teachers, teachers look to the police and in the meanwhile children are running wild in the streets and dying over foolishness. This is a tragedy in process and I wanted to speak out on it. It needs to stop. I am apparently not qualified to sound the alarm. I am just a blogger with not much of a following and easily ignored so I am calling on my better connected Chicagoans to stand up and speak out. Reach out to your children, reach out to parents that are less than involved in their children’s lives and make push for policies that will empower the schools and public programs to rescue this generation.
I welcome your positive feedback and input on this story.