Solving Violence. Proudly. The NEW Chicago Way

We Chicagoans take pride in our home city. In so many ways. There's the annual LGBTQ+ Pride Parade. The championship drives of our beloved Bears, Bulls, Blackhawks, Sox and Cubs. The pride of enduring a brutal Chicago winter. And of enjoying an all-too short Chicago summer, with its famed art, food and music festivals and magnificent 18.5 mile public lakefront. We're the Windy City. The I Will City. The City of Big Shoulders. A World Class City. The most American of American cities. We're Sweet Home Chicago.

But then there's our violence. Five decades of it. Wartime levels. Chicago labeled the poster child of American urban violence.

How often does someone from another state ask you about Chicago's violence? How many Chicagoans do you know whose lives have been lost or destroyed by it?

No pride here. Just shame. And anger. And epic frustration and grief over the loss of three generations  of Chicagoans youngsters to gangs, guns and drugs.

Granted, homicides are down. Somewhat. But only at annual costs in the billions. And violence remains unsolved, with no solution in sight.

But in last year's two mayoral elections things changed. Violence-weary Chicagoans* felt a surge of pride. Momentarily, at least. They voted out the old Chicago Way, with its failed, top-down violence reduction tactics. And voted in a no-nonsense rookie mayoral candidate who kept telling voters that Chicago will solve violence only when all Chicagoans -- citizens, police, civic groups, businesses, City Hall -- are working together, top-down and bottom up, to make Chicago safe.

Since taking office, Mayor Lori Lightfoot has promised to "mobilize the entire city" to make Chicago "the safest big city in the United States."

That's the new  Chicago Way.

And it's music to my ears.

Yet eight months into her first term of office, Chicago remains unmobilized.

No music there.

Recently I had the opportunity to ask Mayor Lightfoot how she plans to fulfill her inaugural pledge to mobilize Chicago. Will she make use of TV, as she had so effectively  in her August "State of the City" address?

The question intrigued her. She responded thoughtfully, finally saying that she and her team are still looking for the best ways to connect with Chicagoans.

Then she added, "If you have any ideas along these lines, I'd like to see them."

I have ideas. They're sketched out in this New Chicago Way piece, a five-minute read. I await Mayor Lightfoot's response to it.

Hi everyone, I'm Steve Sewall, Ph.D., a career Chicago educator and the Director of Chicago Civic Media (CCM). I invent dynamic new uses of digital and mainstream media.  For the past 40 years Chicagoans of all ages and backgrounds have been using them to make Chicago safe. I'm the guy pouring a cup of instant in this 2009 video clip. In 20 seconds it spells out CCM's  Safe Chicago methodology:** (You may need to play the clip twice to catch the opening words.)


So who can inform, inspire and mobilize Chicagoans to make Chicago safe?

That's easy. It's obvious. In our media-driven city, Chicago's media are Chicago's mobilizers. They are, after all, the city's public communications system.

My New Chicago Way piece shows how Chicago's media can profit handsomely by mobilizing Chicagoans to make Chicago safe. This piece shows how a new TV program, ChicagoWRKS, can help Chicago get the job done. 

Yet ChicagoWRKS-TV is just one of dozens of ways Chicagoans and Mayor Lightfoot can productively connect in Chicago's media. media. Take, for instance, ongoing “Dear Lori” dialogues appearing in daily and community newspapers, on radio talk shows and social media as well. The would enable citizens and Mayor Lightfoot to process concerns and solutions, large and small, about violence. Sooner or later, local TV new would be airing segments Dear Lori's conversations.

The List of Tasks, below, shows how I will advance New Chicago Way during the first three months of 2020.

To complete this work, I seek to raise $6,000 for three months of full time work (60+ hours/wk) beginning January 1, at the rate of $2,000/mo.

How committed am I to this high risk, high reward undertaking?

Last September, after years of suburban living, I moved back to Chicago expressly to advance the new Chicago Way.

I left a large home for a small one. The pic below shows my wraparound desk and two companion parakeets squeezed together, with inches to spare, into a tiny Loop-area studio apartment. Fits like a glove.


This tiny apartment gives me what Glenview couldn't: ready access to the civic, business and government action in the Loop. Now I can readily meet lots of people face to face. People like the McDonald's employees I stumbled on at a November 21 City Hall demonstration. They gave harrowing accounts of an "epidemic of violence" caused by unruly customers taking advantage of poorly designed, unsecured McDonald's restaurants.


In coming months, I'll be reaching out, in writing and in person, to the individuals and groups on this list:

List of Tasks to be completed by March 31, 2020:

-- Get Mayor Lightfoot's take on the New Chicago Way

-- Connect with senior executives of Chicago's media, including the general managers of the city's six s leading TV Channels (2, 5, 7, 9 11 and 12)

-- Connect with journalism and communications departments of area colleges and universities.

-- Connect with community, neighborhood and student groups to generate grassroots support.

-- Connect with business sponsored civic organizations including the City Club of Chicago, the Civic Committee of the Commercial Club of Chicago and the Economics Club of Chicago.

-- Connect with advertising salespeople of socially responsible Chicagoland corporations.

-- Write New Chicago Way articles and letters the editor for publication, as appropriate.

-- Ride the CTA Red Line to talk about violence with Chicagoans on L platforms from Howard to 95th Street.

Donations I: Support the New Chicago Way

Back to my studio apartment. Fact is, my finances will allow for nothing larger. Years of volunteer/low-paid Civic Media work -- all documented in my large attic at ChicagoCivicMedia.com -- have taken a financial toll. I'm selling off books, furniture and art work and holding down part-time jobs. But the struggle to make rent each month takes time from my Civic Media work.

For the moment, Chicago Civic Media is an unincorporated, one man operation. The upside here is that your donation will go straight to me. No middleman. And I live frugally. The downside: no tax deduction.

Anyone unfamiliar with my commitment to Civic Media work can email me to be connected with people who know me well.

If you do chose to help advance the New Chicago Way, please consider forwarding this GoFundMe link to your politically active or concerned family and friends living outside the city. Here's why.

Donations II: Support a New Way for American cities, states and America itself

The New Chicago Way (and other Civic Media formats) are scalable to restore functionality to American political discourse at all levels of government. The ChicagoWRKS TV  public forum introduced in my New Chicago Way piece, for instance, is itself a localized version of my 2006 America's Choice  public forum for political discourse televised nationwide.

Multimedia problem-solving Civic Media public forums are designed to restore functionality to America's currently broken top-down, money-driven, election-centered political discourse system. That's saying a lot, I know. But anyone who is concerned with the hyper-polarization and degradation of American politics is invited to consider these public forums as the best (and perhaps only) future of American political discourse and of democracy itself. That, certainly, is how my observation over the past 40 year of the realities of American politics at ALL levels of government has compelled me to regard them.

My academic and professional background

Here's a current resume. For the academics among you, my approach to media, politics and government is informed by writers both ancient  and modern. Modern writers, from across the political spectrum, include the visionary Marshall McLuhan, libertarian George Gilder (Life After Television: the Coming Transformation of American Life ), anarchist Noam Chomsky, conservatives David Brooks, George Will and William F. Buckley and media consultant Shelly Palmer, whose Television Disrupted: The Transition from Network TV to Networked TV  and daily blog posts  are at the cutting edge of digital-age media reportage.

How I will thank my donors

--  Weekly progress updates emailed bright and early every Sunday morning.

--  Invitations to occasional New Chicago Way Meet and Greet events either at my centrally located studio apartment or at Chicago's famous Billy Goat's Tavern located on the lower level of 430 N. Michigan Avenue.

-- Donor thank you prizes shown in a catalog (forthcoming) of art works and antique furniture.

-- Music playlists. Mostly by downloading choice rarities from YouTube I continue to expand my wondrous collection of over 7,000 pieces of music from all over the world. I custom playlists to suite any taste or occasion. But my forte is multi-genre playlists available on YouTube and Spotify. Just ask.

-- More clever, fun ways to thank donors I haven't had time to dream up yet.

* Given the impartiality of the problem solving public forums advanced here, it's important to acknowledge the existence of strong opposition to Mayor Lightfoot from many quarters, including the Fraternal Order of Police.

** Colleagues in the 20-second video and creators of ChicagoWRKS.com, CCM's 2009 hyperlocal news and information platform for Chicago, are: Arturo Castro, Tim O'Connor V,  Catea Merchan, Gary Solovyev, Stuart Rothstein, Daniel Skobal. Absent: Brad Pritikin and Sanjiv Bawa.

Thanks so much for your consideration and support.