Chicago’s blue bag recycling program: Garbage in, Garbage out

By Dennis Byrne
Chicago Daily Observer

A pop quiz: When was Chicago supposed to run out of landfill capacity and we’d all have to start eating our garbage?

Answer? I don’t know exactly, but it was some time past, according to environmentalists who warned that in the 1970s, ‘80s and ‘90s the city—and the rest of the country—would run out of places to dump the garbage. Adding to the crisis mentality were scary claims that leaking toxic substances and methane would poison and asphyxiate the populace. Somebody had to “do something,” and fast.

So, Chicago and other municipalities stampeded into adopting solid waste recycling programs. Americans suddenly were “educated” or forced into massive recycling efforts, separating paper, cans, plastic and other materials from the oozing, dripping, rotting stuff. Recycling became a matter of given truth in the bible of the caring, even though the net benefits were, and in some quarters still are, in doubt.

Among those jumping on the bandwagon was the then-recently elected Chicago Mayor Richard M. Daley, the first of his many attempts to establish his green credentials. But instead of going for a relatively simpler, less expensive and more effective model deployed by most other jurisdictions, Daley decided he had to do it His Way....

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Troop surge in the 'hood?

By Dennis Byrne
Chicago Tribune

The only thing we haven't tried in our desperation to end Chicago's violence is a troop surge.

So then, why not a surge? Give people whose 3-year-olds get shot playing outside what they most want and deserve: security. Call out the National Guard. After all, a surge finally established some degree of security in Baghdad, and if we're to believe what we read, parts of Chicago are no less of a war zone.

How close are we to an insurrection when gangs have usurped legitimate civil authority and pretty much govern how the people in the neighborhoods shall live, i.e., in terror. The shooters are terrorists as much as the Iraqi "insurgents." Flood violence-torn neighborhoods with visible signs of authority. Troops carrying automatic weapons, if need be. Armored Humvees. Martial law. Curfews. Let the punks and gangs know that they're in a war in which they're outmanned and outgunned. Let them wonder whether their drive-bys will be greeted with return fire from locked-and-loaded troops. Let them see the Air National Guard patrolling overhead in helicopters.

Of all the harebrained ideas, this might be the worst, you're probably thinking right now. I can't be serious, right? Treating any Chicago neighborhood as occupied territory?

Well, yes, there are a ton of reasons why a military—or whatever you want to call it—solution is unthinkable. The armed forces are not trained to do police work. It could deprive innocent citizens of their rights. Raging gun battles could break out between troops and gangs, endangering innocent people. And here's probably the most shocking reason: The Illinois Constitution, while permitting the deployment of the Illinois National Guard to "enforce the laws, suppress insurrection or repel invasion," also names the governor as commander in chief. That would be the screw-loose Rod Blagojevich. Yikes.

Then again, why not? We've tried all the "root-cause" solutions, and now Blagojevich is jumping in with more: $150 million the state doesn't have for summer jobs programs, after-school programs and what-not programs. Mayor Richard M. Daley has appointed a study group, whose scholars will come up with "new" solutions, but if they do find just one, something that already hasn't been tried and whose failure can't be explained away by "lack of resources," then surely they'll be in line for the Nobel Peace Prize, and we'll all be grateful.

It's always the same old stuff. In trying to "address underlying and systemic causes of the at-risk population," we've filled the landscape with jobs, education, development, housing, incentives, community involvement and other programs, not that there's anything wrong with that, and, yes, there always can be more, and how unsafe would neighborhoods be without them, but . . .

In a twist on lyrics by the immortal Everly Brothers: "Programs, programs, all day long. Will my programs work out right or wrong?" Truth is, community activists can march until kingdom come, demanding they be "empowered to take back our neighborhoods," and little will happen. The media will dutifully show up to tape, we'll feel deep sympathy for the marchers' frustration and the punks will laugh it up.

If my neighborhood were being torn up the same way, I'd demand full deployment. Check points. IDs. Explanations of intent from assorted roving bands of punks. Stop and frisk to enforce the city's tough gun-control laws. The easily excitable and offended will scream that it amounts to a neighborhood lockdown, even a police state. OK, maybe it shouldn't be the National Guard. Maybe it should be something like the more aggressive policing (including constitutional traffic stops to ask, "What are you doing here?") that has significantly reduced homicides and other crimes in Berwyn.

But, I'll not accept the slander that the people struggling for safety in violent neighborhoods are so much different that they don't yearn for the peace and security that the rest of us enjoy, and which is the first and necessary condition for any of us to realize our potential.

They, like I do, want to be able to walk safely with their grandchildren, to shop, to not worry about a stray bullet ripping through the front window and to be unafraid of the violent consequences of so minor an offense as looking at someone funny. You wouldn't find me rushing to the usual media whiners about how the authorities are unfairly picking on our young men, because our young men—as well as our young women, children and grandparents—now would be safe. Or at least safer. For a change.