Chicago's murdered children

[keep_it_real]

"The number of children who are dying here in the city of Chicago is astronomical," says Black Star's director Phillip Jackson, quoting the figure of 605 children shot – wounded or killed – in the city over the last year and a half. "Stop and think about it: these are children! This is a catastrophe. And it's happening right in front of our eyes."

By his reckoning, some 13 soldiers from the city have died in the Iraq and Afghanistan wars. The number of children lost to violence in the city during the same period is 290.

Former presidential candidate the Rev Jesse Jackson tells me: "These are Baghdad numbers. These are war zone numbers. People are being killed, one by one by one. Children are traumatised, living in fear. Yet we are growing immune to this level of slaughter."

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/aug/11/chicago-children-murders