As leaders in faith communities, we are grateful to be celebrating a season of gratitude. Thanksgiving, with its focus on the appreciation of the gifts we have received and the loved ones for whom we remain grateful, is a special holiday, if not a holy day.
Yet, by the time this Thanksgiving Sunday rolls around, the sanctity of giving thanks has largely turned toward the common practice of commerce. We are sandwiched between Black Friday, Small Business Saturday and Cyber Monday.
We believe there is deeper meaning in the link between taking time for gratitude and nonetheless wanting more. Certainly that is where we find ourselves in the city of Chicago.
We have a wish list this holiday season. We share the hope for one gift to arrive for us all — that Chicago musters the moral courage to invest in preventing the loss of life to gun violence, so that we no longer need to function as experts in performing the rituals associated with death.
Chicago is at a kairos moment, a time in Christian theology when the conditions are right to take crucial action. After our seven long years working with three consecutive administrations, the time has finally arrived for our city to pass an ordinance to follow proven, data-driven practices enacted by our peer cities: to establish an Office of Gun Violence Reduction. We have already stated in this section the many reasons for supporting such an office; we’ve already discussed how the state, philanthropists and the civic community have already stepped up to support these efforts with an investment.
But to date our city has done very little. Even in our discussions with Mayor Brandon Johnson’s office about fulfilling his campaign promise to establish an Office of Gun Violence Reduction, we were repeatedly admonished to ensure that any ordinance be “budget-neutral.” Let’s just say that if a family celebrates a “budget-neutral” Christmas, there’s not only nothing under the tree; there’s also not even a tree.
There should be no greater priority for any city than the preservation of life, especially the lives of children. That needs to be the focus of every budget of every municipality on the planet. So when we hear the mayor’s office suggest this isn’t the year to fund reducing gun violence, we wonder: What else could be a higher priority? An increased budget for the mayor’s beloved Chicago Teachers Union? A pay raise for 47 of 50 aldermen? Cost-of-living adjustments (and more) for the Chicago Police Department?
How can we reckon with the cost of living when we are not willing to offset the price of dying?
American novelist and critic James Baldwin taught that “those who say it can’t be done are usually interrupted by people doing it.” There are always excuses for preventing needed action; money, especially in Chicago, is always tight. But we are tired of people — our elected officials, especially — saying “It can’t be done.” The time is now for us to make a game-changing move on this life-and-death issue of gun violence.
From the perspective of our pulpits, if our city does not fund this new office — this year, in the coming 2025 budget — it just may be too late. The window of opportunity, the window of coordinated civic will, simply might pass us by and close for a generation. That is why we have worked tirelessly with Ald. Desmon Yancy, 5th, to introduce an ordinance to establish an Office for Gun Violence Reduction. This is why we will continue to work with a growing roster of aldermen to muster support for its passage. That is why we are willing, should the door again be opened, to work with Johnson’s office to create and fund such a necessary office.
This season, we count so many blessings. But what we cannot yet claim is the blessing of an Office of Gun Violence Reduction that serves all 77 Chicago neighborhoods. We cannot claim the power of having saved one single soul from the scourge of death by a bullet, but we can work to put our civic energy behind establishing the one office that will work to keep us all alive.
It is very human, even as we count our blessings, still to want more. It is perhaps the highest height of humanity to work to save the lives of other human beings. Let us therefore work together, coming out of this season of Thanksgiving, to unite as a city, to call our elected officials, to work together to bring to this city the incredible gift and blessing of an Office of Gun Violence Reduction that will have as its top priority the preservation of every human life.
Chicago faith leaders Rabbi Seth Limmer, the Rev. Otis Moss III, the Rev. Ciera Bates-Chamberlain and the Rev. Michael Pfleger joined the Tribune’s opinion section in summer 2022 for a series of columns on potential solutions to Chicago’s chronic gun violence problem. The column continues on an occasional basis.
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