By Scotty Reid, 7/16/2012, news, politics

Frustrated with soaring violence in their communities, Chicagoans are said to be begging for the same oppressive policies that their counterparts in New York are trying to get rid of. Willie Cochran, a Chicago city Alderman for the Ward 20 district is leading the charge for Chicago to return to aggressive policing that has shown to lead to racial profiling and other abuses of civil rights as seen in New York City, which is now facing a class-action lawsuit over its “Stop & Frisk” program. Trading one evil for another is a misguided solution. Furthermore, asking those that created the problems cannot be expected to come up with solutions and the city’s mayor, Rahm Emmanuel is one of those politicians who are more concerned with not appearing soft on crime than actually solving the problem.

What is troubling about Cochran’s call for Chicago style Stop & Frisk is that he is a former narcotics officer and knows that the root cause of the problem is the failed so-called drug war which should be considered a war on black and brown people who use drugs at the same percentage rates as other demographics but make up the bulk of arrests, prosecutions and enslavement on America’s prison plantations.

“The war on drugs has failed,” proclaimed Alderman Willie Cochran at a meeting earlier this year in which the decriminalization of marijuana was being discussed by city leaders.

Under current policies, Cochran added, “How many of us sitting here could have had a criminal history?”

That would include many of the past Presidents of the United States. President Obama has been candid about his use of drugs like marijuana while in high school and cocaine while in college but he refuses to consider credible alternatives and has proposed no new ideas to deal with the issue.

The government created the conditions for gangs to thrive who use violence and intimidation to secure their share of the street market created and upheld by politicians like Emmanuel and his former boss Barack Obama.

Chicago is infamous for gangster like Al Capone who ruled the city with violence to control the distribution of bootleg alcohol. Al Capone did not create the market for bootleg alcohol, the U.S. government did when it added the Eighteenth Amendment to the Constitution and passed the Volstead Act. Al Capone and others like him simply took advantage of those misguided policies to amass tremendous wealth. The violence used to secure the distribution of alcohol did not subside until the repeal of alcohol prohibition.

The solution to the violence that plagues America’s streets is as simple as repealing the modern drug war started by disgraced former President Richard Nixon who has been alleged to have started it to target black people and was ramped up under Ronald Regan who also was President when the CIA was facilitating the distribution of cheap cocaine in the black community to fund their illegal wars in South America.

“He (Nixon) thought the Jews were all commies who wanted to legalize weed, and "Negro bastards" only wanted to "live like a bunch of dogs" on welfare.” -  JEFF NEUMANN

Using propaganda to claim that there was a rising epidemic of heroin deaths, a total lie, Nixon was able to convince the public that we needed a war on drugs. However, he had an ulterior motive that he stated in relation to the creation of the Drug Enforcement Agency.

“You have to face the fact that the whole problem is really the blacks. The key is to devise a system that recognizes this all while not appearing to.” – Richard Nixon

Politicians who claim that the legalization, regulation and taxing of drugs is not the answer are like Nixon, the cause of the problem. While Rahm Emmanuel wants to put all the blame on parents, the truth is, Rahm Emmanuel and those like him created the conditions for violence to rule the streets of Chicago. Not only are they responsible for the violence claiming the lives of our children, they are also responsible for the unregulated drug street market which includes the participation of jobless youth, they are responsible for the re-enslavement of black people who are an increasing source of unpaid labor used by corporations.

If Alderman Willie Cochran wants to reduce violence in the community he represents, he needs to be vocal on that which he knows firsthand to be true, that the drug war has been an abject failure in stopping the flow of drugs and has created the conditions for violent drug gangs to thrive just like in the days of Al Capone.

Human beings discovered thousands of years ago how to create alcohol and drugs from plants but they did not start killing each other over the production and distribution until the government outlawed this activity and criminalized people based on what put into their bodies. The drug war can be summed up in a word, tyranny.