As I looking down my Facebook timeline, I noticed a friend of mine (S/O to Jorey!) shared a video of O'Reilly speaking on the craziness going on in my hometown, Chicago. Personally, I believe Bill O'Reilly is an idiot as he shows hints of stereotypical, blatantly racist comments and shows hints of hypocrisy on his show, The O'Reilly Factor on "Faux" News (my dad's term for Fox News). I bite the bullet to see Bill O'Reilly's comments on my city and I was shocked....he was right on the nose, well for majority of the video.
O'Reilly spoke about the outrageous violence going on in my hometown of Chicago, Illinois, claiming that a state of emergency should be called. He gave statistics about the homicides and non-fatal shootings increased 70 percent and 87 percent up from last year, respectively with the fact that majority of the victims are African-American. Then Bill gave a comment about if this same issue was happening in New York or Los Angeles, then it would have been solved already.
O'Reilly pointed fingers at the Mayor of Chicago, Rahm Emmanuel, and Governor of Illinois, Bruce Rauner, claiming that they have done nothing "anything effective to stop the carnage." He also spoke to the residents of the city for them to start protesting and demand action against the unnecessary violence. O'Reilly ended his rant telling residents this: "Don't count on Black Lives Matter or Al Sharpton or Jesse Jackson or even President Obama. They haven't shown up. They don't seem to care."
What do I think about his statements as a resident of Chicago?
Shockingly, I agreed with him. Well, with some things.
I agreed with his statements about Mayor Emmanuel (on the left) and Governor Rauner (on the right). I strongly disagreed with how they handled certain situations here.
Mayor Emmanuel always tries to sweep things under the rug like nobody in the United States knows what's up because my fellow students at my school reminds me everyday. His leadership has been piss poor in handling the violence especially in the case of Laquan McDonald as he was instrumental in hiding the tape of his death. The way he treats Chicago Public School teachers like my mom is disrespectful, but that's a story for another day.
Governor Rauner, sir. How in the hell can you allow your most profitable city go down like this? When people think of Illinois, they think of CHICAGO. Not Springfield. Carbondale. Joliet. Or East St. Louis. (My people that live in those places, no disrespect, but y'all know it's true) Chicago is the Lil Wayne of Illinois and Governor Rauner is Birdman...keeps disrespecting it. Anyway to his neglectful ways to handle the violence, he also hasn't worked very hard in trying to save the only four year institution in the city on an urban lot, Chicago State University. I didn't vote for none of these fools because I knew better.
Chicago, unfortunately, is a very segregated city. I live on the south side of the city, where majority of African-Americans stay and where most of the violence takes place. We are products of black-owned businesses being gone and businesses catering to our needs aren't being ran by our own people. We do feel shut out by our other Chicagoans because we don't feel heard like the fallen is the only to get attention and it shouldn't be like that. The South Side of the city is home to so much history, which was beautifully executed by the PBS special, "Chicago's South Side."
The things I disagree with Mr. O'Reilly on his comments saying that Rev. Sharpton, Rev. Jackson and President Obama don't care. I cannot speak for Rev. Sharpton because he is not based in Chicago. As for Rev. Jesse Jackson, his PUSH foundation, located in the South Side, has annual college tours for inner city children and is always on the forefront of every pressing issue along with the Black Lives Matter branch of Chicago. With President Obama, he has worry about an entire country. Hello, President of the United States, not just Chicago. I don't look for President Obama to solve all the problems here, but I do know he cares because there's too much history here not to. He found his calling in the south side communities, met his wife, and built his family. He cares, he just can't save us because that's why we have Governors, then Mayors to use their own leadership to solve the problems in their state and cities.
At the end of the day, we all need to work on our communication with each other. We done our protests and crying, but we really need is to have a city-wide conversation with both our mayor and governor to understand each other. Or another solution, don't vote for these idiots next time.
Bill O'Reilly, we usually don't agree on certain things, but you got me this time. You hit some things that I respected, but don't get comfortable, I still don't like you.
