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AUSTIN WEEKLY news ■
Activists continue protests of police and fire training academy,
Vol. 32 No.25
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June 20, 2018
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austinweeklynews.com
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Also serving Garfield Park
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Cuts C t ffor a cause, page 3
On Father’s Day, officials decry West Side violence Violent crimes, missing women were front of mind at June 17 press conference By MICHAEL ROMAIN Editor
Members of the West Side Black Elected Officials spent part of Father’s Day on a scorching Sunday afternoon attempting to create some awareness about the area’s violence, particularly the recent spate of abductions that have touched off a wave of hysteria on social media. During the June 17 press conference, held outside of the Garfield Park Fieldhouse, 100 Central Park, at least a dozen West Side politicians at the local, state and federal level endured united around a common message that was printed on flyers that the officials held out for TV news cameras: “Be careful. Be alert. Beware. And in all things, love peace.” “I have a 2-year-old daughter and a week ago, there were gunshots on the corner of my house,” said state Rep. Melissa Conyears-Ervin (10th), the wife of 28th Ward Ald. Jason Ervin, who tended to heir toddler just feet away. “I’m not just speaking for myself,” Conyears-Ervin said. “This is what parents endure day after day. We are tired! We need help, but we need the ones who are causing See VIOLENCE on page 10
ALEXA ROGALS/Staff Photographer
Glamour girls
Students bask in applause last Friday, during the annual Exclusive Spring Fashion Show at Ella Flagg Young in Austin. See more photos on page 4.
Can the West Side turn around?
Development experts say community development key to economic growth By MICHAEL ROMAIN Editor
Chicago is a tale of two cities. Let the mounds of socioeconomic data and anecdotal evidence speak for themselves. According to a government data referenced in a February Chicago Magazine article, the average Loop resident lives to be 85 years old while the average West Gar-
field Park resident lives to be only 69 — the same life expectancy, the magazine points out, as the average Iraqi. “The last time in the United States history when life expectancy was 69 was 1950,” Dr. David Ansell, the senior vice president for community health equity at Rush University Medical Center and the author of The Death Gap: How Inequality Kills, told Chicago Magazine. “In seven train stops,
you go back seven decades.” Last year, according to the Chicago SunTimes, David Doig, a development expert, condensed the growing economic divide between the city’s more prosperous and white North Side and the predominantly black and brown West and South Sides into an acute observation.
Austin Chamber of Commerce on the move... 773.854.5848 • www.austinchicagochamber.com
See DEVELOPMENT on page 6