McDonald's CEO sounds the alarm over crime in Chicago(cnn.com)

109 pointsby thrusong4 lata temu191 comments

McDonald's CEO sounds the alarm over crime in Chicago

https://www.cnn.com/2022/09/15/business/mcdonalds-ceo-chicago-crime/index.html

200 comments

tptacek4 lata temu

Crime in most of Chicagoland is somewhat higher than in recent previous years, and lower than it was when I moved back here in 2005.

That's certainly the case for McDonalds Corporate, which has its headquarters in the heavily-patrolled, maximally gentrified West Loop. Nobody who works in McDonalds HQ is worried about crime near their building.

Where crime in Chicago is a real problem is in the south and west sides of the city, where white people don't live. Those areas are playing out a slow motion mechanistic tragedy set in motion a century ago when they were redlined, sliced in half by the Dan Ryan, evacuated by white people, and disinvested. A map of Chicago violent crime is, roughly, a map of redlining.

The city can make no excuses for this. It's an ongoing human tragedy running at a scale that is hard to get your head around. At the same time, it's hard to take the CEO of McDonalds seriously, because the crime problem in Chicago is mostly segregated away from him and people like him (and me).

chrismcb4 lata temu

Can't take the CEO seriously because he isn't directly affected? That makes no sense. If course the CEo is mostly worried about his employees and customers. Didn't seem like he his to worried about himself. But that's ok, ignore him because he is safe? And that fact that things started agree ago is a bit of a red herring. Because apparently (according to you) things were getting better, but lately they've gotten worse. So why have they gotten worse, recently? And what do we do to fix it?

eyelidlessness4 lata temu

> Can't take the CEO seriously because he isn't directly affected? That makes no sense.

Can’t take him sincerely. He states his motivation in the article but it’s easily buried in insincere fluff and more than enough victim blaming. It’s clear he wants corporate employees back in the office, and wants to frame crime as the reason for that not meeting his preferred expectations. But crime, which he speaks of the same as overdosing and homelessness “issues” are what he’s addressing, rather than actual reasons people don’t want to work in his corporate offices. And more importantly to me, rather than addressing the real suffering homeless people and addicts are experiencing and real solutions to help them.

isitmadeofglass4 lata temu

> And more importantly to me, rather than addressing the real suffering homeless people and addicts are experiencing and real solutions to help them.

But why are you addressing your problems with what he’s addressing instead of addressing the real suffering homeless people and addicts are experiencing and real solutions to help them? /S

Though to be real, yes, he’s addressing the problems he’s experiencing and that’s perfectly fine, we all should. If you hold people to the standard that no one can sound the alarm unless they have found solutions to the root causes then the only thing that would happen would be that there would be silence around the issue.

[deleted]4 lata temu

Noumenon724 lata temu

As he mentioned first, McDonald's has 400 locations in Chicago, which I'm sure see much more crime than the HQ. For the HQ workers it's probably not only their workplace and home they would like to be safe but also the nightlife and tourist locations.

chinabot4 lata temu

Sounds like crime rate is proportional to the number of McDonalds in the area. Easy fix!

tptacek4 lata temu

The nightlife and tourist locations in Chicago are safe.

jacobriis4 lata temu

This chef was just executed during an armed robbery in the Loop by the Chicago Board of Trade Building at 11pm.

https://cwbchicago.com/2022/09/man-charged-murder-robbery-ch...

tptacek4 lata temu

What do you want to hear? Have you ever been to the CBOT building at 11PM? I have, within the last couple weeks. The south Loop is and always has been a ghost town after business hours. There aren't restaurants there, just office buildings. The CBOT building in particular --- I had an office a block from there in the Monadnock building for around 10 years, and even in 2007 I'd have been nervous there super late at night.

It's a big city. People get mugged here. I'm not claiming otherwise.

But when people talk about out-of-control Chicago crime, they're talking about the shootings, 100%. This isn't San Francisco. There isn't a narrative about crime here where like, nobody can operate a Walgreens here because of organized shoplifting rings (I'm sure they exist!), or out-of-control homeless tent encampments and street drug use. The narrative here is gangs randomly and prolifically shooting people in gang squabbles.

And that narrative plays out in Lawndale, Austin, Garfield Park, Englewood, Grand Crossing, and Chatham, not Lincoln Park, Lakeview, Logan Square, and Bucktown.

jacobriis4 lata temu

tptacek4 lata temu

Hah. You got me. You're right, Lakeview is a blighted hellscape, and not a rich white neighborhood where the median home price is over $500k in a city with absolutely no housing scarcity whatsoever. Remind me to wear a bulletproof vest next time I go to Delilahs.

jacobriis4 lata temu

"You're right, Lakeview is a blighted hellscape, and not a rich white neighborhood"

Your theory that the existance of white people in an area establishes an anti-violence forcefield is not sound.

Also Lakeview is not a "white neighaborhood"

• White 77.6% • Black 4% • Hispanic 8.6% • Asian 6.9% • Other 2.9%

tptacek4 lata temu

You got me again; you're right, it's not a "white neighborhood". It's just a "not Black" neighborhood.

You get that I've, like, been to Lakeview a bunch, right? Like, I used to live there? My favorite bar in the world is there? I never know, when I'm talking to people on HN, if Chicago is an abstraction to them and they're just trying to pull facts out of Google or whatever.

JJMcJ4 lata temu

Safe as any big city in the USA. Crimes like this take place everywhere.

seer-zig4 lata temu

> Crimes like this take place everywhere

Everywhere in the US maybe. I couldn't imagine normalizing this sort of behavior. Peace is definitely a huge blessing that many people take for granted.

tptacek4 lata temu

Nobody has normalized this sort of behavior. This was a news story because it was newsworthy.

arkis224 lata temu

Mostly... there are plenty of people getting robbed in the loop and Lincoln Park. I had an associate get carjacked and cops refused to follow the stolen car to avoid a chase.

tptacek4 lata temu

I don't believe your friend†. I work downtown, as does my wife and son. I've been mugged (not carjacked, just mugged --- and not in the Loop!) and had the police catch the assailants within minutes. If I got carjacked, I have a very high degree of confidence in the police response I'd get. But if I was a Black teenager shot in Lawndale, I would have zero confidence.

† Except to the extent that the police won't give chase in Chicago, just like pretty much every other major city, since police chases were killing innocent bystanders on the regular before they were essentially banned everywhere.

blix4 lata temu

I'm sorry I'm trying to follow your argument here. Are you saying that because you have never been carjacked or mugged in the loop that it has never happened to anyone else? Or that because you had one rapid response by the police that all police responses are rapid?

I grew up in Chicago, many of my family and friends still live there. I would categorize your experience as both atypical and extremely privileged. You should hesitate before extrapolating.

tptacek4 lata temu

I do not believe that someone got carjacked in the city of Chicago and CPD blew them off. That's all I'm saying. Do people get carjacked here? Absolutely, 100%.

blix4 lata temu

I don't think I've ever heard someone proclaim such trust in the CPD.

The original comment just says the cops refused to chase... which you yourself acknowledge as likely in a child comment. If you believe that carjackings happen and that the police are unlikely to chase, I'm not sure what else there is to deny.

That is, other than the implicit challenge to the idea of an extremely safe gentrified Chicago. Violent crime doesn't only happen in Englewood. There's a pretty wide range of neighborhoods between Garfield Park and Edgebrook.

tptacek4 lata temu

If all they have to say is that CPD refused to get into a car chase, they have nothing at all to say: no major urban PD would.

blix4 lata temu

That's great, but it makes even less sense to accuse someone of lying about their experiences if it is something that should be reasonably expected. What a strange reaction.

wahern4 lata temu

San Francisco also has a policy against car chases. I don't know how recent it is, but it's definitely a thing, now, presumably mostly among liberal coastal cities. (But maybe even broader to some extent?)

I did some Googling and found this 2013 policy order: https://www.sanfranciscopolice.org/sites/default/files/2018-...

TL;DR: Pursuits are only authorized, if at all, in the case of violent felonies or when there's immediate risk to public safety. See section IV.

Moreover, even if a pursuit is authorized, the rules stipulate that they have to break off the chase if there's a risk to public safety. (This is also stated in the above order.) And as compared to years prior and oh-so-many-famous car chases in California, tolerance for the risks in car chases has plummeted. (If we're being cynical, mostly out of concern for the criminal, not the public; or at least concern regarding the ire of criminal rights advocates whenever a chase results in the death or injury of the suspect.) For example,

> Officers responded to a call Sunday evening of a Tenderloin robbery and auto theft, but were forced to end their pursuit when the suspects began driving the stolen vehicle in an erratic and dangerous manner.

https://www.cbsnews.com/sanfrancisco/news/tenderloin-vehicle...

tptacek4 lata temu

You will find similar rules in virtually every major urban police department in the country. Police chases are empirically a terrible idea: they kill innocent people, routinely.

wahern4 lata temu

Sure, a Hollywood-style car chase is incredibly dangerous, and I never understood why they were tolerated as much as they were. (I mean, other than the obvious explanation that our culture of policing taught that effective policing required an indiscriminate and overwhelming show force and authority.) But some municipalities draw different lines such that once a suspect gets into a car, that's often the end of any pursuit, whether the suspect was even aware of being pursued.

People complain about, e.g., "chilling effects" on legitimate free speech rights stemming from policies designed to restrain unprotected speech. Well, all manner of policies can have "chilling effects", sweeping more broadly in practice than they were intended. Such effects are modulated by various norms. In San Francisco a growing chorus of people (across the political and social spectrum) are complaining about cops failing in an unprecedented manner to investigate, detain, arrest, or otherwise enforce laws as dictated by formal policies (i.e. excluding cases where city policy clearly required abstention), and to the extent it's true (some of it is demonstrably true), part of that is because the political culture in SF causes police to be excessively risk-averse regarding modern reform policies. If you follow seemingly inconspicuously, or your pursuit nominally meets policy but things go sideways, that's your job on the line, and cops enjoy much less deference administratively than in other cities--certainly the DA, but even the Mayor and Police Chief in SF are less tolerant of cops who create controversy, whether or not negligent.) The situation in Chicago might be similar to some extent, especially as of the past couple years.

The new equilibrium might still be preferable, or if not there may be ways to reach a better equilibrium without revisiting sins of the past, but this sub-thread began from you saying that you didn't believe a poster who claimed a police officer deliberately abstained from pursuing a suspect getting away by car. You apparently believed such events are so rare as to be fictitious. But they absolutely do occur, with increasing frequency, and in no small degree driven by changes in formal policy. Maybe the poster is being misleading, but on its face nothing about it seems implausible; quite the contrary.

tptacek4 lata temu

I don't know what all of this is intended to communicate, but you can just Google <city> "motor vehicle pursuit policy" and compare Chicago to whatever major city you think handles this better.

arkis224 lata temu

zone4114 lata temu

"For all three crimes the department says it groups together as carjacking arrests, that’s a clearance rate of just 3.1% for incidents that have occurred so far this year."

https://www.nbcchicago.com/investigations/chicago-police-sta...

tptacek4 lata temu

The cars generally get recovered (they're used to commit further crimes, not so much chop-shopped), but the M.O. of a carjacker is to hand the car off quickly to an accomplice who didn't participate in the robbery, and from that person to someone else, which makes arresting the person who committed the actual armed robbery hard. I'm certainly not trying to tell you that Chicago reliably arrests carjackers.

gusgus014 lata temu

You said you didn't believe OP's friend about being carjacked and the police not giving chase in a certain area. The clearance rate of carjackings and that chase rate are quite low. All that need to exist is a non-zero carjacking rate in that rate for what OP said to be true.

I don't know what the loop is, but could probably find Lincoln Park, but in general looks like you could use official data to disprove the claim: https://data.cityofchicago.org/widgets/dfnk-7re6?mobile_redi...

[deleted]4 lata temu

seibelj4 lata temu

I thought he was mostly saying the stores themselves are unsafe for workers and customers, and the perception of Chicago being dangerous makes people not want to work at corporate. Plus the never-ending tax increases and general denigration of private business from the Mayor (although common in many major cities) which pushed out many other corporate headquarters for Miami and Austin.

> “We have violent crime that’s happening in our restaurants … we’re seeing homelessness issues in our restaurants. We’re having drug overdoses that are happening in our restaurants,” he said. “So we see in our restaurants, every single day, what’s happening in society at large.”

> “It’s more difficult today for me to convince a promising McDonald’s executive to relocate to Chicago from one of our other offices than it was just a few years ago,” he said. “It’s more difficult for me to recruit a new employee to McDonald’s, to join us in Chicago than it was in the past.”

> And when it comes to returning to the office, he said, “one of the things that I hear from our employees [is] … ‘I’m not sure it’s safe to come downtown.’”

> Kempczinski pointed to several high-profile corporate departures from the city, including Boeing, Caterpilllar and Citadel, which all recently announced plans to relocate their headquarters. He said that mayors and governors from other cities and states have reached out to McDonald’s to consider doing the same.

tptacek4 lata temu

If misperceptions of Chicago are making it harder for McDonalds to recruit, he's not helping the situation by amplifying them.

Certainly, violent crime is happening in McDonalds restaurants. There are McDonalds all over the place in the south and west sides of Chicago. I'm sure homelessness is a problem in all their restaurants. Note that he brought that up, because it's a tell: Chicago's crime problem has zero to do with homelessness (that might not be the case in other cities, but it isn't here.)

If you don't have an actual solution for the impacts of redlining in Chicago, you don't have a crime solution. Chicago has tried everything short of that. It's broken up the major gangs; we got a nightmare of tiny little idiot gangs. It's flooded the zone in Englewood and Austin; you can suppress crime for a time, but it just squeezes into other neighborhoods.

prepend4 lata temu

But I think his claim is not that it’s misperceptions but accurate perceptions.

lelanthran4 lata temu

> If misperceptions of Chicago are making it harder for McDonalds to recruit,

Are you saying that the crime he refers to is not as bad as he makes it seem?

tptacek4 lata temu

It's worse than he makes it seem in Lawndale, where nobody who works at McDonalds HQ lives, and it's much, much better than he makes it seem in the West Loop, where McDonalds HQ is.

lelanthran4 lata temu

> It's worse than he makes it seem in Lawndale, where nobody who works at McDonalds HQ lives,

What does HQ have to do with his comments that the restaurants are dangerous?

> empczinski said that McDonald's (MCD) restaurants in the city are suffering,

> "We have violent crime that's happening in our restaurants ... we're seeing homelessness issues in our restaurants. We're having drug overdoses that are happening in our restaurants," he said. "So we see in our restaurants, every single day, what's happening in society at large."

Sounds like he's addressing more than HQ in his assertions.

tptacek4 lata temu

His employees don't work in the restaurants. McDonalds is a franchise business.

hollerith4 lata temu

About 5% of McDonald's locations are owned by the company:

https://www.businessinsider.com/mcdonalds-is-raising-wages-b...

I was unable in 5 minutes to find out how many of that 5% is in the Chicago area.

randomsearch4 lata temu

This reads more like a list of America’s social problems than something specific to Chicago. It’s ironic that a big corporation complains about it, reminds me of tech companies criticising SF govt about the consequences of inequality in SF.

rendall4 lata temu

> Where crime in Chicago is a real problem is in the south and west sides of the city, where white people don't live. Those areas are playing out a slow motion mechanistic tragedy set in motion a century ago when they were redlined, sliced in half by the Dan Ryan, evacuated by white people, and disinvested. A map of Chicago violent crime is, roughly, a map of redlining.

Let's grant these are the sole and entire reasons for crime. This historical analysis is entirely and fully correct.

What does it imply, going forward? What is the solution?

tptacek4 lata temu

It strongly implies that being tougher on crime --- and I'm no defunder --- isn't the solution, most especially because that's been repeatedly tried and there's a plausible argument that it made things worse.

ta86454 lata temu

I worry that this is simply cover for people who don't want to pay for policing and incarceration any more. Essentially abandoning the many innocent victims of crime in those troubled areas.

tptacek4 lata temu

Again: I'm no defunder. But we tried intensive policing and incarceration (and: if you catch someone with an illegal firearm, put them in prison!) and it didn't work. CPD broke the major gangs in the 80s and 90s, and now we've got dozens and dozens of tiny new gangs.

AbrahamParangi4 lata temu

I feel like didn't work is a poor argument because you could just counter that it wasn't enough. Presumably at some limit of policing, crime would be largely eliminated (at potentially tremendous cost) but it seems unlikely to me that it wouldn't work.

ultrarunner4 lata temu

It would seem that such a hypothetical level of policing is taking place inside actual prisons, and yet violence and contraband run rampant. If it isn't possible to eliminate crime amongst already incarcerated people, what suggests that an arbitrarily high level of policing would eliminate crime amongst the wider populous? Especially when such levels of policing would almost certainly approach something akin to imprisonment?

bearmode4 lata temu

The US is already MASSIVELY winning the "percentage of your population in prison" contest. Then you look at the recidivism rates and realise why it doesn't work.

Tough on crime -> more people in prison -> criminals are treated like dogs -> significantly more likely to reoffend upon release, and thus we have a cycle.

lodovic4 lata temu

No, at a certain level of policing you end up with a police surveillance state, it wouldn't work.

ta86454 lata temu

It's still a necessary component, even if it's not sufficient. People are way too eager to be soft on crime without offering anything in the way of an actual solution. To me, it sounds like cover for less than altruistic motivations.

nwienert4 lata temu

It’s stronger than that: you can’t say it didn’t work at all. Using the same rigor you can say they didn’t do enough! Unless you have extremely broad meta studies, and you don’t, saying it didn’t work is just personal skew.

tptacek4 lata temu

The intensity of policing in Chicago has varied and hasn't solved the west and south side crime problems. I honestly don't care if Chicago decides to intensify policing. I'm not, like, morally opposed. I just think it's whistling past the graveyard if you can't fix the underlying economic problems. They're getting worse, not better, as all the families with economic mobility in the redlined neighborhoods flee to the south suburbs.

nwienert4 lata temu

I agree it needs more than just police, but I suspect it needs a ton of law and order too.

Fwiw I’ve talked to some very in the know locals, one who owned a ton of liquor stores all around those parts, and the common knowledge is that the police basically don’t have any control and won’t engage on just about anything. It’s essentially run by gangs at this point.

tptacek4 lata temu

I don't know what that's supposed to mean. I got CPD to track down a mugger whole my phone; they were arrested less than 15 minutes after I got mugged. The arrest happened at J&J Fish in Austin. The police clearly had control there.

At the same time, there are drug corners all over the west side; there's a gas station in Humboldt Park on my commute that is occasionally an open-air drug market, with dealers literally out in the street doing traffic control. I'm sure that's shocking and upsetting to very in-the-know west siders who own liquor stores. Will CPD really engage over small groups of people selling heroin on a corner? No, I doubt it: I see the same groups day after day on my drive into the office.

Those parts of the city are not safe to be in. It's not OK that there are parts of the city that are not safe to be in. I'm not making excuses. But that absolutely does not describe the area around the McDonalds HQ, or, for that matter, almost anywhere in Chicago that middle/upper-middle class white people live.

chaps4 lata temu

That sounds like an extremely exceptional success story out of CPD.

I was mugged about ten 8 years ago on a Friday night by three people after they cornered me and threatened to shoot me if I did anything stupid. After they stole my stuff, I went into the nearest Cheesies and called the cops. The group that mugged me told me they'd shoot me if I called them, but meh. They took took a police report, and that was that.

Even though they knew my phone was stolen, they didn't do anything like what they did for you, nor even attempt to. I ended up keeping the phone activated for about 48 hours so I could figure out who had my phone with the hopes that I could my stolen stuff back. The person who stole the phone called a lot of people in that time: their parole officer, an HIV specialist, family. Tried to pass that info onto the police and they wouldn't take it. Parole officer refused to even listen.

So I submitted some FOIAs for the camera footage of the area -- it was right off the red line at Sheffield and Belmont: no footage they said. When I called the investigator who told me that the investigation was suspended and they weren't looking into it anymore (not shocking). But I still persisted on the call to try to get some semblance of traction to get my stuff back and asked why there was no POD footage -- investigator said it moves randomly and didn't catch me getting mugged. Not sure I buy that, but whatever.

To get me off the call, the investigator asked if I had anything to drink the night I was mugged. I said I had a beer about four hours earlier. He used that as a means to say that anything I said about that night was unreliable and then ended the call.

nwienert4 lata temu

Yea they specifically are talking about the bad areas not all of Chicago (working off the "those parts" I mentioned in the first sentence).

bearmode4 lata temu

All stats thus far show that countries generally deemed to be 'soft' on crime have lower crime rates, significantly lower portions of their population in prison, and have significantly reduced recidivism rates.

nwienert4 lata temu

Not true in the least. In Asia the pattern is clear: tough on crime has lower crime (Japan, Singapore, Korea), but of course there's so many confounding things there.

Central and South America and Africa are notorious for having weak policing and high crime.

Meanwhile those famous Nordic and European countries that some like to think prove the softer on crime hypothesis happen to be completely homogenous, low population and high wealth areas. And of those same places that do have bigger cities with less wealth and homogeneity, there's big problems with crime.

Even within the US tougher on crime correlates with less crime once you control for a few things.

LudwigNagasena4 lata temu

I don’t see how it implies that.

DeWilde4 lata temu

Policing is only one part of the equation and I doubt that violent gangs can be broken up without resorting to tough measures. The trick is that this needs to be combined with social policies to disincentivize repeat offenders and to prevent youths from starting at all by having ample economic opportunities.And there are other measures like decriminalizing drugs which can reduce the economic profit of crime.

somenameforme4 lata temu

I think this maybe an example of an increasingly common scenario in life. We like to envision for any given problem that there are good solutions, and that there are bad solutions. And so if one solution is provably bad, then surely an alternative must be better. But in reality, there are often just bad solutions and worse solutions. The point I make with this is that attacking the failings of one solution doesn't really say anything about the alternative.

It's often interesting how much wisdom there is tucked away in simple, old, folky sayings that one only appreciates much later. "Out of the frying pan and into the fire."

pjc504 lata temu

I don't think it's possible for Chicago to deploy more violence against crime, given what they've done recently. https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/feb/24/chicago-poli...

As an outsider, I suspect the lack of meaningful accountability for police allows them to be both excessively violent and not actually any good at preventing crime. It's a notoriously corrupt city: https://news.wttw.com/2022/05/11/three-peat-chicago-ranks-no... . Of course, the McDonald's CEO isn't going to call out this kind of crime, even though it's arguably responsible for allowing the other kind of crime.

I don't think I can offer any solutions other than the long grinding work of local politics. There are solutions available (e.g. Glasgow's long notorious gang problem was addressed by the Violence Reduction Unit, which offers a successful strategy), but probably not the will to use them. Like Russia, you can't win a war if the first priority of too many administrators is stealing from the system.

rendall4 lata temu

I'm on the side of less is more, too. Poverty alleviation is, while not a universally solved problem, is well enough understood that we know what does not work. Harsh, punitive measures such as long prison sentences without corresponding in-prison safety, nor sincere rehabilitation and redemption programs, are guaranteed to maintain cycles of poverty and resentment across generations.

I do think school voucher programs is a promising direction, but like anything that becomes a pawn in the culture war, it becomes difficult to discuss it without FUD.

rufus_foreman4 lata temu

>> Crime in most of Chicagoland is somewhat higher than in recent previous years, and lower than it was when I moved back here in 2005.

The 2005 crime report has homicides at 448. There have been over 500 so far this year with over 3 months left.

-- https://home.chicagopolice.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/20...

JJMcJ4 lata temu

Those are areas that have not only deindustrialized, but have been losing population steadily for the last 60 years or so.

Deindustrialized - the South Side has never really recovered from the Stockyards and the US Steel South Works closing. Even the hospitals are closing or are closed already.

Losing population - The Englewood neighborhood in Chicago, one of the most violent and poorest in the city https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Englewood,_Chicago#Demographic... population peaked at almost 100,000 in 1960, now around 25,000.

Hard to think of a solution except to subsidize economic activity in such neighborhoods.

The Obama Presidential Library may have such an effect for Woodlawn, though it's worth noting that it is sited so that it can be reached by car without actually traveling through Woodlawn.

And yes, for the Dan Ryan.

tptacek4 lata temu

If you live in Englewood and get on your feet financially, you're planning to move to Olympia Fields, not to build a life in Englewood. It's a huge problem. The deck is stacked entirely against these neighborhoods.

JJMcJ4 lata temu

Exactly. It's true even in the White ethnic neighborhoods that still sort of exist mostly SW side. Get some money, move to the burbs.

tptacek4 lata temu

I grew up in Beverly and around Mount Greenwood and those places are doing just fine, for what it's worth.

claytongulick4 lata temu

> evacuated by white people

That seems like a very strange assignment of blame.

npteljes4 lata temu

I don't read it as blame, rather as a report of a thing that happened.

tptacek4 lata temu

How so?

lelanthran4 lata temu

When people run away from violence, it is not normal to blame them for an increase in violence in the area they left.

There is something really wrong with that logic

tptacek4 lata temu

People didn't run away from violence. They ran away from any neighborhood where Black people were allowed to buy houses. Black people were locked into specific neighborhoods, and were generally not allowed to own their homes and instead locked into rapacious "contracts" for their houses. All commercial investment in the neighborhoods vanished. Generations of families grew up without opportunity or economic mobility, and crime came along with that.

intimidated4 lata temu

I could very well be wrong, but I don't think this is quite accurate:

> Black people were locked into specific neighborhoods, and were generally not allowed to own their homes and instead locked into rapacious "contracts" for their houses

Redlining meant certain areas were deemed hazardous to investment. Maybe the "deeming" was accurate; maybe it wasn't. It certainly made loans more difficult for anyone in a redlined area (of any race).

But it didn't mean Black people weren't allowed to own homes. Many millions did and do.

My parents moved to the United States nearly penniless from India. I am very privileged thanks to them; they were not privileged, especially not when they first arrived. All of the arguments about generational wealth are compelling at first exposure, but they ignore the control group: Poor as dirt, strange-smelling, English-deprived immigrants like my parents.

I don't think it's healthy to blame white people for depriving an area of themselves. Proximity to white people isn't a human right.

kasey_junk4 lata temu

The other side of redlining were racial covenants that quite literally made it impossible to buy certain houses by black people.

This was taken to the US Supreme Court.

pcwalton4 lata temu

> Proximity to white people isn't a human right.

This is literally a defense of segregation.

dial9-14 lata temu

lelanthran4 lata temu

> People didn't run away from violence. They ran away from any neighborhood where Black people were allowed to buy houses.

Once again, your logic is somewhat twisted: are you really blaming people that left an area for the violence in that area?

You're effectively saying "White people shouldn't have left because the all-black area becomes crime-ridden", which is obviously nonsense.

When people leave an area, regardless of the reason, you cannot blame the leavers for the area getting more violent.

They're literally not there any more to influence things!

tptacek4 lata temu

Am I not saying this clearly enough? I'm talking about the 1930s-1950s. If a Black family moved onto your all-white block, everyone would move. It had nothing to do with violence. I can and do blame explicitly racist actions for the economic havoc and concomitant violence they created.

karlshea4 lata temu

I'm sort of dumbfounded that your comments are even controversial... this exact same thing played out in dozens of cities in the 30s-50s. In the upper midwest Minneapolis, St Paul, and Milwaukee all had/have exactly the same issues for the same reasons.

U of M has a whole website mapping racial covenants[0] here in the Twin Cities, and the Wikipedia article about redlining[1] is pretty thorough, discussing exactly what you're bringing up.

Do people just not actually believe how racist everything used to be? And how decades of disinvestment leading to violence just might possibly lead to generational issues?

[0] https://mappingprejudice.umn.edu

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Redlining

6figurelenins4 lata temu

> Do people just not actually believe ... how decades of disinvestment leading to violence just might possibly lead to generational issues?

It's a bit fuzzy, yes. It would clarify the argument to replace "generational issues" with a specific concept, and skip the performative hedge.

The bailey seems to be "poverty implies violence." What's the motte?

karlshea4 lata temu

You can skim the Wikipedia article I linked if you're actually interested in the (heavily researched) consequences of redlining, many of which happened up into the 2000s and all of which urbanists are still trying to mitigate today.

My reaction is literally one of confusion, not "performative hedging". The charitable read of most of the comments here is a profound lack of historical knowledge ("these areas were classified as hazardous, and the violence there is why white people left"), and an uncharitable one is thinly veiled racism ("minorities by definition are violent").

tptacek4 lata temu

I'm not making a general "poverty equals violence" argument. I'm saying that you can look at a redlining map and a Chicago crime map and see the pattern plain as day.

questionputter4 lata temu

Given that the areas they moved out of now have problems with crime, maybe it was a rational decision to move out?

Sprocklem4 lata temu

The movement of white people out of neighbourhoods with black people, and the use of redlining to concentrate a marginalized group within those neighbourhoods led to a disinvestment of both private and public capital in those neighbourhoods, creating and later perpetuating the cycle of poverty that leads people to turn to crime to survive. It does make sense for people with the means to leave a neighbourhood (from a personal safety standpoint) when it starts to have an increased crime problem but that is not what is being described here. Instead, the people left due to the racism that was prevalent in the mid-20th century, well before the rise in crime that resulted from their leaving.

rufus_foreman4 lata temu

85% of the people in the redlined neighborhoods were white. That was around of half of all urban households. Why didn't redlining lead to the same cycle of poverty and violence for white people?

tptacek4 lata temu

Because they moved to neighborhoods where they were allowed to get fucking home loans and open businesses.

lelanthran4 lata temu

> Am I not saying this clearly enough? I'm talking about the 1930s-1950s. If a Black family moved onto your all-white block, everyone would move.

That still does not make the people who chose to leave responsible for violence that developed only after they have left!

Are you happy being held responsible for the development (or lack thereof) of the place you last lived in?

refurb4 lata temu

The "white flight" mostly happened with the riots in the 60's. At least in the mid-West.

I think it's fair to say that race caused the riots, but to say that racism caused people to move is just silly. I don't care if black or white people are setting fire in my neighborhood, if I can move somewhere safer, I will.

kasey_junk4 lata temu

That’s not the timeline in Chicago. Racial covenants were deemed unconstitutional in the early 40s. White flight occurred in the 50s. By the time of the riots the neighborhoods that suffered from riots (and landlords burning their property for insurance fraud) were already majority black.

tptacek4 lata temu

Late 40s. :)

wglb4 lata temu

Not true. Flight happened substantially before the 60s.

MichaelCollins4 lata temu

I think the problem is that when white people leave a neighborhood, they bring with them their political influence to allocate city funds to that neighborhood. Funds for things like... adequate policing. Huh.

lelanthran4 lata temu

> I think the problem is that when white people leave a neighborhood, they bring with them their political influence to allocate city funds to that neighborhood. Funds for things like... adequate policing. Huh.

I don't think that makes sense in context of GPs argument, as GP also argues that "more policing" did not help alleviate the violence problem.

The assertions "police were defunded, therefor the area got more violent" and "policing was escalated, and still the area got more violent" cannot both be true at the same time.

MichaelCollins4 lata temu

Refusing to fund more policing in response to rising crime is effectively the same as pulling out funding. Either way it's "not his problem", he's quite adamant that crime in Chicago doesn't effect his own family, and he opposes more funding to police in neighborhoods his family wouldn't be so safe in.

npteljes4 lata temu

>The city can make no excuses for this.

I agree with this. People are and will be the the way they are, we can't exactly fix that as a whole. What we can make better for sure, is the system. And so, systemic issues should be fixed on the system's level.

Zolt4 lata temu

My wife and I have visited Chicago from Ohio about five times over the last ten or fifteen years. We’ve brought in the new year on the Navy Pier a few of those years. We really enjoyed our visits.

We’ve heard enough about the crime in Chicago over the last few years that we’ve agreed to stay away for a while.

I'm not sure why I feel the need to mention this, but without doing a deep dive on the statistics, we hit the tipping point to not return.

tptacek4 lata temu

Probably the city just got boring to you. It's great for a couple visits, but after that you gotta decide to live here, or go see other places. I like Montreal, have you tried there?

arkis224 lata temu

Dan Ryan Jr. died in 1961. It should be terrifying that the government can't thrive past that date based on geography.

kasey_junk4 lata temu

Interesting you mention Dan Ryan as the highway that bears his name was placed where it is specifically to act as a racial barrier and to break up a burgeoning black political power base.

At the same time mega public housing projects were built for the same purpose going against the best practices then and now.

It’s not surprising that 2 of the biggest infrastructure projects in Chicago history that were used with the express purpose of isolating and disempowering specific neighborhoods should have the effect of doing just that.

lelanthran4 lata temu

> A map of Chicago violent crime is, roughly, a map of redlining.

Maybe you should define what redlining means.

tptacek4 lata temu

For decades, Black families were explicitly forbidden to live in much of Chicago by means of covenants on real estate parcels; those families were concentrated in specific neighborhoods. At the same time, the Home Owners Loan Corporation drew maps grading areas from "desirable" to "hazardous" --- the "hazardous" neighborhoods were demarcated with a red line, hence the name. Lenders refused financial services to any family in the redlined neighborhood.

rufus_foreman4 lata temu

>> the Home Owners Loan Corporation drew maps grading areas from "desirable" to "hazardous" --- the "hazardous" neighborhoods were demarcated with a red line, hence the name. Lenders refused financial services to any family in the redlined neighborhood.

The HOLC did not use the redlined maps to deny loans. For one thing, they couldn't have, the HOLC was a temporary program intended to deal with the Great Depression and the maps weren't completed until the HOLC had made 90% of the loans it ever made. And second, it did make loans in the redlined areas, and it made a higher percentage of loans to black borrowers than other lenders.

The HOLC did share the maps with the explicitly racist FHA, but the FHA didn't use the maps to deny loans. It couldn't have, the FHA insured loans, it didn't make them. It also focused on financing new construction, the redlined areas were already built up. And when it did refuse to finance black borrowers, it appears to have used block by block census data, not the HOLC maps. Outside of the FHA, it doesn't appear that the HOLC shared their maps with private lenders.

If you're using the HOLC maps to measure the effect of something, you're measuring something other than the effect of lending decisions. If the HOLC map of Chicago is a map of Chicago violent crime that is correlation rather than causation. There must be other factors that explain the correlation.

tptacek4 lata temu

Are you seriously attempting a first-principles argument that redlining didn't actually happen (or, "it happened, but it was just some lines on a map that didn't mean anything")? Because that's the only way I can find to read this comment.

rufus_foreman4 lata temu

Depends on what you mean by redlining.

Did the HOLC draw maps with red lines on them around neighborhoods where they thought mortgage loans were going to go bad? Yes.

Were those maps used to deny loans in the areas with red lines around them? Certainly not by the HOLC, and almost certainly not by the FHA or private lenders.

Was there racial discrimination by the HOLC? Maybe. Less than with other mortgage lenders of the day.

Was there racial discrimination by the FHA? Yes. Mostly block by block based on census data and New Deal projects that collected data. They did make their own maps, but that's hard to research since those maps were mostly destroyed in the 1960's. The ones that survive don't match the HOLC maps. There's some overlap.

Were there racial covenants? Until 1948, yes, that's not redlining though.

Do the maps made by the HOLC in the 1930's explain violent crime in Chicago in the 2020's? No. Not at all.

tptacek4 lata temu

"Was there racial discrimination by the HOLC? Maybe."

Yeah. Ok. They literally cited the presence of racial covenants in neighborhoods as a reason to rate them more highly. There are HOLC maps that reference neighborhoods as "threatened by negro encroachment".

How do you expect anyone to take you seriously with this stuff?

rufus_foreman4 lata temu

Cite your sources, what neighborhoods and did or did not the HOLC make loans in those neighborhoods?

tptacek4 lata temu

Nah, I don't think I'm going to continue trying to re-establish whether redlining was racist or not with someone who just said they're not sure the Home Owners' Loan Corp was itself racist. I've, you know, been on message boards before; I know how this conversation ends: with some weird appeal to phrenology, most likely.

You can of course content yourself with your victory on this thread. It'll be valuable currency in your effort to convince the world that redlining was overblown, and likely of little long term impact on American cities.

ajl6664 lata temu

buggeryorkshire4 lata temu

Never knew that, thank you - it's horrifying.

Mind you here in the UK it wasn't much different in the 70s where I remember signs outside houses for rent stating "no blacks, dogs or Irishmen"

ALittleLight4 lata temu

So - your theory is that a loan practice which has been illegal since the late 1960's is responsible for the current high and growing crime in Chicago? What's the mechanism for that?

tptacek4 lata temu

Do I think 50 years of overt, de jure housing segregation that locked Black families into neighborhoods where they were explicitly not allowed to get home loans had any long term impact on the communities of people that lived there? A little, yeah, yeah I guess I do. I don't think "the late 60s" is the mic drop you think it is; some of us were alive in the late 1960s.

ajl6664 lata temu

Explain why so much of the rest of the world passed redlined communities.

Korea, Israel, Czech, Hungary, Poland, etc etc. The data strongly contradicts your implied thesis.

But you think people born in what is one of the wealthiest cities in the world shouldn't be compared to urban Indians or people (like my dad) born in a mud hut.

ALittleLight4 lata temu

So what do you think the mechanism is?

ajl6664 lata temu

Correlation is not causation. And I wouldn't ask you to explain why equally poor zips don't have the same murder rate, since it's obvious you've never considered controlling the data that way.

[deleted]4 lata temu

y0ssar1an4 lata temu

Fun fact: The number of gang members in Chicago (>117,000)[1] exceeds our peak troop deployment to Afghanistan (110,000)[2]

1. https://www.nbcchicago.com/news/local/chicagos-top-cop-break...

2. https://www.history.com/topics/21st-century/afghanistan-war

_8j504 lata temu

They call it Chiraq for a reason.

This is the product of adressing housing wrong and modern segregation. They have a lot of well funded cops, that and prosecutors are responsible, the buck stops there.

MichaelCollins4 lata temu

Gang members is not really gang soldiers though, right? With a number that big, I think they must be counting a lot of people who wear a gang's merch/colors/etc, but aren't active combatants. At least I hope so.

SlickNixon4 lata temu

A fun fact in addition to the above fun fact is that most of the soldiers in Afghanistan were also not active combatants.

justnotworthit4 lata temu

All soldiers go through basic training. Can we confirm that these gangsters were at least hazed?

_8j504 lata temu

If their organization was legal like NRA which is millions of people that would be something else. A gang is a criminal org so while many carry weapons their main goal is to expand the empire and make money.

MichaelCollins4 lata temu

Isn't there an element of something similar to sports-team affiliation? Where people superficially align themselves to a gang their friends or family or neighborhood is associated with, but don't actually commit crimes in service to that gang? Like a guy who wears a Cubs hat, but he doesn't play the game.

_8j504 lata temu

Maybe but gang initations are usually brutal and hardly ever legal.

pydry4 lata temu

On the low end it's more about protection. In that sense gang violence begets gang membership.

They inevitably crop up everywhere where police represent more of a threat than protection. Kind of like the free market springing up to meet demand, in a kind of sick and twisted way.

juanani4 lata temu

IIRC, you are correct. gang-bangers are usually the dangerous kind, always strapped and making sure no other gang is crossing/doing business on their blocks. Throwing signs and intimidating is their main duty. Usually come up to you and ask 'Watchu is?' if you have the hoodlum look, ready to war.

Gangmembers are older(and less dangerous by themselves) and some have gone through 'banging', others have joined through other means. They used to have the kids do the banging since laws are more lax on minors, and the kids are usually the hot heads who need to prove themselves. Members count the money and are in charge of administration, when organized proper. Im sure there is more to the heirarchy but usually a member wont come at you by themselves. they send the foot soldiers if they have beef with someone. Members are fairly weak, drugged up, care about the money. They come at you with numbers. Bangers are extremely dangerous by themselves.

perardi4 lata temu

I feel like it’s relevant to link to some stats here.

https://home.chicagopolice.org/wp-content/uploads/CompStat-P...

And, for more easily visually parseable statistics on homicides, let’s link to…

https://heyjackass.com

…though the commentary there is, let’s just say, less than neutral.

I grew up and went to school in downstate Illinois. Having lived in Chicago for 7 years, and having lived in large cities now for 10 years, I do feel there’s been a shift in perception both in the city and outside. I definitely get nastier vibes from family, and the city does “feel” a bit less safe living here now. (Bit spooky seeing someone drive by at 2am and saw a catalytic convertor right off a car on the street…)

I wish I really knew what this vibe shift (ugh, sorry) meant for the future of the city. I love it here—wouldn’t live anywhere else in the USA. The architecture, the transit, the arts and entertainment, the beautiful lake front…there’s just so much going for it. But perception becomes reality when it comes to things like this. If Chicago becomes truly notorious for crime, there is less investment, and thus less development, and everything comes tumbling down.

(And seriously, I would not move. I live in Uptown, which is, oh, not the safest of neighborhoods. I’ve seen some gnarly crimes and scenes here, but the benefits just so outweigh the potential costs in crime. I am quite willing to gamble a bit of safety so as to not succumb to suburban ennui.)

aaaaaaaaata4 lata temu

> the benefits just so outweigh the potential costs

The reader is left to assume these are emotional benefits, is that accurate?

mdrzn4 lata temu

>> https://heyjackass.com

HOLY SHIT those stats! Great website to put it in perspective.

xnx4 lata temu

I believe he is sincere, but he also definitely wants to eliminate headlines like "9 shot, 2 fatally, in 'outrageous act of violence' outside Chicago McDonald's" (https://abcnews.go.com/US/shot-fatally-outrageous-act-violen...) and "6-year-old boy sexually abused in River North McDonald's bathroom, police say" (https://abc7chicago.com/chicago-crime-boy-sexually-abused-in...).

arkis224 lata temu

clearly only a shallow capitalist would want to eliminate those acts from happening.

simonsarris4 lata temu

I find it incredible how many people's responses in crime topics (like this one or SF) immediately turn to blame-shifting, blaming the messenger, claiming the messenger must have some ulterior motive, trying to redirect conversation to other crimes like wage theft, etc.

2,606 people (that we know of) were shot so far in Chicago this year. That's over 10 per day. That's insane. And it's even crazier that it's so hard for anyone to discuss it without the carnival of canards that get bandied about every time. It seems like some people are practically trained to divert away from the actual subject.

pjc504 lata temu

Northern Ireland's troops-on-the-streets civil war that lasted for 30+ years only managed to kill about three thousand people.

Do we need to send international peacekeepers to Chicago? Send in some blue helmets?

> It seems like some people are practically trained to divert away from the actual subject.

That is a succinct description of American politics and "news" media.

swearwolf4 lata temu

There’s a word for what you’re describing: gaslighting.

therealchiggs4 lata temu

Citadel are moving their HQ from Chicago to Miami, explicitly stating violent crime as one of the reasons[1].

One thing that’s affecting peoples perception of safety is an increase in violent crime in previously safe neighbourhoods such as River North. Folks who felt safe because they could avoid the more violent areas of town are reading about (and witnessing) shootings and car-jackings occurring near where they work and go out to eat at restaurants. That changes calculations away from feeling some semblance of control over the situation towards feeling like violence might randomly happen to me or my family, which increases fear disproportionately compared to the raw statistics.

[1] https://www.nbcchicago.com/news/local/billionaire-hedge-fund...

tb_technical4 lata temu

The more than half of all homicide by gun in America is committed by five cities. Chicago holds the record for number one.

Clearly there is a problem, but how the hell do we fix it?! Stop and frisk? All the authoritarian shit New York did in the 70s and 80s? That's not politically feasible AND it's unconditional.

seer-zig4 lata temu

It's definitely a challenge. A good start is to instill a sense of accountability in people, that there is a Day of Judgement where they will face God for their actions. Improve infrastructure and education. Crack down hard on crimes.

shishy4 lata temu

If the bullets don't kill you, McDonald's will ;)

In all seriousness I think unlike other local (ex) CEOs, he's committed to staying and seems to be trying to talk about it productively. The others seemed to hide behind crime rates to cover up their hiring issues and ran away.

Still, part of the problem is that they're going to have trouble recruiting because of the perception of crime / safety based on how its reported and he never seems to acknowledge it in any statistically meaningful way; I don't think the areas the HQ is in for example are as bad as some of the other neighborhoods further south or west.

Bit of a shame because it sort of reinforces the bad perception others have, when he could be combating it and trying to address the issues simultaneously.

Balgair4 lata temu

It's the YouTube algorithm.

Or so says Channel5 youtube channel with an interesting take on one of the drivers of the increased murder rates[0]

TLDW: Drill rap is a very aggressive style from the projects, the same ones Michelle Obama grew up in. A few of it's rappers got really famous and rich because a bunch people seemed to really like it and the atmosphere behind it. This atmosphere is known as Chiraq (pronounced 'Chai-rack', for CHIcago and iRAQ, and the dangerous nature of area). There are many people documenting the Chiraq scene. As many of the Drill rappers produced music to YouTube, the algorithm caught hold. Viewers seemed to watch the more aggressive videos, commentary, and dis-tracks. Rappers saw this and produced even more aggressive and violent content. Quickly, content about murder and the like became top hits. Rappers found that hyper-violence got big views and therefore money and fame. YouTube, in a small way, incentivized the murder rate to rise, or so is alluded to in Channel5's video.

After that they go to a White Sox game and talk about flat-earth and condoms.

[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RPnQbKgotOw

pjc504 lata temu

Linking a specific type of music to a specific type of crime is quite a common prejudice; that's how we got the UK criminalizing "repetitive beats" in an attempt to outlaw raves, Cuba banning reggaeton, etc. I'm don't think there's any actual evidence for this and in any case music is free speech.

Balgair4 lata temu

This comment just seems so at odds to the linked video and the interviews Channel5 did in it.

google2341234 lata temu

> McDonald’s on Wednesday announced plans to open a new innovation facility at its Chicago headquarters, relocating employees from its current innovation center in Romeoville, Illinois.

This seems like the wrong action to take if they actually want to put any pressure on the government to address this.

Kon-Peki4 lata temu

They’re kind of stuck where they are. The old McDonalds corporate HQ campus has already been sold off and redeveloped. Oak Brook wasted no time, and are probably really glad they did - it’s a mixed use thing with plenty of housing.

ironick094 lata temu

I was just there about a month ago, definitely did not look redeveloped

Kon-Peki4 lata temu

No? I drive past frequently and see a lot of change. Am I looking at the wrong parcel?

samoit4 lata temu

That's what you get when you under finance public schools,public healthcare, etc. They wanted people to be just clever enough to consume but without complaining about real problems. So now people are "a lot" less educated, so they live with a low/bad/wrong idea about the world, economics and society. For years rich people thought that every man for himself was the better aproach but don't having into account that they also live into society. Thatś what you get, a place where you need private police, a place where you are scare to go anywhere.

sure_about_that4 lata temu

As someone who lives in Chicago, it’s odd how obsessed other people are with my city and it’s crime, politics, etc. Don’t see the same interest in other cities.

spicyusername4 lata temu

America only has a few real metropolises. Anecdotally I've seen the same obsession with the others as well (New York, LA, etc).

It's not entirely unexpected that our largest cities get the most attention.

sure_about_that4 lata temu

Dallas and Houston are almost as big (with worse crime rates) and barely make the news. They are also in a Republican state, so Fox News, talk radio, and the like don’t focus on their issues. It’s political. They don’t actually care about crime in these places.

See also: All the talk about Detroit, a very small city.

MichaelCollins4 lata temu

You're looking at the here and now, but to understand the prominence of cities in the American zeitgeist, you need to understand the history of those cities too.

A hundred years ago Dallas was a small city of less than 200k people, not particularly relevant to anybody outside Texas, but Chicago had a population of 2.7 million and was the economic powerhouse of the entire midwest. And Detroit seems like a generally irrelevant city by the numbers today, but 100 years ago Detroit was America's 4th largest city and in the subsequent decades rapidly became an industrial powerhouse with the rise of the automotive/war industry. Detroit seemed like the future of America, it became very prominent in the American zeitgeist at this time. When people express dismay with Detroit, they're not merely responding to the present conditions of Detroit but also Detroit's failure to make good on the expectations people used to have for the future of Detroit.

If it makes you feel any better, I think 100 years from now people will probably talk about Dallas like they talk about Detroit today.

TheChaplain4 lata temu

First time I see it. Mostly I read about Detroit that seem to have huge problems of smash and grabs on cars as well as stolen catalytic converters.

sure_about_that4 lata temu

Same things happening in Republican-led cities, but doesn’t get the national headlines for some reason.

Miami, FL: https://www.local10.com/news/florida/2022/09/14/watch-allege...

Oklahoma City, OK: https://okcfox.com/amp/news/local/oklahoma-city-police-seek-...

karlshea4 lata temu

Everyone in outstate Minnesota has the same obsession with Minneapolis/St Paul.

pjmlp4 lata temu

So it is already time to engange Eliot Ness' successor?

2devnull4 lata temu

Nobody in this thread is making any international comparisons. Being tough on crime has worked to a measurable extent in other nations, what about Chicago makes those policies that work elsewhere around the world, suddenly stop working when deployed in Chicago? Can Chicago be more like Singapore? Why not?

res0nat0r4 lata temu

I take with a grain of salt mega-corps complaining about "crime", when usually it's just used to deflect from other plans that they already have in place that just aren't as appealing to the public.

https://qz.com/2077384/why-is-walgreens-really-closing-its-s...

twelfthnight4 lata temu

Honestly, I have a really hard time reading this situation. Admittedly crime has risen in Chicago (I live here) and folks talk about it a lot. Partly because it's warranted, partly because it's amplified in order to get Pritzker out of the governorship. In any case, McDonalds moved their headquarters downtown to appeal to folks who wanted to work in the hipper downtown than the Chicago suburbs. But then the pandemic hit and now they are paying for an expensive office that isn't as appealing as it was before. So are these CEOs looking for excuses to leave the city (and blame Democrats who will tax them more)? Are there actually concerns inside the company that folks don't want to work downtown Chicago (I could honestly see that as possible as well). shrug

claytongulick4 lata temu

maybelsyrup4 lata temu

Glass houses etc etc

https://www.cnn.com/2019/11/25/business/mcdonalds-wage-theft...

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2022-08-12/claim-lodged-against-...

https://www.businessinsider.com/mcdonalds-wage-theft-lawsuit...

Noumenon724 lata temu

I think almost everyone would trade away their 10-minute breaks for an assurance of never getting robbed or shot, so it's more like a house with a few glass windows. Also, the law and punishment around wage theft seems to be pretty stable, as seen in all these convictions. If wage theft started increasing like violent crime, we might start paying more attention to it.

drekk4 lata temu

I would also trade my left arm to stop school shootings, but funny enough life doesn't work that way

McDonalds and other companies do wage theft because it's profitable. Having to pay out a couple of times whenever someone raises a fuss is already paid for by all the times someone didn't notice. Unlike violent crime it affects nearly all of us directly and represents a larger monetary value than all burgarlies and larcenies put together.

"The convoluted wording of legalisms grew up around the necessity to hide from ourselves the violence we intend toward each other. Between depriving a man of one hour from his life and depriving him of his life there exists only a difference of degree. You have done violence to him, consumed his energy. Elaborate euphemisms may conceal your intent to kill, but behind any use of power over another the ultimate assumption remains: "I feed on your energy."" - Frank Herbert, Dune Messiah

[deleted]4 lata temu

drekipus4 lata temu

I don't think it's macdonald's employees that are putting lives in danger (aside from the food)

black_134 lata temu

carabiner4 lata temu

(2)

rickdeckard4 lata temu

jacobriis4 lata temu

It is highly problematic for a corporation that is ostensibly commited to social justice to weaponize disinformation like this. Almost all grassroots wealth redistribution actions end without violence. Physical harm is usually caused by those "fighting back" against giving up even a modicum of the fruits of their unearned privilege.

notinfuriated4 lata temu

Is this satire?

none_to_remain4 lata temu

Yes

shishy4 lata temu

their food is an injustice to society

anyway, I don't think they're "weaponizing disinformation" this seems like hyperbole (but I'm not sure if this is satire either)

[deleted]4 lata temu

snickerbockers4 lata temu

McDonald's is ostensibly committed to social justice?

[deleted]4 lata temu

alphabet90004 lata temu

mcdonald's hamburgers are the worst. they are worse than burger king. a big mac has 26 grams of fat, a quarter pounder has 28 grams of fat.

thelittleone4 lata temu

Fat isn't necessarily bad. It depends on the type of fat and the individuals caloric macro nutrient profile. The notion that fat is outright bad was conjured up decades ago and has since been shown to be false.

Some fats are healthy. However, I would not be surprised if the fats found in McDonald's are predominantly unhealthy.

Dalewyn4 lata temu

To add to this, everytime I eat at Burger King I'm amazed at how god damn /salty/ it is compared to McDonald's. The saltiness isn't immediately obvious, but any day I have a a BK burger for lunch I end up drinking several huge cups of water throughout the day because of all the salt.

Over consumption of salt is far more harmful to one's health than over consumption of fat in general, as far as I'm concerned.

thelittleone4 lata temu

Perhaps higher salt masks a lack of flavour and the resulting thirst leads to increased sales of high margin drinks.

claytongulick4 lata temu

Salt is just below sugar on the list of nuclear bombs you can detonate in your body.

thelittleone4 lata temu

Too much salt is indeed bad. But too little is also. Especially in hot climates.

semiquaver4 lata temu

Wow, a no context Wesley Willis quote is the last thing I expected to read in this comments section.

Rock over London, Rock on Chicago!

addajones4 lata temu

Wheaties, breakfast of champions!

lamp9874 lata temu

stop caring about fat, the problem is sugar

[deleted]4 lata temu

almost_usual4 lata temu

Rock on Chicago

latchkey4 lata temu

They've been feeding people crap food for decades. It is easy to google research into how diet is interlinked with things like crime [1]. Shutting down these places is likely a net positive.

[1] https://www.ojp.gov/ncjrs/virtual-library/abstracts/diet-cri...

serf4 lata temu

i'm not one to defend mega-corporations, but pretending a company that originated from belting out hamburgers as fast as possible is supposed to be doing social-positive humanitarian work is ridiculous.

also, just to entertain this notion, fast food is interlinked with poverty and substandard living conditions, too -- most folks tend to think that rather than being the cause of these conditions that fast food is simply the available option.

It's a special kind of privileged to be able to yell "Shut these places down that serve unhealthy food." without first securing healthy food for those in need.

Let's first think about what happens when the only food source available to certain groups gets regulated out of existence.

I'm not saying that they don't hold a level of responsibility -- what I AM saying is that no food is worse than bad food.

hackerlight4 lata temu

The GP is right about the problem, but wrong about the solution.

Part of the reason healthy foods are more expensive is indirectly due to the junk foods industry, which has caused our supply chains to be tightly optimized around provision of unhealthy foods.

It also likely causes crime. Metabolic syndrome -> psychiatric conditions && debt to pay for insulin && lost productivity --> crime.

What the GP is wrong about is the solution. We're trapped in a bad local optima here. Just immediately shutting down fast food isn't an exhaustive solution, because you suck jobs out of the local areas and it takes time for the supply chains to reoptimize around healthy food. Some kind of gradual systemic change over multiple decades is needed.

latchkey4 lata temu

> Just immediately shutting down fast food isn't an exhaustive solution, because you suck jobs out of the local areas and it takes time for the supply chains to reoptimize around healthy food.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jamie%27s_School_Dinners

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jamie_Oliver%27s_Food_Revoluti...

blowski4 lata temu

These two positions seem a bit extreme.

1. Shut down McDonalds! 2. But then poor people will starve to death!

I imagine there’s a solution somewhere in the middle. Perhaps McDonalds is taxed higher, banned from advertising. Subsidies are pushed for healthier lifestyles in those neighbourhoods.

drekk4 lata temu

Or, and I'm just entirely spitballing here, we cut out all the middlemen and provide food at dispensaries for people at no cost? The US produces enough food to feed 10 billion people. Most of it is animal feed or gets landfilled.

1 in 5 children are food insecure on the wealthiest nation in the history of this planet. It's an absolute disgrace and the children getting permanent learning disabilities due to malnutrition don't have decades for the free market to humanely allocate resources (something it's entirely incapable of doing unforced).

McDonalds has employees qualifying for food stamps. On top of that we give them tax incentives for "creating jobs" as they spend all their R&D trying to maximize their food's "craveability" (addictiveness). More to the point we've made it illegal for food companies to not optimize for that because they've have a fiduciary responsibility to the shareholders.

It's not a money problem. Heck, we could solve global poverty with <5% of "first world" GDP. It's an incentives problem. There's no incentive to feed Americans healthy food. There's not even an incentive to feed Americans. Which is why you get headlines like: https://apnews.com/article/portland-storms-oregon-4eebd2cd2f...

latchkey4 lata temu

> It's a special kind of privileged to be able to yell "Shut these places down that serve unhealthy food." without first securing healthy food for those in need.

Special kind of privileged? I moved from the Bay Area to Vietnam. I've lived and traveled all around SE Asia for many years. I've seen the poorest of the poor, in the most remote places possible. I've eaten the same food. One thing they have going for them is that food is inexpensive and food is available. It is also not fast food.

It is possible to feed people food that isn't crap McDonalds. The concept that it is the only thing available, is completely manufactured. The fact that people give up production of good food, for this crap, because it is cheap and easy, is a big part of the problem.

kortilla4 lata temu

There are McDonald's in rich places too.

barrysteve4 lata temu

Regulate the cheapest food. Violent crime and food quality rules can be grasped by the gov.

peyton4 lata temu

Haven’t we clamped down on the little people enough?

hackerlight4 lata temu

Is stopping Purdue Pharma from selling life-destroying opiates "clamping down on little people"? I'd say no.

Is alcohol and marijuana prohibition "clamping down on little people"? I'd say yes.

Clearly there are shades of grey here that need to be worked out and there's no substitute for a first principles analysis of each case on its own merits.

If you are worried about the unintended consequences of prohibition, then there are many other avenues without that downside, such as taxing fast food and using that revenue to subsidize healthy food, or mandatory packaging labels, or public health education efforts.

barrysteve4 lata temu

I would hope removing food that is causing violent crime, is a net positive enough that the little people would prefer it.

Of course there is no incentive to hurt the poor, the debate is over what is the correct way of helping them.

Saving a few bucks on a big mac meal, in exchange for their health and crime, may not be the best way forward.

From a non-us perspective it's a bit odd that a CEO has to point out that violent crime is happening too much, that it's bad and that something should be done about it. That's the gov's job?

odessacubbage4 lata temu

when you are very poor, meals are uncertain and every dollar counts, saving a few bucks on a big mac is actually a pretty big deal. not to mention mcdonalds are open much later than homeless shelters or soup kitchens, safer too. being able to get warm and be fed for low cost is something easy to take for granted but when you have nothing it really means a lot.