Max Lewis Death – Obituary | Max Solomon Lewis Has Died

This from my brilliant friend, Susan Carol Stokes: Yesterday, Max Solomon Lewis, a rising third-year student at the University of Chicago, died after being struck days earlier by a stray bullet as he sat a Chicago Transit Authority train station in the Bronzeville neighborhood, just west of Hyde Park. My own teenage sons were making their way home from a baseball game that afternoon, on public transit, and didn’t know what to make of the dozen police cars and ambulances at the CTA stop. It’s getting easier to get hit by stray bullets in Chicago. More than 1,600 people have been shot in the city so far in 2021. For reasons no one seems to understand, the number of bullets sprayed per gun attack has increased. Speculation is that the guns are different. In South Side neighborhoods like Englewood, residents have gotten used to rushing indoors or hitting the pavement when they hear gunfire. The response of our police and political leadership has been inadequate, to put it mildly. Superintendent of Police David Brown, recently recruited from LA, has the imaginative idea of putting more cops on the streets in tough areas. It hasn’t worked. Our mayor, Lori Lightfoot, is too much of a former prosecutor. She’s been a terrible disappointment and deserves to be a one-term mayor. Research tells us that what does work are grassroots organizations that build personal relationships with kids at risk. These organizations had to cut back their face-to-face activities during the pandemic and we are feeling the consequences. You might want to push some cash their way as they usually operate on a shoestring This isn’t just a Chicago problem. If you live in another city plagued by gun violence, think about volunteering or donating to a local organization.