The program pushes $250 million in funds to the state’s hardest hit communities. Designed to interrupt and prevent gun violence, it’s a three-year investment that started at the end of 2021.
Anthony Williams
It’s been a violent start to 2021 in Chicago, which has recorded 131 homicides in the first three months of the year. Now, a measure sitting on Gov. J.B. Pritzker’s desk declares violence a public health crisis and takes aim at racial inequities in the state’s health care system.
One of Chicago’s bloodiest holiday weekends in memory ended with 17 people fatally shot, including a 7-year-old girl and a 14-year-old boy, and 70 more wounded, despite a concerted effort to quell the violence with an additional 1,200 police officers on the streets.
State Rep. La Shawn Ford and the Rev. Anthony Williams offer their answers to Chicago’s epidemic of violence.
