Alan Mills’s Reviews > Us versus Them: Race, Crime, and Gentrification in Chicago Neighborhoods > Status Update

The author fails to consider history, and specifically the 40 year history of organizing against racism and gentrification in Uptown (and more recently in Rogers Park). Similarly, his predictions of the future are doomed by the failure to examine the past. In 2024, Uptown & Rogers Park are represented by progressive African American Alderpersons, and Uptown’s State Rep and Edgewater’s Alderperson are both Asian!

Issue is whether positive loitering is racist. Jan looks at the racial makeup of the loiterers to suggest that at least one group is not. It the issue isn’t who is loitering; it is who is being targeted. No mention of the fact that EVERY person targeted by the group was Black!

Jan continually discusses the “public safety” group as focused on drug dealing—which they equate with “gang loitering.” Allegedly, dispersing these loiterers would drive the drug dealing out of the neighborhood. BUT, Jan (and the activists) focus only on the dealers and fail to ask who the customers are? They are often those very homeowners in Uptown.

He hires Ald Cappleman as stating he is in FAVOR of affordable housing, but it has to be done in a way that doesn’t make people afraid. But making people afraid is not a crime, and doesn’t suggest that residents of affordable housing are doing anything wrong.

I’m the end, looked at objectively, far from fighting crime, the safety advocates were committing crimes!

This lead him to the odd position that he would not examine whether the crime fighters were actually reducing crime. So, for example, he dispassionately reports a CAPS meeting where residents were urged to call 911 about any “suspicious” activity. But being “suspicious is NOTa crime. Calling 911 when there is no evidence that anyone is breaking the law is a CRIME.

This is a disturbing book. The concept is great: how are gentrification and crime linked, focused on those residents proclaiming that they are improving public safety versus those residents who claim they are working for social justice. However, the author self-proclaims that his study was undertaken through a narrowly focused sociological lens.