Last weekend, seven young children, four of them just 10 years old, were charged in the viral attack on a mother and her 9-year-old son on the Far South Side, an assault that drew national outrage and calls for adult-level accountability.
Watching this video, my heart broke — for both the victims and the accused children. While the alleged actions of the children are inexcusable, we must remember that they are not finished beings. With the right support and compassion, they have the capacity to change. I say this not to excuse wrongdoing but to argue that even in moments of failure, children deserve the chance to become better.
Too often, our society is quick to give up on children at their lowest points. I know because it almost happened to me.
In school, I was constantly defined by my worst behavior. Many adults told me I would be, “dead or locked up.” I internalized these predictions and acted out, believing change was impossible.
However, what made me want to change were the adults who saw me beyond my behavior; the ones who showed me love, even when I showed myself to be unlovable based on my actions. Because of my newspaper teacher and principal, I graduated from high school; because a recruiter took a chance on me, I graduated from college and later earned a Ph.D. I’m now a husband, father and small-business owner.
Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. reminds us “only light” can “put out darkness.” As adults, we can be the light for these children by reminding them of their inner greatness. We can rally around them by providing patient mentorship. We can support them by connecting them with books that teach them how to regulate their emotions, like “My Tiny Temper” by Christopher Fequiere and “B is for Breathe” by Melissa Munro Boyd.
While prosecutors charged these children with misdemeanor battery, they were also referred for counseling services. I believe this is the right thing to do, because it offers these children an opportunity to reflect on their actions and be supported in their development.
Ultimately, we must not give up on Black children in Chicago — or anywhere else. Instead of condemning them to a lifetime defined by a single act, let’s invest in restorative justice, mentorship programs and community support.
Nosakhere A. Griffin-EL, co-founder and CEO, The Young Dreamers’ Bookstore, and Public Voices fellow, The OpEd Project in partnership with the National Black Child Development Institute, Pittsburgh
Food delivery robots create safety hazard on sidewalks
As a college freshman studying out of state, I was looking forward to coming back home to Chicago for winter break. For my family, like many others, it is a tradition to walk around and see the neighborhood’s winter decorations. But when I returned home recently, I was disturbed to encounter something I had never seen before — the sidewalks in Lake View cluttered with delivery robots, zipping along with little regard for the pedestrians around them.
Those robots drive on the same walkways marked by city signs, which explicitly ban bike-riding. Similar laws also prohibit electric scooters, e-bikes, cars and motorcycles on city sidewalks. There are good reasons for these laws: Powered vehicles on sidewalks present a risk to pedestrians, especially the most vulnerable. In Chicago, a significant percentage of the population consists of the elderly, children or people with limited mobility.
Chicagoans already face obstacles on public sidewalks: broken and uneven pavement, light poles, trash cans, ground-level business signs, etc. Add to that the new risk from ubiquitous robots, with their low and wide profiles. They often obstruct the middle of the sidewalk, oblivious to how they affect people in wheelchairs, parents pushing strollers, children, pets and others.
As it stands, delivery robots have somehow become the most privileged users of our sidewalks. Cyclists and e-scooter riders are generally forced to share the road with cars, but delivery robots avoid the danger of automobiles by mostly traveling on our sidewalks. Should a robot delivering a bag of hamburgers have more rights than humans?
These robots should be banned from our sidewalks and restricted to driving in the bike lane on our roads. This would create a safer and more accessible environment for humans — and return sidewalks to their original purpose: a safe space for people to walk.
Felix Litwinski, student, Case Western Reserve University, Lake View East
Enforcing laws can help solve city budget woes
Here’s a message for the new year and an untried path to minimizing Chicago’s budget morass.
Neither Mayor Brandon Johnson’s failed corporate head tax proposal nor the mishmash of raising fees on plastic bags, littering the city with advertising in public spaces, or selling debts to private collection agencies add up. None comes close to meeting the city’s real needs.
The solution to the city of Chicago budget failure is simple. That is why neither the mayor nor City Council members can see it.
Enforce the laws.
Giving tickets and enforcing payment on Lake Shore Drive alone would substantially reduce the accumulating deficit and begin to pay for much-needed actions, including strengthening all public safety forces, repairing streets and sidewalks and the like.
Add to that enforcing laws for motor vehicles — trucks, cars, electronic scooters — and bicycles not stopping at stoplights and stop signs. And of course, enforce parking laws, including e-scooters and bikes left on sidewalks without required cables and trucks regularly blocking streets.
This is much easier than counting heads or plastic bags, and painting graffiti and littering the city with advertisements. On the question of counting: I underscore that none of this rhetorical jumble comes close to meeting Chicago’s serious safety, street, sidewalk, signage and other needs. Doing that would attract new businesses more effectively than fumbling for or against a head tax.
Or am I being too complicated for our well-paid public servants, none of whom can see the physical city before their eyes? Or do simple arithmetic.
Harvey J. Graff, professor emeritus of English and history, Ohio State University, Lincoln Park
Physician-assisted suicide goes against doctors’ objectives
As a physician and a legislator, I strongly opposed the bill the governor recently signed to legalize physician-assisted suicide. A physician takes an oath and has always had a duty to fight for life, to care for the sick and to relieve suffering.
What we don’t do is fast-track death or give patients deadly drugs to kill themselves. We do everything we can to preserve life and to “Do no harm” as our sacred and ancient oath requires.
There is a huge difference between administering comfort care to dying patients while nature takes its course and prescribing those same patients a deadly cocktail to kill themselves. As a physician, the idea of being an agent of death for a patient is a stark contrast to the principles, practices and purpose of medicine. The goal of medicine has always been to save lives — not end them. Taking a life is not medicine.
Physician-assisted suicide is not just a slippery slope — it is a slippery cliff. The law legalizing physician-assisted suicide in Canada started out with very stringent requirements much like the way the proposed legislation is constructed here in Illinois. Everywhere it’s been tried, it’s been expanded. It is no longer a question of if, but when will it expand.
No matter what euphemism is used, physician-assisted suicide ends with a patient’s death, aided by the very people charged with saving their lives. We do not need to bring this gruesome practice to Illinois, and we must reject the lie that it will apply in only rare and well-controlled circumstances.
Gov. JB Pritzker should not have signed this into law over so many objections, including the objections of the Illinois State Medical Society. We have opened Pandora’s box, and sadly, our state and Illinois medicine will forever be changed. I will continue to speak out against the culture of death in Illinois and this policy, as will the medical ethics, religious and disability communities. Please join us.
State Rep. Bill Hauter, R-Morton
Signing ‘right-to-die’ legislation was right thing to do
Walk a mile in my shoes. Or two or three. While I appreciate medical student Sofia Carozza’s comments in her Sun-Times letter to the editor on the recently signed law that allows physician-assisted suicide, she brings a utopian view of how end-of-life treatment might be achieved.
As a physician, she will, no doubt be involved in the care of terminal patients at some point. However, it is not she who will be at the bedside 24/7, nor will it be she whose body is being decimated by illness.
Writing as a nurse with over 40 years of experience, I know that choosing physician-assisted suicide is neither a quick nor frequent decision. I have cared for many patients who suffered severely, and many times seemingly needlessly, in their quest to live for themselves, for their families, before they died heartlessly. I believe the option to die in peace is one every person should be able to choose for themselves, and I am grateful the governor agreed.
Barbara Orze, Cedar Lake, Indiana
ICE’s inhumane plans
Some days, I feel like I’ve woken up, not in Chicago in 2026, but in Germany in the 1930s. Now our federal government is making plans to build seven large-scale warehouses in different parts of the country, so that they can hold immigrants to be deported. The goal? To be as efficient as Amazon: “like Prime, but with human beings,” U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement acting Director Todd Lyons said a few months back.
As I type his words, I feel physically sick. Don’t you? People, transported like they were packages, not human beings with souls. With families. But that’s right, ICE routinely separates parents and children.
I’m not going to say, “This isn’t who we are,” because I know better — our Founding Fathers owned slaves. But I’m still naive and hopeful enough to ask, “Is this who we want to be?”
Diane O’Neill, North Center
Trying taxes
Reading part of last week’s headline regarding Chicago Public Schools’ tax hike: “CPS Board OKs Small Property Tax Hike”, one would think that the CPS Board left a little something on the table and gave taxpayers a break because it was a “small” tax hike to collect $40 million more (more than originally planned).
Nothing could be further from the truth.
The fact is the CPS Board took the maximum amount allowed just like it always does. So the only reason the tax hike was “small” was because they couldn’t take any more money from taxpayers!
Tony LaMantia, Logan Square
Snowplow fit for president
What better name for the city of Chicago snowplow name contest than “Trump Plower?”
It will be the most efficient and get the most done.
Voters, this will be another popular vote Donald Trump wins.
Jim Lanham, Joliet
Adding to unbearable grief
Caroline Kennedy’s daughter, Tatiana Schlossberg, died on Tuesday at 35, leaving two small children. Her terminal cancer was revealed publicly in early November. Caroline’s father, President John F. Kennedy, was murdered in service to his country when she was 5. Her only sibling died in a plane crash in 1999. In the midst of her latest grief, Donald Trump defaced the most important Washington, D.C., memorial to JFK by putting his own classless imprint on the Kennedy Center. His inhumanity has no bottom.
Joel Ostrow, Deerfield