Since he was shot decades ago on the South Side, Eric Wilkins has committed his life to violence prevention.
While President Donald Trump has called the city a “killing field” and threatened to deploy the National Guard, Wilkins argues it’s those most affected by violence who know how to keep Chicago safe.
“Trump is using all his tactics to tear the city apart when we’re working from the grassroots to put it together,” Wilkins said Tuesday. “No, we’re not going to stand for it.”
Wilkins joined a handful of gun violence survivors Tuesday to push back against the potential deployment of federal troops.
Violence prevention leaders like Wilkins said since taking office for his second term Trump has undermined proven solutions to gun violence, and they said his proposal of using the military to address crime will make neighborhoods more dangerous.
Meanwhile, everyday Chicagoans interviewed by WBEZ and the Chicago Sun-Times said they do not think Chicago’s crime problems warrant a militaristic response.
“Once again, our communities are being threatened by policies rooted in fear,” Yolanda Androzzo, executive director of One Aim Illinois, said Tuesday. “The Trump administration’s threat to send National Guard troops to Chicago is not about safety, it’s about control through intimidation and fear.”
On Monday, Gov. JB Pritzker, Mayor Brandon Johnson and dozens of other community advocates gathered to voice a similar stance: that federal troops are not welcome or needed in Chicago.
Although the president claims action is needed to address crime in Chicago, the city has seen a 30% decline in homicides, a nearly 35% decline in robberies and 40% decline in shootings in a year.
Samuel “Mook” Mormon, a shooting survivor and founder of Impact Social Solutions, said if Trump were really interested in bringing down crime, he would invest in social services and community violence intervention work.
“This is not a war zone,” Mormon said Tuesday. “We need the social programs. We need all the CVI work that we’re doing right now. We need the cognitive behavior therapy. We need the wraparound services.”
A day after Pritzker gathered Illinois Democrats to protest Trump’s threat to send in the National Guard, the president once again insulted him, calling Pritzker a “slob” and “such a bad governor.”
“Speaking during a lengthy Cabinet meeting Tuesday, Trump criticized Democrats who are fighting his crime strategy, including deployments. He also relayed the false claim that crime in Washington, D.C., “was the worst it ever was,” despite crime stats showing the nation’s capital saw violent crime drop 10 percent from 2023 to 2024.
“They’re going to fight me, like this slob of a governor you have in Illinois. This poor, this poor guy got thrown out of his business by his family,” Trump said. “I know the family. I was partners with the family. Nice family. I like the family, but he was no good. He was, they threw him out. He’s governor of Illinois, and he goes about Trump, ‘We don’t need his help.’ Chicago is … these places are really bad.”
Trump has frequently brought up his feud with the Pritzkers, specifically the governor’s uncle Jay A. Pritzker, which stems from a New York City hotel they partnered with in 1979. Trump sued him in 1993 — and Jay A. Pritzker countersued. The suit was finally settled in 1995. It’s unclear what Trump is referring to about the governor being “thrown out” of the business, but the family split their business interests in Hyatt, along with other companies, in 2005.
Trump also again questioned why Pritzker isn’t calling him to ask for the “troops.”
“You would think that Illinois would have such a problem with crime, such a bad governor, he should be calling me and he should be saying, ‘Could you send over the troops?'” Trump said. “It’s out of control.”
The governor admonished that request Monday, saying, “Mr. President — Instead I say: Do not come. You are neither wanted nor needed here.”
In an interview on Tuesday, former U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan said Trump has done “zero” when it comes to fixing the gun violence problem in American cities, and he said the president was not actually serious about the problem.
Duncan, who runs the violence prevention organization Chicago CRED, said sending troops into the city would only undermine efforts that have succeeded in reducing the city’s gun violence. And he doubted the National Guard would even be deployed to areas that suffer from the most shootings.
“They’re not gonna be in the neighborhoods. They’re gonna be Downtown,” Duncan said. “That’s what they’ve done in D.C.”
Duncan also criticized the president for cutting funding to community-based anti-violence efforts.
Johnson has also called on the president to release $800 million in violence prevention funds “that he stole back in April.”
“As the mayor of this city, I can tell you that Chicagoans are not calling for military occupation,” Johnson said Monday. “They are calling for the same thing that we’ve been calling for for some time, and that’s investment.”
Chicagoans interviewed Downtown Tuesday mostly shared the mayor’s opposition to troops being deployed to the city.
“Chicago is not a killing field,” said Alexandria Cummings, who said she was born and raised on the South Side. “I’ve been in Chicago my whole entire life. I’ve never been shot or shot at.”
Of federal forces, Cummings said, “We don’t need them here.”
Her friend, Tania White from the Morgan Park neighborhood, said she keeps her “head on a swivel” when it comes to Chicago crime, but she has not been victimized, and Chicagoans can take care of themselves.
One person said Trump’s suggestion was “offensive,” another speculated it was an effort to “punish” cities and states that did not vote for him.
Survivors of gun violence said they were proud of the strong stance Illinois leaders have taken in standing against Trump.
“The organizations that we work with, who are fighting this fight, violence prevention for years, these survivors, they’ve lost way too much to be scared at a moment like this,” Androzzo said. “We have to continue to be unafraid … because in history, people who were afraid kept the status quo.”
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