October is Domestic Violence Awareness Month. For organizations serving survivors of domestic violence, October is typically filled with activities to raise awareness and build support for services and prevention. We make domestic violence — and its victims — visible. Visibility shows survivors they are not alone and makes it easier to access help.
This October feels different. We are still wearing our purple ribbons and holding rallies and memorials, but the country is engaged in a debate about safety in Chicago that lacks nuance and bears little resemblance to most Chicagoans’ daily realities. Meanwhile, the federal government is deploying a “crime-fighting” strategy that makes survivors less safe — and the fear created by this federal occupation will likely cost lives.
Domestic abuse is based in power and control: People who abuse use isolation and threats to persuade their victims that leaving an abusive relationship is riskier than staying. By deploying Immigration and Customs Enforcement to patrol our neighborhoods, grab people off the streets and detain people based literally on “how they look,” the federal government is reinforcing that isolation for survivors. We don’t have to guess how this will impact rates of domestic violence. We have a recent example in the surge in domestic violence during the COVID-19 pandemic, when rates of domestic violence, including domestic shootings, increased. When people are isolated, domestic violence increases.
Today, we cannot accept isolating entire communities: immigrants, documented and undocumented, and citizens alike. People across our city are afraid to drop their children at school or go to work in case they are not able to return home to their kids. Like an abusive partner, the government is isolating survivors by making help-seeking scarier and riskier than the violence they are enduring.
As advocates who work with survivors every day, we reject the idea that armed, masked federal agents will make us safer. We reject the idea that our city’s sanctuary policies make us less safe. Chicago’s sanctuary policies make immigrants more likely to come forward as witnesses of all types of crime, so survivors are more likely to seek help and get the resources they need to leave their abusers. The current federal occupation is having the opposite effect.
There are many ways the federal government could demonstrate concern for the safety of domestic violence survivors, such as more investment in services, prevention and survivor-led initiatives. This Domestic Violence Awareness Month, we’d settle for a quick end to Operation Midway Blitz.
— Margaret Duval, executive director, Ascend Justice, Chicago
Root causes of violence
Regarding the op-ed “Curbing gun violence in Chicago doesn’t require that we first end poverty” (Oct. 12): Katie Hill and Jens Ludwig assert that “ending poverty is neither necessary nor sufficient for solving the problem of gun violence” and that environmental improvements such as cleaning vacant lots and adding street lighting are root causes that are “at least as important” and “much easier to solve.” Their framing contradicts decades of research on economic inequality and violence.
For generations, communities of color and working-class neighborhoods have been told to tolerate conditions that would never be acceptable elsewhere: school closures, inadequate infrastructure, lower life expectancy and systematic exclusion from economic opportunity. We ask these communities to adapt to militarized streets, accept disinvestment and, now, apparently, to be satisfied with cleaned vacant lots rather than having addressed why those lots are vacant. This represents an enormous loss of human potential.
Understanding the historical drivers of structural racism, discrimination against poor and working people, and economic inequality is essential to solving violence. Our research using the Firearm Violence Vulnerability Index found that historical third-grade math scores and the incarceration of a parent during childhood were the strongest predictors of community firearm violence risk.
Our work with Recovery Legal Care, a novel medical-legal partnership at the University of Chicago Trauma Center, demonstrates how deeply economic exclusion drives violence. We screened 516 patients recovering from violent injuries and found that 95% had at least one legal need — such as income support, housing assistance, employment advocacy or help navigating wrongfully denied public benefits. Eighty-nine percent required income support assistance, with 9 in 10 needing help accessing public benefits they were legally entitled to.
Patients in the most disadvantaged neighborhoods had nearly six times higher odds of needing assistance accessing benefits compared with those in less disadvantaged areas. This isn’t just poverty — it’s systematic exclusion from economic support systems, rooted in the same Jim Crow-era policies that created the segregation and disinvestment the authors acknowledge.
Over two years, our legal team recovered $1.2 million in direct financial benefits for patients — money they were already entitled to but couldn’t access without advocacy. Preliminary findings show that addressing these structural barriers through legal intervention was associated with significantly lower odds of reinjury among violence survivors — a far greater impact than the 30% reduction Hill and Ludwig cite for environmental interventions.
We cannot mistake treating symptoms for addressing root causes, nor should we accept that communities must simply adapt to structural abandonment rather than demand the investment and opportunity that would allow human dignity and brilliance to flourish.
— Dr. Tanya L. Zakrison, Montserrat Tijerina and Dr. Selwyn O. Rogers Jr., University of Chicago
How to protect seniors
The article “Tax hikes loom for South, West sides” (Sept. 21) highlighting the impact of rising property taxes on South and West Side homeowners underscores an urgent issue: protecting older adults from being priced out of their homes.
We at AgeOptions express our strong support for efforts to expand access to and reduce barriers in Cook County’s property tax relief programs for older adults, particularly the Low-Income Senior Freeze Homestead Exemption and the Senior Citizen Real Estate Tax Deferral Program.
We commend Cook County Assessor Fritz Kaegi for proposing the automatic renewal of the Low-Income Senior Freeze when income eligibility can be verified without requiring a new application. This simple, practical reform would prevent thousands of eligible seniors from losing critical relief due to missed paperwork while easing administrative burdens for both homeowners and the assessor’s office.
We also support Cook County Board President Toni Preckwinkle’s proposal to expand the Senior Citizen Real Estate Tax Deferral Program, which currently allows eligible seniors (age 65-plus, income under $65,000 and three years of homeownership) to defer up to $7,500 annually in property taxes at a 3% interest rate.
However, we urge policymakers to reconsider upcoming changes that would reduce the maximum deferral to $5,000 and lower the income threshold to $55,000. Instead, eligibility should be expanded to reflect today’s cost of living and the growing number of seniors affected by housing instability and gentrification.
Additionally, raising the income threshold for the Low-Income Senior Freeze would help ensure that this relief keeps pace with economic realities.
These programs are essential to helping older adults remain in their homes and communities. As housing costs rise and incomes remain fixed, property tax relief is not just a financial issue but a matter of dignity, stability and aging in place. We urge state and county leaders to act decisively to modernize and expand these vital programs so that no senior loses their home due to outdated policies or administrative barriers.
— Diane Slezak, president and CEO, AgeOptions, Oak Park
Give us ethics reform
As former Illinois House Speaker Michael Madigan takes up his new residency in prison, isn’t it finally time for the Illinois House and Senate to move forward with truly meaningful ethics reform legislation? Can our House and Senate leadership and our governor please do this one thing for us?
Voter confidence in our state legislature and in democracy in general is at a significant low, and our legislators sit on their hands doing nothing after many, many years of too-many-to-count convictions of their fellow elected officials. It’s an understatement to say that it raises questions about the personal ethics of the entire legislature.
There is an obvious path forward, with comprehensive ethics legislation having been drafted previously. All it takes is some backbone and leadership that would set Illinois on a new and assuredly better path toward good governance instead of the same old thievery of the past decades.
— J. Walker Geyer, Chicago
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