We should. She has a heck of a lot of good ideas, but she, like other famous political/social commentators/writers, forget about some critical aspects of human nature that will prevent their theories from working. This applies to both liberals and conservatives. (The "Kennedy wing" of the Democrats is just as clueless as the "DeLay wing" of the Republicans).
Chicago turned out to be a very tough nut crack. The problems and challenges were different than the South and not as easily dealt with.
In northern cities, African Americans usually got service jobs, such as janitors, housekeepers, cooks, laborers, etc., though there were black teachers, police officers and firemen, at least in Phila. In WW II, in response to a labor shortage, the Philadelphia Transportation Company wanted to promote blacks from cleaners to streetcar motormen. The rest of the motormen vehemently objected and went out on strike shutting down the city and vital war production plants, causing a big mess that required Federal troops to clean up.
In the 1950s blacks very slowly were permitted into better jobs, such as a judge, school principal, TV newscaster, etc. This accelerated in the 1960s.
FWIW, according to Peter Jennings book, the aggressive actions of the Chicago Police were supported by the majority of the citizenry. It is also known now that the "demonstration" planners specifically trained their people to provoke the cops. Up to that time, liberal use of the nightstick was accepted by most of the public as legitimate police technique.
In the 1950s, the criminal justice system was much smaller because a lot of petty activity was dealt with directly by the local cops on the beat. It is popular to demonize the cops of those days, but records show that in their own way they were trying to make their neighborhoods safe and teach kids proper behavior. Yes, if some kid was out of hand he was in for a beating; today he'd be another statistic in the juve system where he'll get beaten in the juve hall. (Great improvement, huh?) For instance, there were some highly controversial vice squads raids on coffeehouses. Parents and civic groups demanded those raids because they feared youth were being corrupted by gays. The cops did NOT go in and beat heads as is popularly suggested. Rather, the kids present were taken to the police station and given a serious and candid lecture about morality and how what they were doing was dangerous. Again, this isn't what today's standards call for at all, but this is what people felt back in those years.
As to the spying on "peaceful citizen groups", again police efforts were supported, indeed, demanded by parents and civic leaders. We know today that many such groups were in reality not "peaceful" but planning disruptive activities for the sole purpose of disruptiing commerce or education. Some former radicals of the past have written memoirs admitting this. Parents did not appreciate the college education of their kids being disrupted. Small business people didn't appreciate their little stores being targeted as "part of the man" and disrupted. A great many college students of those days participating in their "civil disobediance" were blissfully unaware of the collateral damge they did to innocent people caught in the middle.
I know a lot of people proudly defend "civil disobediance" and the
1960s. But they forget that that sort of thing works both ways. Today we have "civil disobediance" in the blockades of abortion clinics, for example, and aggressive actions to block to stop marijuanna for legitimate medical purposes. [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: I remember all the commotion downtown the day of the 1968 Democratic convention riots and the next day as well. Almost all the offices downtown closed early that day, urging people to go home _and stay home the next day_ unless things got different. On the Sunday before (the start of the convention week) police went through the south end of Lincoln Park gassing everyone who dared to sit in the park. In a couple cases, they went into a restaurant at North Avenue and Clark Street and smashed up the whole restaurant as they dragged some of what they percieved to be 'war protestors' out of the place. It was like that mess in New York last summer during the convention at Madison Square Garden. Thousands of people just swept up off the street and put in jail. But in Chicago, in 1968, the main event was the Battle of Michigan Avenue on the Wednesday of convention week. Two friends and I were having a meal in the dining room at the Conrad Hilton Hotel when that large plate glass window got broken out and police swarmed through the place. It was like one of those 'throw a pie at someone' as we would see in those old Three Stooges movies. People there in the Hilton Hotel were getting attacked, assaulted with plates of food, etc. My friend had a plate of mashed potatoes and gravy hit him, gravy and potatoes running down his shirt and trousers, etc. Other patrons settled for cream pies, etc.About two years ago I received a letter here from someone who said he had been "a long time supporter here but because of the way I had been talking in print about police, he was withdrawing his support." I asked him if he was aware that even the Illinois governor had declared police behavior that week to be a 'police riot'. Police objected to that characterization, of course. PAT]