MORGAN PARK — Showing his commitment to mentoring programs he intends to bolster fight crime and gun violence, Mayor Rahm Emanuel attended a Becoming a Man meeting at Morgan Park High School Friday.
"You guys haven't given up on yourselves, and the city shouldn't give up on you," Emanuel told a group of a dozen Morgan Park students known as the Dreamchasers. He was joined at the meeting by Ald. Matt O'Shea (19th).
Emanuel's visit came the day after he touted a three-year, $36 million commitment to youth mentoring as a key part of his comprehensive plan to rein in crime and gun violence in the city.
"I wanted people to see this firsthand," he said of his visit to the high school.
Emanuel said he had gone on a three-mile run with police cadets in the morning, followed by a weightlifting session, and one cadet had specifically cheered the mentoring proposal mentioned in Thursday's speech.
According to Emanuel, the cadet told him, "I really loved what you said about mentoring. ... I was a mentor. That's why I wanted to become a cop."
Emanuel said it was intended to prevent "another generation lost to the gangs and lost to violence." He touted jobs programs and training through the City Colleges as lifelines to young adults who are not in school.
The BAM meeting began with all introducing themselves and rating the summer just passed from one to 10. Emanuel gave his summer a nine, saying, "My son came home from college, and he and I are rock solid. Nothing could make me happier."
Most rated their summers equally high and expressed goals of passing the SAT to get into college.
"My name's Rickey," said one student. "I rate my summer a 10 because I lived through the summer."
(School officials asked that the students' last names not be used.)
The group split into teams to engage in a contest involving paper airplanes. Emanuel's team beat O'Shea's in getting planes to fly beyond a designated line, but BAM counselor Michael Anderson used the contest to ask the teens what they'd done to help their teams and to learn from it no matter the outcome.
"Everything you do has consequences, right?" Anderson said.
He urged them to set "visionary goals," long-term and short-term, for the coming school year, and they all agreed to the goal of passing all classes.
"Can we make that a goal, Dreamchasers group?" Anderson said.
O'Shea pledged to "do what I can to help this group at Morgan Park."
Rickey said he was determined to focus on positive energy and "tune all that negativity out."
One student, who aspires to get into the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, offered to help others in their work over the school year, and Anderson encouraged them to "use your support, guys."
Many in the group said the BAM meetings had already altered their lives for the better from the year before.
"I'm a firm believer in it," said Emanuel, "in that everybody needs to figure out how to get right and go straight."
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