PBS高端访谈:为什么芝加哥不能远离枪支暴力

 　　JUDY WOODRUFF: But, first: a bloody¹ year in Chicago. And residents, police and community leaders are asking why the violence is getting worse, instead of better?

　　It is already the deadliest year in more than two decades, 500 homicides so far, 90 in August alone. The killings² were mostly clustered on the city's South and West Sides.

　　John Yang went to Chicago to try to find out why, despite calls for new action, the violence there is so hard to rein³ in.

　　JOHN YANG: On this busy street corner in Englewood, one of the hardest-hit neighborhoods on the city's troubled South Side, it looks like a party. Kids are playing. The grill⁴ is fired up. In the past, though, 75th and Stewart felt like a war zone.

　　TAMAR MANASSEH, Founder⁵, Mothers Against Senseless Killings: This corner is a corner where a man was killed — well, several men, a woman was killed, and a child was killed. A 9-year-old girl was killed right across the street over there washing her dog in broad daylight.

　　JOHN YANG: But for two summers, a group called Mothers Against Senseless Killings, or MASK, led by Tamar Manasseh, has been out on this corner, and there hasn't been a single shooting.

　　Volunteer Laura Lambert (ph) comes from nearby Hyde Park. And 91-year-old Edwina Knight⁶ (ph) crosses the street every day from the house she's lived in for 57 years.

　　TAMAR MANASSEH: Just show up. That's all you have to do. Show up, grab a lawn chair and a pair of sunglasses, and you can do this. You can change the world with that.

　　JOHN YANG: But the moms of MASK are only on one corner in a city of 2.7 million people. Killings have spiked⁷ this summer. Chicago has already recorded more homicides this year than it did in all of last year.

　　DR. GARY SLUTKIN, CEO, Cure Violence: This is also very typical of all epidemics⁹. You can see the high density¹⁰ of shootings.

　　JOHN YANG: University of Illinois at Chicago physician Gary Slutkin says epidemic⁸ is exactly the right word. He argues that violence is a contagious¹¹ disease.

　　DR. GARY SLUTKIN: For example, you're exposed to flu, you're more likely to get flu. You don't actually get flu without being exposed. Same thing for T.B., cholera¹² and violence.

　　I mean, why does someone who was exposed to child abuse, abuse their own kids? That would be the person who you would think would be least likely to do it, because he knows how bad it was. But, in fact, he's picked up this contagious set of behaviors.

　　JOHN YANG: So Dr. Slutkin treats gun violence as a contagious disease. He founded Cure Violence, now an international effort that trains former gang members and felons¹³ to stop violence in its tracks, violence interrupters.

　　DR. GARY SLUTKIN: They are always in the community, aware of what's going on, and asking families and people, you know, who's upset? You know, who is — somebody slept with someone's girlfriend, someone was disrespected, someone owes somebody money. And we can reach those people with these health workers.

　　They may not look like health workers to everybody. They know how to cool people down, know how to buy time,

　　JOHN YANG: Chicago violence interrupter Chico Tillmon knows how to cool people down. He drove us around the South Side last week, where much of the violence happens.

　　CHICO TILLMON, Ceasefire Illinois: In early January, two cliques¹⁵ were arguing. So one clique¹⁴ went into another clique's neighborhood and got on Facebook Live and was like: F. you all. We're in your all neighbor. We're in your all gas station.

　　Within 30 minutes, on that walk from the gas station back to the house, two were dead, one was wounded.

　　JOHN YANG: It's not like this is a gang war over turf. This is just sort of…

　　CHICO TILLMON: Interpersonal. I said something you didn't agree with, you responded negatively, it ended up in gun violence.

　　JOHN YANG: Violence interrupter Ulysses "U.S." Floyd was a leader in one of Chicago's most notorious gangs, the Gangster¹⁶ Disciples¹⁷.

　　ULYSSES "U.S." FLOYD, Ceasefire Illinois: I know I helped start this mess, so I wanted to help clean it up.

　　JOHN YANG: He told us that gangs are very different now than they were in his day.

　　ULYSSES "U.S." FLOYD: One or two men control everything. Now you have got a lot of different little gangs split all over. They are offsprings of the major gangs, what they call cliques. And they just do what they want to do. Ain't nobody really in control, no structure, no rules.

　　JOHN YANG: The number of neighborhoods where Chicago's branch of Cure Violence operates varies based on funding. But a Justice Department study found that, at one point, the group helped reduce violence by 40 percent to 70 percent in some of the areas where they were operating.

　　Today, they are in only five of the city's 77 neighborhoods. On our drive through the South Side, we saw children walking home from school.

　　What do you think when you look at kids that age?

　　什么芝加哥不能远离枪支暴力

　　CHICO TILLMON: I'm praying that they survive through this — through this epidemic that's going on in the city. It's not a Woodlawn problem. It's not a South Shore problem. It's everybody's problem. And we don't understand that until the disease hits home, until one of our loved ones is killed by gun violence. Then we want to get involved.

　　JOHN YANG: Police have seized 6,000 illegal guns this year. That's one every hour, many from nearby Indiana, where laws aren't as tough.

　　Chicago cops are feeling the heat, a federal probe of the use of deadly force and public trust at a breaking point after last year's release of a dash-cam video showing a white officer fatally shooting a black teenager 16 times.

　　After another deadly weekend, Superintendent¹⁸ Eddie Johnson virtually threw up his hands.

　　EDDIE JOHNSON, Superintendent, Chicago Police Department: It's not a police issue. It's a society issue. Impoverished¹⁹ neighborhoods, people without hope do these kinds of things. You show me a man that doesn't have hope, I show you one that is willing to pick up a gun and do anything with it.

　　LANCE WILLIAMS, Associate Professor, Northeastern Illinois University: I really see this problem as a cultural problem.

　　JOHN YANG: Lance Williams is an associate professor of urban affairs at Northeastern Illinois University and an inner-city youth advocate.

　　LANCE WILLIAMS: This is not a law enforcement problem. I mean, you can hire all of the police that you want. You're not going to solve this problem, because these young men are acting²⁰ in alignment²¹ with their cultural value system. They need a cultural retooling²² process.

　　JOHN YANG: Williams says it's a culture that's developed in the absence of working institutions and in the midst of crushing poverty.

　　One big cause of much frustration²³? Nearly half of black men in Chicago aged²⁴ 20 to 24 are not in school and out of work, far higher than the national rate of 32 percent.

　　LANCE WILLIAMS: There's a lot of rage. There's a lot of anger. They just see their lives, you know, just passing them by. They don't — they haven't been to school. They're not qualified²⁵ for jobs. There are no viable²⁶ businesses in their neighborhood, so they're really depressed²⁷. And then they're self-medicating through drinking and drugging. And the only individuals around them are other young African-American males like themselves who have these — these same forms of depression.

　　JOHN YANG: Another structural²⁸ factor playing into the violence, Chicago is one of the nation's most segregated²⁹ cities.

　　LANCE WILLIAMS: All of the poor blacks live way, way, way, way away from affluent³⁰ people, from the business district, from the tourist district. You know, you have some kids in these neighborhoods far south that have never been downtown. Right?

　　And you have folks in the white communities who have never been to the South Side. So, what happens is, you have an out-of-sight, out-of-minute kind of deal.

　　CHICO TILLMON: I was 23 when I went to prison.

　　JOHN YANG: For Chico Tillmon, who spent 16 years and three months in federal prison, violence is never out of sight or mind, turning other people's lives around after turning his own around.

　　CHICO TILLMON: Being able to see all the violence and chaos³¹ in the community that I once was a part of, and that I once helped produce, pushed me or gave me an obligation to make a change.

　　JOHN YANG: Since you got out of prison…

　　CHICO TILLMON: Yes.

　　JOHN YANG:you got your bachelor's degree.

　　CHICO TILLMON: Yes, sir.

　　JOHN YANG: You got your master's degree.

　　CHICO TILLMON: Yes, sir.

　　JOHN YANG: You're working on your Ph.D.

　　CHICO TILLMON: Yes, sir.

　　JOHN YANG: How long, how many years are we talking about here?

　　CHICO TILLMON: Five years.

　　JOHN YANG: Pretty determined³².

　　CHICO TILLMON: Yes.

　　JOHN YANG: Pretty motivated.

　　CHICO TILLMON: Yes, sir. I got out with a purpose, and I got out trying to not only do something that was beyond what I believed I could do, but to inspire hope within all the people that I left behind in prison.

　　JOHN YANG: Back on the corner of 75th and Stewart, Tamar Manasseh is also determined that change will happen.

　　TAMAR MANASSEH: It's going to take a lot of people all doing something, not saying something, but doing something to fix that problem. And the doing something is the sitting here. It's the sitting here, having a conversation.

　　I live on this block with you. I live in this city with you. I live in this country with you. And we're all affected³³ by the same things. And, sometimes, when we don't talk to each other, when we don't interact, we miss that.

　　JOHN YANG: On one corner, a small effort in response to a big problem.

　　For the "PBS NewsHour," I'm John Yang in Chicago.

　　JUDY WOODRUFF: And online, you can take a closer look at Chicago's history of violence. We go back 50 years to count all of the city's homicide victims. That's at PBS.org/NewsHour.

1 bloody   

adj.非常的的；流血的；残忍的；adv.很；vt.血染

参考例句：

• He got a bloody nose in the fight.他在打斗中被打得鼻子流血。
• He is a bloody fool.他是一个十足的笨蛋。

2 killings   

谋杀( killing的名词复数 )； 突然发大财，暴发

参考例句：

• His statement was seen as an allusion to the recent drug-related killings. 他的声明被视为暗指最近与毒品有关的多起凶杀案。
• The government issued a statement condemning the killings. 政府发表声明谴责这些凶杀事件。

3 rein   

n.疆绳，统治，支配；vt.以僵绳控制，统治

参考例句：

• The horse answered to the slightest pull on the rein.只要缰绳轻轻一拉,马就作出反应。
• He never drew rein for a moment till he reached the river.他一刻不停地一直跑到河边。

4 grill   

n.烤架，铁格子，烤肉；v.烧，烤，严加盘问

参考例句：

• Put it under the grill for a minute to brown the top.放在烤架下烤一分钟把上面烤成金黄色。
• I'll grill you some mutton.我来给你烤一些羊肉吃。

5 Founder   

n.创始者，缔造者

参考例句：

• He was extolled as the founder of their Florentine school.他被称颂为佛罗伦萨画派的鼻祖。
• According to the old tradition,Romulus was the founder of Rome.按照古老的传说，罗穆卢斯是古罗马的建国者。

6 knight   

n.骑士，武士；爵士

参考例句：

• He was made an honourary knight.他被授予荣誉爵士称号。
• A knight rode on his richly caparisoned steed.一个骑士骑在装饰华丽的马上。

7 spiked   

adj.有穗的；成锥形的；有尖顶的

参考例句：

• The editor spiked the story. 编辑删去了这篇报道。 来自《简明英汉词典》
• They wondered whether their drinks had been spiked. 他们有些疑惑自己的饮料里是否被偷偷搀了烈性酒。 来自辞典例句

8 epidemic   

n.流行病；盛行；adj.流行性的，流传极广的

参考例句：

• That kind of epidemic disease has long been stamped out.那种传染病早已绝迹。
• The authorities tried to localise the epidemic.当局试图把流行病限制在局部范围。

9 epidemics   

n．流行病

参考例句：

• Reliance upon natural epidemics may be both time-consuming and misleading. 依靠天然的流行既浪费时间，又会引入歧途。
• The antibiotic epidemics usually start stop when the summer rainy season begins. 传染病通常会在夏天的雨季停止传播。

10 density   

n.密集，密度，浓度

参考例句：

• The population density of that country is 685 per square mile.那个国家的人口密度为每平方英里685人。
• The region has a very high population density.该地区的人口密度很高。

11 contagious   

adj.传染性的，有感染力的

参考例句：

• It's a highly contagious infection.这种病极易传染。
• He's got a contagious laugh.他的笑富有感染力。

12 cholera   

n.霍乱

参考例句：

• The cholera outbreak has been contained.霍乱的发生已被控制住了。
• Cholera spread like wildfire through the camps.霍乱在营地里迅速传播。

13 felons   

n.重罪犯( felon的名词复数 )；瘭疽；甲沟炎；指头脓炎

参考例句：

• Aren't those the seats they use for transporting convicted felons? 这些坐位不是他们用来押运重犯的吗？ 来自电影对白
• House Republicans talk of making felons out of the undocumented and those who help them. 众议院共和党议员正商议对未登记的非法移民以及包庇他们的人课以重罪。 来自互联网

14 clique   

n.朋党派系，小集团

参考例句：

• The reactionary ruling clique was torn by internal strife.反动统治集团内部勾心斗角，四分五裂。
• If the renegade clique of that country were in power,it would have meant serious disaster for the people.如果那个国家的叛徒集团一得势，人民就要遭殃。

15 cliques   

n.小集团，小圈子，派系( clique的名词复数 )

参考例句：

• All traitorous persons and cliques came to no good end. 所有的叛徒及叛徒集团都没好下场。 来自《简明英汉词典》
• They formed cliques and carried arms expansion and war preparations. 他们拉帮结派，扩军备战。 来自互联网

16 gangster   

n.匪徒，歹徒，暴徒

参考例句：

• The gangster's friends bought off the police witness.那匪徒的朋友买通了警察方面的证人。
• He is obviously a gangster,but he pretends to be a saint.分明是强盗，却要装圣贤。

17 disciples   

n.信徒( disciple的名词复数 )；门徒；耶稣的信徒；（尤指）耶稣十二门徒之一

参考例句：

• Judas was one of the twelve disciples of Jesus. 犹大是耶稣十二门徒之一。 来自《简明英汉词典》
• "The names of the first two disciples were --" “最初的两个门徒的名字是——” 来自英汉文学 - 汤姆历险

18 superintendent   

n.监督人，主管，总监；(英国)警务长

参考例句：

• He was soon promoted to the post of superintendent of Foreign Trade.他很快就被擢升为对外贸易总监。
• He decided to call the superintendent of the building.他决定给楼房管理员打电话。

19 impoverished   

adj.穷困的，无力的，用尽了的v.使（某人）贫穷( impoverish的过去式和过去分词 )；使（某物）贫瘠或恶化

参考例句：

• the impoverished areas of the city 这个城市的贫民区
• They were impoverished by a prolonged spell of unemployment. 他们因长期失业而一贫如洗。 来自《简明英汉词典》

20 acting   

n.演戏，行为，假装；adj.代理的，临时的，演出用的

参考例句：

• Ignore her,she's just acting.别理她，她只是假装的。
• During the seventies,her acting career was in eclipse.在七十年代，她的表演生涯黯然失色。

21 alignment   

n.队列；结盟，联合

参考例句：

• The church should have no political alignment.教会不应与政治结盟。
• Britain formed a close alignment with Egypt in the last century.英国在上个世纪与埃及结成了紧密的联盟。

22 retooling   

v.（给…）更换工具， （给…）更换机械设备( retool的现在分词 )；改组，革新

参考例句：

• The factory is retooling to start making the new line of cars. 工厂正在重新装备以便开始制造新系列车型。 来自辞典例句
• Among her suggestions: retooling factories to focus on rebuilding America's transportation system. 她的建议包括围绕重新建设美国交通系统这个重心来重组汽车工业。 来自互联网

23 frustration   

n.挫折，失败，失效，落空

参考例句：

• He had to fight back tears of frustration.他不得不强忍住失意的泪水。
• He beat his hands on the steering wheel in frustration.他沮丧地用手打了几下方向盘。

24 aged   

adj.年老的，陈年的

参考例句：

• He had put on weight and aged a little.他胖了，也老点了。
• He is aged,but his memory is still good.他已年老，然而记忆力还好。

25 qualified   

adj.合格的，有资格的，胜任的，有限制的

参考例句：

• He is qualified as a complete man of letters.他有资格当真正的文学家。
• We must note that we still lack qualified specialists.我们必须看到我们还缺乏有资质的专家。

26 viable   

adj.可行的，切实可行的，能活下去的

参考例句：

• The scheme is economically viable.这个计划从经济效益来看是可行的。
• The economy of the country is not viable.这个国家经济是难以维持的。

27 depressed   

adj.沮丧的，抑郁的，不景气的，萧条的

参考例句：

• When he was depressed,he felt utterly divorced from reality.他心情沮丧时就感到完全脱离了现实。
• His mother was depressed by the sad news.这个坏消息使他的母亲意志消沉。

28 structural   

adj.构造的，组织的，建筑（用）的

参考例句：

• The storm caused no structural damage.风暴没有造成建筑结构方面的破坏。
• The North American continent is made up of three great structural entities.北美大陆是由三个构造单元组成的。

29 segregated   

分开的； 被隔离的

参考例句：

• a culture in which women are segregated from men 妇女受到隔离歧视的文化
• The doctor segregated the child sick with scarlet fever. 大夫把患猩红热的孩子隔离起来。

30 affluent   

adj.富裕的，富有的，丰富的，富饶的

参考例句：

• He hails from an affluent background.他出身于一个富有的家庭。
• His parents were very affluent.他的父母很富裕。

31 chaos   

n.混乱，无秩序

参考例句：

• After the failure of electricity supply the city was in chaos.停电后，城市一片混乱。
• The typhoon left chaos behind it.台风后一片混乱。

32 determined   

adj.坚定的；有决心的

参考例句：

• I have determined on going to Tibet after graduation.我已决定毕业后去西藏。
• He determined to view the rooms behind the office.他决定查看一下办公室后面的房间。

33 affected   

adj.不自然的，假装的

参考例句：

• She showed an affected interest in our subject.她假装对我们的课题感到兴趣。
• His manners are affected.他的态度不自然。