>> Hello and thanks for joining us on Chicago tonight.

I'm Brandis Friedman.

Here's what we're looking at.

The Trump administration has record called millions in federal grants.

Chicago organizations are feeling the impact.

Hear from the author of a new book arguing a very different reason for gun violence.

My main concern was.

>> 11, person.

>> And remembering George Ryan, the former governor with a complicated legacy from died last week.

>> Now to some of today's top stories, another member of the Illinois congressional delegation makes it official.

Congresswoman Jan Schakowsky will not run for a 15th term.

She Koski has represented her Northside in north Suburban district for the last 26 years.

Championing rights for the LGBTQ community supporting Barack Obama early in his race for president and opposing the war in Iraq side, her announcement sets off a free for all for a coveted seat representing an overwhelmingly Democratic district.

26 year-old because ALA announced in March that she would run for the seat April was Chicago's least deadly single month in more than a decade.

The Police Department's monthly crime stats show that the 20 homicides throughout the city last month.

We're also the fewest for any April since 1962.

April of 2024, saw 38 homicides and there were 53 in April of 2023. so far in 2025.

116 homicides reflects a 24% decline compared to the first 4 months of 2024.

CPD says shootings and shooting victims are also down compared to last year, speaking at a separate event today, Mayor Brandon Johnson credited a holistic approach.

>> It's not just because of one entity is because of this.

The collective work making sure we're investing in housing.

That's how we build safer communities.

Investing in our small businesses.

That's why I put forth a 1.2, 5 billion dollar investment for housing and economic development.

Those 2 components together is how we build better together.

>> And we'll have more on gun violence later in the program with the director of the University of Chicago Crime Lab.

A former chief of staff to Mayor Richard India, daily and senior vice president of the Obama presidential Center.

Lori Healey has died.

Her family says the 65 year-old died after a battle with pancreatic Healy also served on the board of the City Club of Chicago.

In a statement, former Mayor Daley called her, quote, a brilliant leader whose tireless spirit and deep commitment to public service set her apart from major civic developments to international events.

Lori's clarity of vision and gift for collaboration made her an essential force in our city's most important achievements.

Up next, the impact of the Trump administration's latest round of moves to slash funding for organization with nationwide impact.

That's right.

After this.

>> Chicago tonight is made possible in part why the Alexandria and John Nichols family.

The gym and K maybe family.

The Pope Brothers Foundation.

And the support of these donors.

>> The federal agency tasked with dispatching more than 200,000 workers to serve at local organizations across the country is the latest to face cuts under the Trump administration.

Americorps was directed to terminate nearly 400 million dollars in grants.

Roughly 34 million of which are invested in Illinois.

Local organizations are speaking out saying the decision will have serious consequences for volunteers and communities.

Joining us now are Patricia Rivera, the founder of Chicago hopes for kids which supports students and families experiencing homelessness.

Row, the president of a safe Haven, a group that offers comprehensive approaches to addressing homelessness.

And via zoom marked pain, the executive director of public Allies, Chicago, which helps underrepresented emerging leaders with pathways to education and careers.

Thanks to all of you for joining us.

Row.

Starting with you first, please.

How do organizations like yours use the AmeriCorps program to support your work?

>> So the programs for important her work as it.

Provides us with services firm professionals who are dedicating up to a year their time sometimes to your at times to help build capacity for not-for-profit foundations.

So put quite simply.

They come in and they do work that we otherwise would not be able to get done.

Because we can afford the position funding for that position would not be available to our general revenue funding.

So it's really a great program that allowed of in our organization.

We had master level.

Americorps volunteers coming in, helping build tools to better serve our clients stay.

We're working on HR program say we're working on there are ways to define the metrics of how we serve people and understanding how those those services had impact on individual lives.

>> You've said this will have a domino effect in communities.

How so?

they're just taking a look at stake in the slash-and-burn attitude towards the position that >> saying, well, we're paying for this resource to this agency.

Won't.

The agency is a not-for-profit foundation that brings homeless services treatment house saying and job training to individuals.

These individuals are working on key program.

So make us that will build our capacity do that better to provide better services have a better service delivery system.

Overall.

And it allows us to explore projects that we otherwise could not do.

>> What other benefits are there to organizations that bring on AmeriCorps workers when it comes to budgeting resources.

>> But you resort I mean that that's the largest.

I mean, some of these individuals we could not afford to bring on.

I mean, quite quite honestly, it We've had graduate level students come in that are taking a year off of their career path to come in to make a social impact.

They don't work for a lot of money.

They work for a stipend.

So for when we take a look at the state, we're building program stat.

Trickle down to the community.

They were helping those resources that trickle down to the community.

Most are resources that we we couldn't do without or without kind of program you do with Patricia Rivera, how are volunteers that Chicago hopes for kids responding to this?

>> Ok, well, we have a different type of volunteer.

They're a direct service volunteer through the national and state program.

And those volunteers are able to do direct service with students.

So are program mainly focuses on providing after school help, especially in literacy and enrichment for children who are experiencing homelessness.

We actually going to homeless shelters and the AmeriCorps members often our one on one with the student helping them improve their literacy skills, helping them do their homework.

And then providing a Richmond activities for the children.

So we have a group of students up to maybe 15 with AmeriCorps volunteers who are there usually for afternoons a week working with students as well as community volunteers.

But the mayor, of course, people were really helping us with that direct service every single day to provide consistency to the children.

They also get training in trauma, informed care because these are children who have had experiences with homelessness, which is really extremely difficult and, you know, it's kind of an emotional.

What do I want to say?

Emotional time for the kids in terms of trying to fit into a new school, sometimes to a new place where they don't have anything that they've had before.

So if volunteers are experiencing cut says Yorick organization, you able to to help them in any way and without them, then what happens?

>> Of all those services that you just named that are not being provided?

Well, we have to really changed.

>> The way we focus our program.

We still want to provide literacy services, but it won't be one-on-one.

Maybe it would be small groups will have to get a lot more community volunteers in the past before we had an AmeriCorps program, we were not able to provide the consistency that really has really helped him pack the children and help them do much better in school.

We've had volunteers that have only been able to give us like one afternoon a week rather than for afternoons a week.

We'll also have to really change our summer program because that really depends on our direct service volunteers.

We're going to try and get more community volunteers and we actually depend on our board as well to help us out during this time.

Hopefully I imagine recruiting recruiting community volunteers.

That's that's another project, which means and your staff would have to take Mark Payne, you're an alum of the program.

What drives someone to sign up to become an AmeriCorps volunteer?

>> Thank I am the law mom and a long, proud alum of a 1996 public allies.

Chicago has been around since 1993. and since 1993, we have graduated over 1000 diversion leaders.

So we have 1000 alone in the city from our program in the city of Chicago and represented over 400 nonprofits.

So what would drive somebody to say that they care about the civic life of Chicago that they want to serve and lead Chicago.

So that's what drives And we care about our neighborhoods.

We care that we look at neighborhoods from the asset based lands.

We care about schools.

We care about health clinics and we care about leaders that you normally would not think would be leaders need that extra step.

That's why people join public allies.

Chicago.

>> And what it one of the volunteers themselves, what they take away from the experience with the game.

>> You know, they First of all, they game one day serve nonprofit or government agency for 10 months.

And so for 4 days a week they serve under leaders, leaders who are working every day to make changes.

Systemic changes in Chicago.

And during that time they work in schools.

They work in health clinics and they take away how to learn about budgets.

They learn about integrity, learn about asset base, work to learn about public safety, public health.

It's an organization that really focuses on the skills, the gifts that you need to become a leader in serve Chicago in a lot of our allies.

They serve nationwide.

We have 10,000 nationwide, our CEO Denise Tyrrell is doing an amazing job of continuing so of continuing this program and making sure that is strong and it was a redundant founded by Michelle Obama.

>> As well.

And so I want to I want to asking question because we've not a lot of lawsuits challenging the Trump administration's executive orders.

>> is there any recourse for AmeriCorps?

What have you heard anything yet?

We've seen a lot of lawsuits varying varying organizations knee a cheese stages are filing lawsuits because, you know, 3rd of executive branch's ability.

>> To cut this program, a congressionally funded program at debate across the board all over.

>> And so you're going to see a lot more lawsuits.

Team Kelly prompt as the impact to the organizations waiting for those lawsuits to work their way through or just even re-engage these individuals to get this point is the damage already done?

If if you've had to let go of your volunteers, the damage is done.

But mean, I think another thing that was brought is that.

>> Volunteers who comments sometimes go into the field after working in AmeriCorps four-year to 10 months hurt here.

Sometimes state become the new leaders in the field.

And I in that whole aspect was totally that gets totally lost.

When you do something like this because now they individuals who would consider doing it may not think it's a viable program be able to rely on Patricia.

We've got about 20 seconds left.

What's next for you all as you navigate this?

Well, we're really concerned about the children.

So what we want to do is get our community volunteers together and see what we can do.

>> To continue.

The programming were also been a support.

Anything that can be done on a state or national level to try and bring the funding back, OK, that's where we'll have to leave it.

We're out of time.

Gang Mark Monroe, Patricia Rivera and Mark Payne, thanks to all of you for joining.

Thank Best of luck to you.

Thank you.

Up next, a new framework for tackling gun violence.

>> The U.S. gun homicide rate is 26 times higher than other developed countries for decades.

Conservatives and liberals have fiercely debated what drives the nation's gun violence epidemic.

But a new book called Unforgiving Places.

The unexpected origins of American gun violence says neither side has a quite right and suggests a new pathway to stop these acts of violence before they start.

Joining us now is yen's lead big move.

It WIC director at the University of Chicago Crime Lab.

I apologize in the author of Unforgiving Places.

Thank you so much.

For you explain.

There are sort of 2 types of conventional wisdom about what causes gun violence.

What are those yet?

So I think the main argument, book is that we haven't made more progress on this problem of gun violence in America.

>> Because we've largely misunderstood conventional wisdom on the right for a long time.

He's been that gun violence is due to morally bad people who aren't afraid of whatever the criminal justice system is going to do to them.

>> And that leads you to think that the only solution is to disincentivize gun violence by threatening people with bigger criminal justice sticks.

On the left.

Most people think the problem of gun violence is mostly due to bad economic conditions.

People just desperate to feed themselves to feed their families and lovely to think that the only thing you can do to address the problem, he's to disincentivize it by improving the alternatives to crime, jobs programs and social social programs.

And the thing that the left and the right, even though they disagree on so many different things.

The thing that the left and the right implicitly agree on here is that before anybody pulls the trigger, they're thinking carefully about the pros and cons, the consequences what's going to happen before they do it.

And that's not what most gun Violence in Chicago or in America more generally.

You know, when you look at most shootings in the city, you can see that most of them are in their arguments.

The crimes of passion, not crimes, a profit recognizing that range is one of the most powerful of all human passions.

So it's it's time in the spur of the moment thinking that I go sideways and ends in a tragedy because someone's got a gun.

And that's not the moment when any of us are really responding.

New incentives very much.

We often hear acpd referring to as a beef, right, like a beast that that just escalates and gets out of hand and before you know it so much because someone in that beat had a gun.

>> We have the tragedies that we that we talk about so much.

Cdc data shows that there was a 44% increase in firearm related homicides nationally between March 2020 in October 2021, why did we see those high numbers during the pandemic?

Yeah, I think what we saw during the pandemic, I think it's very consistent with this idea that most gun violence is is arguments not economically motivated, premeditated.

You know, if you >> think about what we all saw over the course the COVID pandemic.

There were a bunch of things that made very clear that the cold that the pandemic put everybody on edge.

You know, you remember before the pandemic, we were not in the world in which videos of people punching each other out on plans was a regular thing right?

Motor vehicle accidents skyrocketed during the pandemic as well.

And I think rise in shootings was very much of of that pattern as well.

The book addresses the ripple effect that gun violence can have on different cities.

What's the impact of gun violence on cities?

Populations?

>> Yeah, I've I've really come to think of gun violence as the problem that sits upstream and every other challenge that cities like Chicago face.

Oh, my University of Chicago colleague Steve Levitt wrote a paper many years ago that showed that every murder that happens in a city reduces the city's population on I-70, people.

So that's fewer people moving in and more people moving out you know, I don't know how many people know this, but the city of Chicago has lost fully million people since 1958.

That's a lot of people now gun violence is not the only thing that's causing people to leave the city.

But as one of them really important drivers and when a city loses a million people that makes everything else in the city is trying to do so much harder, right?

It makes it harder to pay for schools for better mental health services for economic development A Kuala Cross, the south and West sides.

And so I think I really come to think that solving to gun violence problem is just so important for making it possible to solve these other city challenges.

He also argued that the term crime is unhelpful.

What's wrong with that word?

Yeah, I think crime to me is as unhelpfully broad is the word disease.

You know, if you think about how big of a problem is disease or what we do to solve disease?

depends on whether we're talking about pneumonia versus cancer versus COVID versus something else.

Right.

And I think similarly, you know, crime captures everything from jaywalking in shoplifting to murder.

And I think the term just leads us to be very confused about what the problem is that we're talking about and what the solution is that we should be thinking about because they're very different across different types of crops.

And you write that up, of course, because of that spectrum, right while shoplifting in some of these quality of life crimes aren't great.

They're bad.

Murder is a completely different sort of level of devastation.

And the thing that we know the the public cares most about from the public's perspective, gun violence is the crime problem.

This is something that you can see very clearly in the data over and over again.

You also proposed solutions.

>> What are some of those?

Yeah, I think the way that I've come to think of for 100 years, we thought about the problem is being all about changing incentives, right?

And I think we very, very different approach and the way that I came start thinking very differently about solutions was I was in the juvenile detention center on the west side of Chicago many years ago talking to a Steph leader there.

He said he always tells the kids in there.

If I could give you back 10 minutes of your lives, none of you would be here.

I think that's a very, very profound kind of reframing about the nature of the problem that we're trying to solve.

And so I think there 2 sorts of things that we can do to solve the problem.

One is we've learned a lot over the last several years about what sorts of social programs can change, what kids bring with them into these really difficult 10 minute windows and very unforgiving neighborhood environments right time, help them better navigate these hard situations.

And the other thing that we can do is we can make situations that so many kids in cities like Chicago face much more forgiving.

You know, part of that is what we think of normally as part of the criminal justice systems response to gun violence like police and community violence, intervention, nests, but also things that you wouldn't even think of as being related to gun violence and also things like zoning stores in neighborhoods cleaning up abandoned lots and turning them into pocket parks.

All of those sorts of urban design, things create more of what urban planners call eyes on the street that turned out to be remarkably helpful and remarkably important in getting other adults around to interrupt young people when they're in these 10 minute windows that can sometimes escalate tragedy.

And you say that like each of those steps, while one of them might reduce crime by 20% and another by 30% may not sound like a lot.

But before, you know, you've added a pallet of potential Exactly.

I think one of the key things that I've come to realize about this problem is like we're never going to have like the polio vaccine for gun violence.

There's never going to be one single thing that you push that button and the violence goes away.

I can.

Progress is gonna be like the way we made progress on reducing motor vehicle deaths.

I think it's going to be doing a bunch of things that each address, the problem by 10, 2030%.

And you add that up and you're talking about transformative change.

We've got 30 seconds left because one of the things that you mentioned do you explain that addressing the proliferation of guns in this country?

It's highly unlikely.

Yeah, a I think, you know, where 400 million guns in the country, 330 million people go.

There's guns are going anywhere I think the key point, the book is optimistic.

Gun violence is guns islands.

If the gun situation in America isn't changing anytime soon.

The good news is that we have another path to make real progress on this, which is to reduce the willingness of people to use guns to hurt one another a world that we're just saturated with And you also say it costs next to nothing a lot less if you can implement some of these.

And obviously worth the return on investment for whatever, whatever it is.

Alright, guns, Lou big, thank you so much for joining us.

Thanks so much for having me on.

Again.

The book is called Unforgiving Places.

Up next, remembering former Governor George Ryan.

But first, a look at the weather.

Former Illinois Governor George Ryan died last week.

His complicated legacy includes putting a moratorium on the death penalty in Illinois when he was governor after voting in favor of it early in his legislative career.

Ryan also served more than 5 years in federal prison on a corruption conviction relating to when he was Illinois.

Secretary of state in Twenty-twenty, Ryan appeared on Chicago tonight to discuss his book on the Death penalty here.

He talks about why he commuted the sentences of everyone on Illinois's death row.

My main concern was.

>> The execution of an innocent person.

And there was there was a lot of people that were very close that work in a and almost got too.

I didn't want to leave saying that and the paper the next day and some had been executed, that he was innocent, found innocent.

But it was too late for so as I said, the only thing that I could really do come 167, people lights.

So nobody got out prison.

Everybody was committed life in prison without And I thought sure still think that I did the right thing.

And I want I do it again.

If I Governor how do you want to be remembered ultimately you were nominated for the Nobel Prize.

>> For your moratorium and the commutation of sentences.

Is this your legacy?

>> That you look at Illinois, I mean, they did adopt the criminal justice reforms after you're gone and then the death penalty is abolished in 2011.

Do you feel vindicated by all that?

>> Well, I don't know about that.

leave that up to story and with my legs, but I know that the >> it.

>> Commute Asians thing that I had to really think about time and the but I you know, you met in person about my book.

took a long time to write think about it.

And I only hope another still.

28 states that have the death penalty gave us a good night and And I think there are a couple of fellows executed today or yesterday in the federal prison over We've got to do away with the death penalty in 2. that is not an intern fashion and and to just kind of arbery.

>> Former Governor George Ryan died on Friday at the age of 91.

And that's our show for this Monday night.

Join us tomorrow night at 5, 30 10.

Now for all of us here at Chicago tonight.

I'm Brandis Friedman.

Thank you for watching.

Have a good >> Closed caption is made possible by Robert a and Clifford law offices, a Chicago personal injury and wrongful death that supports