LaDonna Miller and her mother are looking forward to mayor-elect Rahm Emanuel keeping his campaign promise to help make the city safer – in actuality and perception.
LaDonna Miller and her mother are looking forward to mayor-elect Rahm Emanuel keeping his campaign promise to help make the city safer – in actuality and perception.
Shortly after Emanuel was elected, he recalled a conversation he had with Miller following the Chicago Defender’s mayoral debate at the DuSable Museum. It was backstage after the event that he met her and that learned Miller did not use public transportation to get to school everyday because she didn’t feel safe commuting on the city buses across town. Additionally, she didn’t feel safe in her neighborhood.
Miller commutes from her home in Roseland to attend King College Prep H.S. in the Bronzeville community. For her, using Chicago Transit Authority is simply not an option so her mother drives her daily.
Emanuel vowed to address the uptick in violent crime and help to quell perceptions of not feeling safe in some of the city’s neighborhoods.
“I want students like LaDonna to concentrate on their studies, not their safety,” a newly elected Emanuel said publicly.
With his choice for the city’s top cop job announced this week, residents like Miller are hoping things change.
“It’s not safe over here,” the 17-year-old said of her community and the Chicago Transit Authority.
As a freshman she was pick-pocketed during her commute home from school, riding the No. 4 Cottage Grove bus. And she said other crimes often happen in her community.
Her mother, also named LaDonna, shares her daughter’s anxiety about public safety.
The single mother of two daughters said she has was unnerved by the 2007 shooting death of Julian High School student Blair Holt aboard a CTA bus and is aware of other incidents that have occurred since then.
“That caused me to say no I didn’t want her to feel like she couldn’t get to school safely,” LaDonna Miller said of her daughter.
Every morning she drops her teen off at high school and takes her younger daughter to elementary school. At dismissal time – which can be late for daughter LaDonna who is very active at King – mom picks her girls up. It gives them all peace of mind.
“I see quite often children are being picked up and transported by their parents, because of safety reasons,” the mother said. “There’s a real big need for safety…in schools.”
Copyright 2011 Chicago Defender
About Post Author
