tv CNN Newsroom CNN August 22, 2009 10:00pm-11:00pm EDT
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water. get out of the water people. we had between 50 and 80 rescues that took place in north carolina, in the wrightville beach area. this is just an example of how strong those waves are. he did tell us they did eventually shut down that beach around 2:30 this afternoon. richard, thank you very much for that i-report. we love them. keep them coming at ireport.com. hurricane bill, hurricane 1. it is about 220-plus mile as way from the coastline now, making its closest approach overnight as you're sleeping. that's some good news but we could see tropical storm-force winds out in the cape, nantucket. also into martha's vineyard. be aware that there could be some power outages as a result. forecast track is moving north now. it's going to be curving to the north and east late tonight. it could be making a run for nova scotia by tomorrow morning as a category 1 storm. of course, that will cause some damage in addition to all of that rough surf throughout the area. the showers and thunderstorms
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have been heavy not really from bill but from the cold front that's keeping bill at bay. check out these pictures out of norfolk, virginia. earlier today, heavy downpours caused a lot of flash flooding throughout the area. this was common in parts of new jersey into pennsylvania, also into maryland as well as virginia. so use a lot of caution throughout the weekend if you're still trying to travel around. don? >> thank you, jacqui. now to the harsh facts about chicago. so far this year nearly 300 people have been murdered in that city. 258 were killed by guns. more than 5,000 handguns have been taken off the street. add to that, 232 assault weapons. you get the point. police say homicides are down slightly. but that's after a stunning murder rate in 2008. keep in mind, this year isn't over yet. let's go to "chicago's deadly streets." summer is hot in chicago.
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people are looking for relief. not just from stifling temperatures -- >> it's bad. it's real trouble. it's too much violence here. >> it's sad. i would rather be in the country. the city is not for us. >> reporter: relief from the heat of gunfire and a wave of violence gripping the city streets. >> wbgn news at 9:00 -- a teenage girl is in critical condition tonight. hurt in a possible drive-by shooting on the south side. >> reporter: it is a war zone. consider this -- this year 287 u.s. troops have been killed in afghanistan. 113 in iraq. in chicago, 293 people have been killed. 69 of those were under the age of 21. most from the city's south and west sides. >> our young folks here have been the property as they resort to pick unweapop weapons and tr
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resolve their differences. >> reporter: 2008 was one of the city's deadliest in recent years, taking drastic steps, police brass saturated some city streets with s.w.a.t. teams. arming officers with more firepower. still, the violence and the shootings persist. so we go to chicago to talk solutions and to hear from people living and dying in chicago's deadly streets. like matthew ramirez, gunned down on his way home from a friend's house. he was just 16 years old. >> someone went out there and took away his ability to make his mark on the world. >> reporter: at just 18, terrell bo bosley, a self-taught six string bass player and drummer, was shot and killed outside a church. >> my baby suffered for what reason? he wasn't in a gang, didn't sell drugs. didn't do nothing. he was a college student. >> reporter: and then blair holt, who died a hero at 16,
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throwing himself on top of a classmate when shots rang out on a city bus. >> there's nothing in this life left that can hurt me like that, than losing my son. i'm sure all of the mothers here would agree, there is nothing else in life that will break you worse than your child being snatched from you like that. >> reporter: kermit deland jr., 21. dreamt of fame but not the fame he got over his shooting death. >> my son was killed three days before christmas, an hour after i spoke to him on the phone. >> reporter: christina waters, caught in the crossfire leaving a church function, shot in the head. the 18-year-old survived. >> she has a second lease on life. >> is he right? it takes you back to always just the raw pain of the moment. >> every time we talk during the day, it breaks me down all the time. >> i'm just as numb as that night, the afternoon when they called me and she told me blair
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had been shot. you talk about the worst feeling in the world, instant trauma to the emotions. >> and you know, when i think back to what kind of child i had, it hurts me so bad. it hurts so bad. >> reporter: most of you are carrying some sort of memento or something. what are you guys carrying? >> my son was killed 3 1/2 years ago, and as you can see, i still have his cell phone on. i just can't bear to turn it off because i keep having that stupid little thought in the back of my head when he walks back through the door, if he doesn't have a phone, he's just going to die, you know. >> reporter: does it ever ring? >> i leave it on for his friends, you know, for them to text him and, you know, they text him a lot. >> reporter: what are some of the text messages say? do you get the text messages? >> just poems. i love you. i miss you. things like that. >> reporter: you can read it. do you want to read it? >> i don't want to lose anybody else.
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this hurts a lot. i love you. >> reporter: you brought something of your -- >> i brought a program, yeah. obituary and also a newspaper article because he told me he would be in the paper. >> reporter: this is how he was in the paper? >> yep. >> reporter: college student is city's 500th homicide of the ye year. this isn't how you expected your son to be in the paper? >> uh-uh. >> reporter: tell me your story. >> terrell was a bass player, gospel bass player. he was at a church coming out to help his friend get out of the car and someone shot terrell. >> i drove him to high school for four years. i drove him every day so he wouldn't have to take public transportation. and the one place that i never worried about was church. i never worried about him being at church. and to get a phone call that your son got shot coming out of church, it was just unbelievable.
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>> i get a call from a complete stranger. they're coming -- her and her friend were coming from a church function, and i get a call, you know, on my cell phone. it has her name. so i'm, you know, calling -- calling to get an update. how is your afternoon going? it's 5:00 in the afternoon. a complete stranger telling me that my daughter is -- is laying in the alley bleeding. >> we almost lost christina. i feel very lucky that we still have her. >> if i can say anything to that parent whose child caused my child to lose his life, i hope you never feel like i feel. >> their stories are just the beginning of what we're going to show you tonight. i spent a night embedded with
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chicago's cease-fire. they took me to k-town, which is short for killer town. you will see what i saw. but first, this -- >> she fell right here. that was her head. that's where her head was with the blood. >> our cameras were still rolling after an interview with a chicago official when we got word a 15-year-old girl was shot in a drive-by. i will take you to that scene. plus, your feedback tonight on twitter, facebook, myspace or ireport.com. we want your comments, your solutions and your questions. by v er tizir dreams. during the lexus golden opportunity sales event, you can do both. special lease offers now available on the 2009 es 350. tom. now, i know the catering business but when i walked in here i wasn't sure what i needed. i'm not sure what i need. tom showed me how to use mifi to get my whole team working online, on location.
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director t.o. hardigan asked me to come to chicago to meet some of the young men they mentor and some who refused their help. our first stop, killer town. t.o. hardman knows chicago's deadly streets and takes us for a ride in a neighborhood so dangerous, it's been dubbed killer town. >> if you come up through killer town and people don't know who you are, we can get shot right now for filming in this car riding down the street. we can get shot. >> reporter: hardiman grew up out here but now runs cease-fire illinois, a nonprofit that tries to get troubled youth, gangs and drug dealers out of the neighborhoods. >> chances are i know most of the people in the areas if i was to get out of the truck and say, this is tio, i'm doing something with cnn, they'll give us a pass. >> but just for riding here, we're taking our lives in our hands. >> you're taking the chance, don. i have to be honest with you. people shoot and they ask questions later. there's no method to the madness.
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>> madness, like a child selling drugs. so you're out here at 8 years old. how old are you now again? >> 17. >> 17. what was the routine? what did you do? >> well, i walk up and down the streets and i see somebody and i say, like i have myself, i say, is that what you want? and i say, sir. it was fun at first. and then you keep on flipping and then you usually get tired of it. >> did you get caught? >> yeah, i got caught. >> yet the lure of the streets is like a drug, so powerful, it becomes a way of life for teenagers like bill. why is it so easy to fall into the violence, drugs, guns. why is it so easy? >> money. money.
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a lot of the young cats like a lot of money, you know what i'm saying. want to be like a rap on tv, you know what i'm saying. >> what's the result of that? >> getting locked up or o.d.'ing, chasing a murder. >> the almighty dollar, the common thread. we call this young man dave. he asked us to conceal his identity. so what do you do for a living? >> sell drugs. >> you sell drugs? why? >> i'm my own boss. ain't nothing like being your own boss. >> you're your own boss but you know people, including your brother, who have been shot. >> yeah, i've been shot. >> that doesn't happen to me on my job. >> that's the life i chose. i chose this life. a wild life.
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check it, two, three, honey every two weeks and i can check two, three hundred in one sitting for one person. >> in one night, how much? >> that ain't even one night. one night probably about faster. >> $5,000 or $6,000 in one night? >> or better. some people get $20,000, $30,000. i'm a small player but i'm eating. >> what's the violence for it? what is the reason for shooting? why do so many people get shot? >> they get [ bleep ] the traffic doesn't flow my way. you see, it's all about the almighty dollar. >> so if you kill somebody, you get rid of them, that's more money for you? i don't mean you specifically. >> not me specifically. but some people. >> explain it to me. what do you mean by that?
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>> [ bleep ] cut the middle man out. some [ bleep ] in the way. some people have to go down for me to get on top. >> the crude business and why some men like bill are working with cease-fire to turn their lives around. are you done with it? >> yeah. >> for real? >> seriously. >> why do you say that? why should i believe you? >> i can only show you. you see these guys out riding their bicycles and kids, kids that are coming up. what's your advice, if you have any for them? >> what's my advice? man, stay in school, school is where it's at. you're not going to make nothing in the schools. you ain't going to see none of it. >> just take a look at what one
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chris mallett. he's been appointed by mayor daley to specifically address solutions to violence in the city by young people. and here's just a glimpse of why they need him. in chicago there is no hiding the violence anymore. our i-reporter writes in his report submitted on august 12th, "for the past several nights, residents of the yuch town neighborhood of chicago have been experiencing gang rioting beginning around 9:00 p.m. last night, this reportedly led to three being wounded from gunfire. send the n word to the hospital, beat him to a pulp. that's what they yell. the i-reporter says, i called 911 at 9:10, and again at 9:15 i began filming and i called 911 again at 9:25. the police arrived some time after the third call.
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as this is going down on chicago's north side, i'm on the south side. hello, chris. >> how are you? >> just about to tape an interview with the man the mayor hand picked to stop youth and gang violence, chris mallett. what's different about chicago that percentagewise it has so much of this happening now? that's what i can't understand. >> right. i think if you look at other cities, other cities aren't necessarily counting. i think one of the things about chicago is that we make ourselves vulnerable. we count how many young people have been killed. we make it public. we're not trying to hide records. >> what do you mean by counting? >> by counting. >> right. >> if los angeles has 158 people shot, chicago has -- the numbers are the numbers. i don't understand. >> los angeles has not had that many. new york has not had that many. a homicide is a shoid. a shooting is a shooting. so what is different here?
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what is going on here that needs to be fixed that's not happening in other cities? that's my question. >> i think if i had the answer to that, or if anyone had the answer to that, we wouldn't be doing this interview right now. i think it's something that we're trying to get to the root of. i think there needs to be a substantial movement by all chicagoans, including the media. >> in the middle of our interview with a city official charged with stopping this violence, we got word another shooting, a teenager shot in the head, caught in the crossfire. >> she went to shield a child that she was bending down, and, of course, she was struck by a bullet. >> a 15-year-old high school sophomore, who lives just doors from the alderman's home. >> and i believe that our kids have no sense of what -- how important life is. >> that's unique to chicago? >> no, i think it's all over the world or all over the united states. i think it's in many other places besides chicago. it just has run so rampant in our city. >> so this is a crime scene, and that's your house.
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>> that's my house right here. >> did you hear -- were you here when it happened? >> no, i was down at the mccormack place for the 2016. >> the 2016. that's how chicagoans refer to the olympics they're so desperately working to secure. and random shootings are not the kind of publicity city leaders want. but unless the gang bangers listen -- >> put your guns down. put your guns down. we're out here. you know, we're shooting innocent babies. put your guns down. >> and police get a handle on this, chicago's hope of olympic gold in danger of being tarnished. that 15-year-old girl who was shot during my conversation with chris mallette, her name is takara swain. we spoke with her cousin, who was right there when the shooting happened. >> we heard the gunshot and we thought they were fire crackers. we looked around, are those fire crackers? my mom was like, no, that's a gunshot. i was about to run but i remembered that my cousin was right here and i turned around
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and she was on the ground. >> we spoke with takara's family. she is still in the hospital tonight in critical but stable condition. the shooter has not been caught. stopping the violence on chicago's deadly streets. we take you to the round table of chicago's cease-fire, where gang members work out their differences. plus, secretary of education arne duncan sits down with me to discuss solutions. chicago's deadly streets, let's stop the violence. if you're using other moisturizing body washes, you might as well be. you see, their moisturizer sits on top of skin, almost as if you're wearing it. only new dove deep moisture has nutriummoisture, a breakthrough formula with natural moisturizers... that can nourish deep down. it's the most effective natural nourishment ever. new dove deep moisture with nutriummoisture. superior natural nourishment for your skin.
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i just looked up and i heard pop, pop, pop, pop, pop. >> the crack of gunshot, the wailing of sirens. sounds all too familiar. the perpetrators and the victims, all too young. tonight, the grief, the anger, the cause, the solutions on chicago's deadly streets. going into troubled neighborhoods and interrupting violence before it happens is
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half the task for chicago's cease-fire. i had an opportunity to sit down with the staff, along with a couple of the young men who had benefited from cease-fire's intervention. this looks like your boardroom to me. is this the board -- once they come in, once have you these two guys to come in and get it together, what happens after that? do they come back and sit around this table and talk? >> yeah, and they bring with us how are we going to meet the needs of the other guys still out there? how are we going to get them to come in? or if they're not ready to come in, how are we going to keep a constant flow of communication and able to stop them from making the decision to shoot someone. >> easier said than done. >> right. >> well, if you keep your eye -- eyes open and your ears to the street and we try to catch everything on the front end, if we can catch it on the front end, it's simple. >> what does that mean, on the front end?
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>> on the front end, it means if i hear about them two having an argument and i can calm them down and like, man, that's nothing. it's only a girlfriend. she's not your girlfriend. it's not worth your whole life. if we catch it on the front end, we can stop it. but on the other hand, if someone's shot, it's a more difficult mediation. >> like him. >> right. his story is an exception to the rule. he got shot august the 1st of last year. i got a phone call. when i got there, they were putting him in the ambulance. and all of his guys was heated. they was hot. so i told him that it was a blessing from god because he got shot point blank and he lived. >> why did you listen to him? >> basically, i think i really listened to him because of the fact of him bringing me -- both
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of my baby mommas in there like i said and we were laughing that they're pregnant and the situation that i was -- that was going on with me that i probably, you know, i got to be here for my kids. he made me think about -- more about my kids instead of myself. >> see, you guys know where these guys are coming from? >> yeah. >> because you've been there. >> yeah. >> do you think that makes them respect you more or listen to you more because you have been there before? >> i believe that they know where we came from, the underworld, you know. we live in a subculture, and they -- they believe that because we got out of it, there's a way out. and they need -- they need the information that we give them to get out. >> will they listen to you guys you think more? because the police department tries -- they try to do the same thing with the gang task force and all of that stuff. >> no. no. >> what the police do is oppression. you know, it's lock them up, throw away the key. that's it. that's all. what we try to do is change, let
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them know the behavior is abnormal. it's not normal to sell drugs. it's not normal too kill people. >> so when the police ride up, they scatter? >> right. >> when you ride up? >> what's up. credible messenger. >> why does that work? >> because in most of the communities that we're in, we try to get people from that area that are credible messengers that changed from the neighborhood. like what jacques was saying about me. i'm a big homey. he know i did a long stretch. he know i changed my life. i know i could have jumped back in, but i didn't. >> go ahead. >> i say, listen, we don't have solutions for the economic problems, so some -- me, myself, i don't go out there trying to figure out how to change them from selling dope all the time. i don't have nothing to substitute for what they're doing. >> here's what's interesting. spoke to the police department and they said to me, it seems to
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be what's working for you is that what needs to happen in chicago right now is not to get people to stop selling drugs, not to get people to do whatever, it's to stop the violence. >> we don't care how you eat. don't shoot. don't shoot. >> we had amazing responses from you and a lot of comments here. i want to read some of them from you. gun control is needed. the sooner we face it, the better. it is not good taking your rights away. it is about keeping safe. yougogurl says violence in this country has reached an all-time high in the world. thanks for covering this important story about chicago. another viewer writes, i live in uptown and i wish that we had more support from mayor daley. while i could move, i choose not to because i love it. send us your comments, twitter, facebook, myspace or ireport.com. we'll get them on the air. coming up -- >> it's the one area where i felt during my time in chicago we improved in so many ways. this is one area where i feel
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president obama is from chicago. so is his education secretary, arne duncan. as ceo of chicago public schools, duncan wrestled for years with the alarming rise in teenage deaths in his city. i sat down with him recently to discuss what can and should be done. when you see all of the kids, you know, all of the people who
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are killed in chicago this year, it's terrible that it happened but many of them are school-aged kids. it's happening in and around schools. solution? >> first of all, this is a devastating problem, and it's unacceptable. and kids can't learn if they don't feel safe. it's the one area where i felt during my time in chicago we improved in so many ways. this is one area where i feel like i feel like an absolute failure. >> why do you say you feel like a failure with that? >> because i look at trends, and from the time i started raising this four, five years ago when 20 students were killed, i think every year those numbers have gotten worse, not better. >> i know it's not just numbers to you. because christina waters was someone that you knew. and you know her family. >> this was by far the hardest part of my job in chicago was going to classrooms after kids were killed and trying to explain to those classmates with an empty desk what happened and why and trying to give some meaning to that.
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going to the homes of loved ones who had lost their son or daughter. going to the funerals of these children. and i'm the father of who young children. i'm always a father first. and what these families go through is just simply unimaginable to me. and these are innocent children. these are children who are going to and from school every day. these are children who are shot at 7:30 in the morning by an ak-47 in their living room, getting ready for school. these are children, blair holt, who's shot 2:30 in the afternoon on the way home on a public bus going home. this is christina waters, who thank god survived, who was shot at a church picnic on a sunday afternoon two weeks before she leaves to two to college. >> so you can name those kids by name. so then what do you do in order to help those kids back in your hometown? >> well, we have to do a number of things. first of all, we trying to put
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unprecedented resources behind creating climate where's students can be safe. money is say piece of the issue. we're looking at $400 million we want to put out on a competitive basis for those districts, those communities who are willing to tackle this courageously, tackle this head on. secondly, we have to really think more broadly. this is not just about school safety. and knock on wood, in chicago, none of these, zeros of these shootings have occurred in schools. this is all out in the community. and so while we should continue to take pride and work hard and be vigilant to make sure our schools become those safe havens, that's simply not enough. i think we've been willing to sort of stop at the front doors. and if our children can't get to and from school safely, they still can't concentrate on algebra and biology and ap physics. so we have to think about how we work with churches, how we work with community grounz, how we engage the entire community to create not just schools that are safe havens but entire neighborhoods where children don't talk about if i grow up, not when i grow up. that's just crazy to me.
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>> it's not just happens in school as far as reading, writing, arithmetic. sometimes have you to teach kids conflict resolution. do you think that should be taught in schools? if so, when? how early should it be taught? >> we have to make sure our children are fed and not hungry. we have to make sure our children can see the blackboard. and we have to make sure our children are learning conflict resolution skills and be able to interact with their peers and decrease stress rather than escalating everything. and so many of these shootings are over nothing, over absolutely nothing. and -- >> somebody stepped on my shoe or looked at me the wrong way. >> looked at me the wrong way. said the wrong thing. and to your point, no one's worked with the chern to say that's not a mortal blow. that's not a challenge to your manhood. as a matter of fact, if you're a young man, maturing young man, to pick up that gun to resolve a resoluti
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problem destroys your life and the person you shoot. >> to watch that entire interview, go to our blog, cnn.com/newsroom and click on don. it was a very interesting interview. holding president obama accountable for the deadly violence in his hometown of chicago. >> our president of the united states is from here. he knows. he's from hyde park. he knows what's going on here. and it's time for him to address this as a major issue. >> we'll look for a way to end the violence on a local and national level. my name is chef michael. and my dog bai@íy and i love to hang out in the kitchen... so she can watch me cook. you just love the aromas of beef tenderloin... and, ooh, rotisserie chicken. yes, you do. [ barks ] yeah.
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an immediate natural intervention in chicago. no one knows the need for that more than the parents of children who have been killed. many of those moms and dads were born and raised in chicago. some of them say they no longer feel safe at home. do you feel safe when you're leaving your house and when you're out in the city, if you feel unsafe, raise your hand. everybody except for you. you feel safe? >> uh-huh. i feel safe because, one, i refuse to live in fear. >> but the reality is -- >> that's the reality. that's my reality. that's my reality. i refuse to live in fear. when our son was taken from us, i told myself, what else is there to fear? >> you guys mentioning drugs.
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>> it's tied together because that's the part of the society, gangs, drugs and guns go together like baseball and apple pie in america. >> in the prison system, there's no deterrent. they go in and they come out, and it's almost like the glamourous type. everybody looks at this guy who just got out, hey, it didn't break him. so it won't break me. >> so cool. >> so they don't mind. the consequences are not there. >> what would you like to see done? is the city doing enough? are parents doing enough, the community? >> a combination of the things. i think the community has to be outraged and unfortunately, individuals don't get outraged until they become a victim. two, our president of the united states is from here. he knows. he's from hyde park. he knows what's going on here and it's time for him to address this as a major issue.
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>> it's a combination of all of the above. everybody has to band together. >> do you agree with what he says, is this a national issue now? >> oh, my god, yes. >> would you like to see the president? >> he needs to say no more. no more. >> that is the question. how realistically because i'm still kind of cynical. i don't think that we will ever live in oh, i love put the guns down kind of world. we just won't. >> but weren't we like that the day he became president. >> yeah, we were. >> didn't we ban together and come to grant park. it didn't matter if you pushed me or stepped on my foot or touched me. i had no fear of the city because we finally got an african-american president. we were a million strong in grant park. so how come we can't be a million strong for gun control? >> a lot of this is happening near schools, school-age kids. arne duncan is from here, too. and arne duncan is very
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passionate about this. what do you say to the education secretary? >> it's viewed as a national health and safety issue, which it is because the cdc has come out with four factors as to how to stem that flow of the gun violence away. it is on a national level right now, it should be taught as a curriculum in certain levels of school and elementary and in high school. >> what do you say to the world who's watching this about your son and about all of these people who are around you, who have lost or their kids were injured? >> no mother or father, sibling, grandparent, should feel like we feel. this is -- it's not easy sitting here talking about somebody who you want. you can't hold. you know, most of us who have
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lost children, we loved our kids. we had good kids. we enjoyed spending quality time with them. and it was taken senseless ly. i hope you never feel like i feel. >> our conversation about the shootings in chicago, our search for solutions, it doesn't end tonight. we remain dedicated to this story. tomorrow night, special agent in charge of the chicago office of the bureau of alcohol, tobacco, firearms and explosives joins us live, along with a former chief of the chicago police department. we'll ask them where the guns, where the drugs, all of it, where it's coming from and what is being done to get it off the streets. now time for your feedback. one of our viewers writes, there's needs to be a solution where the dealers are making money. illegal drugs will always produce killing. another viewer writes, they need to be taught what respect really is. they need to learn when someone disrespects them, it doesn't
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mean have you to shoot them. jennifer c. says, yes, teaching conflict resolution is a huge part of the answer. start in kindergarten. another viewer writes, daley does care. we need less apathy and more fashion and hope. thank you for your comments. twitter, facebook, myspace, or ireport.com. in other news tonight, she is a registered nurse who didn't have health insurance. believe it or not. then she was diagnosed with cancer. now she's a cnn hero who is saving the lives of others. a new customer wanted to insure his home turns out it was more valuable than he thought. we got him the coverage he needed. it was a good thing we did
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so what do you think? i think i'll go with the basic package. good choice. only meineke lets you choose the brake service that's right for you. and save 50% on pads and shoes. meineke. all right. it's time right now for our hero of the week. her name is faith coleman. she's a working nurse practitioner and mother of six. but like some 46 million other americans, she has no health insurance. she was also diagnosed with kidney cancer and she had to mortgage her home to pay for her
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treatment. but coleman has survived with the fierce determination to service a growing number of uninsured americans. >> i have been completely denied all insurances. i have been unemployed and basically have no income. >> and they told me i had breast cancer and i didn't have insurance, so i came here. >> if they have no insurance, and they have no money, what's going to happen to them? in 2003 i discovered that i had kidney cancer. i'm a nurse paractitioner, but had no health insurance. i was able to mortgage my house to pay for the surgery. if it can happen to me, then certainly it can happen to anybody. i'm faith coleman. i co-founded the free clinic for americans who don't have health insurance. good morning, everybody. we welcome every patient here who is uninsured and who meets
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the federal poverty guideline. >> nice to meet you. >> we have what i call controlled chaos. it is a busy, busy, go, go, go. >> two x-rays and two c.a.t. scan s. >> this is one of the best things that ever happened to me for the one main reason i can truly empathize with patients. >> any questions at all? nothing you can think of? all right. i will see you back here in two weeks. okay. awesome. good. i'm proud of you. >> we are all have the same rights. i'm sorry, the right of health care is just right up there with the rest of them. >> you can find out more about faith or any of our heroes on cnn.com/heroes and be sure to keep an eye out, in just a few weeks, we will be announcing the top ten cnn heroes of the 2009. drum roll. banks, investment firms and
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hey, why don't we use our points from chase sapphire and take a break? we can't. sure, we can. the points don't expire... ♪ there is nothing for me... ♪ there's no travel restrictions... we could leave tomorrow. we can't use them for a vacation. you can use the points for just about anything. i know... ♪ the way you look tonight ♪ chase what matters. get your new chase sapphire card at chase.com/sapphire. want to create jobs? one north carolina restaurant owner said he created 35 jobs in 3 weeks if you send stimulus money his way. he just needs a loan.
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but as cnn's christine romans reports, it's a dog eat dog world. >> reporter: dinnertime in lumberton, north carolina. >> everything good? >> reporter: restaurant owner rod renfern. >> we did a million two in 2007. it's not bad for a small town, small restaurant. >> reporter: he was 35 employees, crowded bar on weekends, a dependable banquet business. five years ago he turned saintry-old mule stable into this -- he's confident he has the ingredients to open another restaurant here, 35 miles north on i-95 in fayetteville. >> i will hire 50 people in three months if i get the money i'm looking for. >> reporter: $150,000 to be exact. >> my issue is the stimulus money everybody's talking about needs to flow through to small businesses like this one. i don't want a bailout. i just want to open the door. i will walk through it myself. >> reporter: but so far, that door is shut. we called bb & t bank, the area's biggest small business lender, and asked them why.
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turns out redferne's credit score doesn't match his confidence. a spokeswoman for bb & t, who recently paid back its own $3 billion bailout said, we would have turned him down based on his credit history. redferne admits to bumps in the road that have dinged his credit. this is the new world of lending. >> wonders are return to the old-fashioned london standards, they are making loans with the expectation that all of them are going to be repaid. >> reporter: that means making fewer loans it only the best applicants. even small business owners like redferne, who had no trouble borrowing money in the past, are being turned away. >> we sort of ended up in a chicken and egg situation where the banks don't want to make loans because the small section as a whole have been having so much trouble but small sectors cannot get the financing they need to expand. >> reporter: the number of new small business loans is less than half of what it was before the recession but the stimulus has helped. the amount of money loaned through sba's program has risen
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50% since february. however, the entrepreneur redferne doesn't have the loan, but he still has the vision. >> you look at the parking lot and you see cars. >> i see it full. >> reporter: and you see strength. >> i see it full. >> reporter: christina romans, cnn, north carolina. when we come back, i will have your feedback. i'm on the social networking sites now. you see this, this is a neck tie of one of the victims. with will tell you about this and the emotional moment of how i got it. we're back in a moment. i've helped somebody. you know, it makes me feel pretty good. we're offering a solution for a customer that maybe has to choose between paying their credit card or putting food on the table. our main objective is to reach out to the customers that are falling behind on their payments. a lot of customers are proud and happy
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that bank of america actually has a solution to help them out. i listen. that's the first thing i do is i listen. you know what, what happened? what put you in this situation? we always want to make sure that we're doing i'll go through some of his monthly expenses, if he has a mortgage payment, if he pays rent. and then i'll use all that information to try and see what kind of a payment he financially can handle. i want to help you. bank of america wants to help you through this difficult time. when they come to you and they say thank you aj, for helping me with this problem, that's where we get our joy from.
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good choice. only meineke lets you choose the brake service that's right for you. and save 50% on pads and shoes. meineke. first some quick feedback. i found this one from vicky. it's on twitter. vicky says, watching and enjoying, solutions, gun control, education. what you are doing, shining bright light on issue. thank you so much, vicky robinson for that.
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i just wanted to share a little bit of my experience there. obviously, a lot of the viewers know that i've moved here from chicago, where i worked for a number of years when i was there. the president was a state senator, and arne duncan was the school ceo. i want to tell you about an emotional moment i had -- and this is one reason the story was so important to me, because people were calling me from chicago saying, don, you've got to do something. it's crazy here. it's a war zone. this is blair holt. he was 16 years old. he died may 10th, 2007. he was buying his mom a present for making captain with the chicago fire department. i don't know if you saw her when she was grabbing the pendant saying it hurt so much. that's his mom. he died shielding a classmate on a city bus. he threw his body over her. he died a hero. anyway, his dad wears this tie. the men in the family wear this tie because they want to remember blair holt. we had guns pulled on us when we were in chicago, my producer and i. we were shooting after our photographers le
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