Rheumatoid arthritis is a disease of inflammation, so adding anti-inflammatory herbs and spices to your diet might sound like a good idea. According to the National Center for Complementary and Integrative Health (NCCIH), though, there's not enough evidence to support the use of particular herbs or spices as effective treatments for rheumatoid arthritis.
“I think we are a long way from making a recommendation to people. We are not quite there in terms of the right dose,” cautions rheumatologist Beth Jonas, MD, director of the Rheumatology Fellowship Program at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
Still, a number of herbs and spices do have anti-inflammatory properties, and, at the very least, adding them to your recipes will liven up your meals.
Here are seven herbs and spices worthy of your consideration.
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Ginger
Gingerol is the compound in ginger that gives it flavor and some of its anti-inflammatory properties. Elements in ginger were found to reduce the action of T cells, immune cells that can add to systemic inflammation, in an analysis published in the July 2015 issue of Phytotherapy Research.
Animal studies have shown that essential oils of turmeric have anti-arthritis properties. In a review published in 2013 in The AAPS Journalof curcumin, the active ingredient that gives turmeric its yellow color, researchers at the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center found that this natural remedy may have antibacterial and anti-cancer properties, as well as anti-inflammatory properties that could help with rheumatoid arthritis.
“Both turmeric and curcumin, two parts of the same plant, have very strong anti-inflammatory activity and can be used for treatment of inflammation, especially joints,” Roofener says. But she cautions that turmeric is also a blood thinner and should be avoided in large doses if you take a blood-thinning medicine. Want to try turmeric? Opt for a curry dish like this healthified chicken curry with couscous recipe.
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Green Tea
Green tea contains polyphenols, says Dr. Jonas, which could aid in reducing inflammation and protecting joints, according to research published in December 2014 in Arthritis Research & Therapy. Evidence from animal studies suggests that polyphenols, which are rich in antioxidants, may suppress the immune response. That could be important because rheumatoid arthritis is a disease in which the immune system attacks joints, causing pain and swelling, Jonas says. And you don't have to stick to plain green tea either — next time test out this recipe for iced mint green tea.
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Cinnamon
In China and India, cinnamon bark is used to make natural remedies such as medicinal powders and teas. "Cinnamon may have some properties that fight inflammation," Roofener says. "Cinnamon is a hot herb. It’s very useful for aches and pains, especially when they are worse with cold or cold weather." Researchers who published an analysis of the phytochemicals in cinnamon that help reduce inflammation theorized that cinnamon could be used for inflammation if the right concentration is determined. The findings were published in Food & Function in March 2015.
"Although fine on your cinnamon bun, if it’s overdosed, it might not be safe for pregnant women," Roofener warns. Up to 6 grams of daily use seems to be safe, but larger doses of the spice could interfere with blood clotting and blood thinner medications. For RA inflammation, cinnamon may be a good option, but in moderation. Powdered cinnamon can be added to oatmeal, or even oranges for a delicious and healthy dessert.
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Garlic
Fresh garlic can liven up any dish and may help ease rheumatoid arthritis pain. A 2013 study published in the journal Food and Chemical Toxicology noted that garlic has significant anti-inflammatory effects because it inhibits the production of pro-inflammatory substances known as cytokines. But the study found that heating garlic extract significantly reduced its anti-inflammatory properties.
Garlic can be added to many types of foods, including roasted vegetables, stir-fries, and sandwich spreads. You can also whip up this delicious roasted garlic dressing and serve over greens.
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Black Pepper
Peppers are widely used to fight pain and swelling in traditional natural remedies. For instance, capsaicin, the substance that gives hot peppers their heat, is used in gels and creams as an arthritis treatment, according to the Arthritis Foundation. Research published in the journal Natural Product Communications found that many of the anti-inflammatory properties found in capsaicin are also found in black pepper.
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Willow Bark
Willow bark has been shown to help reduce markers of inflammation, according to research published in April 2013 in Phytotherapy Research. When researchers gave a willow bark extract to 436 people with rheumatic pain or back pain for three weeks, they saw a significant reduction in pain, according to a report in the August 2013 issue of Phytomedicine.
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The Bottom Line?
"Adding herbs and spices to your diet for their anti-inflammatory properties is usually safe," Roofener says.
She advises using herbs or supplements at least two hours before or after taking your medications. And, she adds, your treatment should be personalized. Work with a health professional trained in herbal medicine, she suggests, because such a person will consider many factors, including your overall health and symptoms, before recommending specific herbs.
"When you look at herbs, it is important what they do but also for whom they are prescribed," Roofener says. "If you want to use them in high doses as medicine, make sure to check with your doctor first.”
An explosive device detonated as a bomb squad robot attempted to disarm it Sept.18. This was one of multiple devices found in a suspicious package near a train station in New Jersey. (Reuters)
An explosive device detonated as a bomb squad robot attempted to disarm it Sept.18. This was one of multiple devices found in a suspicious package near a train station in New Jersey.An explosive device detonated as a bomb squad robot attempted to disarm it Sept.18. (Reuters)
NEW YORK – The New York Police Department announced Monday that it is seeking 28-year-old Ahmad Khan Rahami in connection with Saturday’s bombing in Manhattan, though the man’s role in the incident remains unclear.
Rahami is a U.S. citizen of Afghan descent born in Afghanistan, according to the FBI. His last known address was in New Jersey, officials said.
Law enforcement officials said they were investigating whether Rahami could have been influenced by international militant groups or the ongoing conflict in his homeland.
New York Police Department spokesman J. Peter Donald announced the development on Twitter. It came after authorities took “a number of people” into custody in connection with the bombing, and their counterparts in New Jersey worked to render safe “multiple improvised explosive devices” discovered at a train station in Elizabeth just across from Staten Island.
FBI agents also launched what they termed an “operation” at an address on Elmora Street in Elizabeth. Court records show members of the Rahami family live and work at the address.
The developments sowed further concern about terrorism in the region and across the country. Police already had been investigating three weekend incidents — explosions in New York and New Jersey and a stabbing attack in Minnesota — that took place within a 12-hour period on Saturday.
About 8:45 p.m. Sunday, the FBI and the New York Police Department stopped what the bureau’s New York Field office called a “vehicle of interest” in the Manhattan bombing investigation, and took people into custody. As of early Monday, authorities said no one had been charged with a crime, and the investigation was continuing.
An FBI spokeswoman, Kelly Langmesser, gave no further details on those detained. But the Associated Press, citing government and law enforcement officials, reported that five people were questioned.
What we know about the New York explosion
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At least 29 people were injured in an explosion in the Chelsea neighborhood of New York City Sept. 17. Here's what we know so far. (Deirdra O'Regan/The Washington Post)
At least 29 people were injured in an explosion in the Chelsea neighborhood of New York City Sept. 17. Here’s what we know so far.At least 29 people were injured in an explosion in the Chelsea neighborhood of New York City Sept. 17. Here’s what we know so far. (Deirdra O'Regan/The Washington Post)
Law enforcement also combed an area around an Elizabeth, N.J., train station where a backpack with “multiple improvised explosive devices” was found.
In Elizabeth, a port city near Newark International Airport, Mayor J. Christian Bollwage said that up to five devices were discovered inside a backpack, and one of the devices — found around 8:30 p.m. Sunday — exploded as it was being disarmed, shortly after 12:30 a.m. Monday. The New Jersey Transit rail system halted rail service near Newark Airport due to the police activity. Regular service was restored before dawn.
Amtrak announced its Acela Express Northeast Regional and other services would operate with schedule modifications Monday, and passengers should be prepared for delays and cancellations.
“This could take more hours than we thought initially” to disarm the other devices, Bollwage said. Bomb technicians from the FBI, as well as New Jersey law enforcement, were processing the scene. “I’m not sure if the morning commute will be easy,” Bollwage said.
Officials said they could identify no definitive links between the disturbances — the discovery of the devices in Elizabeth, the bombing that injured 29 in Chelsea, an explosion along the route of a scheduled race in Seaside Park, N.J., and a stabbing that wounded nine in a St. Cloud, Minn., mall.
Each incident in its own right raised the possibility of terrorist connections, prompting federal and local law enforcement to pour major resources into determining exactly what happened and why. Officials said they were looking aggressively for links in the New York and New Jersey cases.
A news agency linked to the Islamic State claimed Sunday that the suspect in Minnesota, who was fatally shot by an off-duty police officer, was “a soldier” of the militant group, though there was no confirmation of what connection the man may have had.
A claim of responsibility is no guarantee that the terrorist group directed or even inspired the attack, and authorities said they were still exploring a precise motive. The terrorist group made no similar claims about the New York and New Jersey incidents.
In New York, authorities said there was no evidence that the mysterious Saturday-night explosion was motivated by international terrorism, though they confirmed that the bombing was intentional.
“This is the nightmare scenario,” Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo (D) said.
Earlier Sunday, New York’s governor said nearly 1,000 police officers and National Guard troops would be sent to bus stops, train stations and airports, as investigators with the New York Police Department, the FBI, and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives worked to identify the person or people responsible for the explosion.
One law enforcement official said that while it was looking like the New Jersey and New York blasts “might be connected,” investigators still didn’t have any hard evidence. The official also said that only one of the three pipe bombs in New Jersey detonated.
Those injured in the Saturday-night blast in Chelsea had been released from hospitals by Sunday.
The Manhattan explosion occurred about 8:30 p.m. Saturday in the area of West 23rd Street between Sixth and Seventh avenues, injuring 29 people as it hurled glass and debris into the air, officials said. Surveillance video showed passersby running to get away from the blast, and investigators said they would comb through that and older footage to try to identify those responsible.
Authorities said the explosion was produced by some type of bomb, and they posted on Twitter a photo of what appeared to be a mangled Dumpster or garbage container. Masum Chaudry, who manages a Domino’s Pizza near the scene, said the explosion “shook the whole building” and caused “total chaos.”
Cuomo said, “When you see the amount of damage, we really were very lucky there were no fatalities.”
A short time after the explosion, just a few blocks away, police found another potentially explosive device, which looked like a pressure cooker with wiring, according to a law enforcement official who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the ongoing investigation. Pressure cookers were used in the two bombs detonated at the Boston Marathon in 2013.
The New York police said that this pressure-cooker-type device was first rendered safe at a Bronx facility. This device and materials from Seaside, N.J., were sent to the FBI’s lab in Quantico, Va., where they and the remnants of the device that exploded will be analyzed, authorities said.
Sara Miller, who was at a restaurant two blocks from the site of explosion, said she heard the blast, then saw people scrambling to get away. “I was here on September 11th so I thought, maybe, you know, I was being paranoid … but then I saw people running,” said Miller, 42. “It is a scary time because you never know when it will happen again.”
Officials differed on whether to call the Saturday night explosion an act of terrorism. Cuomo said: “It depends on your definition of terrorism. A bomb exploding in New York is obviously an act of terrorism, but it’s not linked to international terrorism.”
City, police and FBI officials said it was too early to determine any type of motivation, though they insisted they would not shy from labeling the crime an act of terror if it became appropriate to do so.
“We do not know the motivation. We do not know the nature of it. That’s what we have to do more work on,” said New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio, who shied away from labeling the attack as terrorism.
New York City Mayor: 'Not going to jump to conclusions' about explosion
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New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio said officials will not jump to conclusions or offer "easy answers" in relation to a deliberate explosion in Manhattan's Chelsea neighborhood that injured nearly 30 people. (Reuters)
New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio said officials will not jump to conclusions or offer "easy answers" in relation to a deliberate explosion in Manhattan's Chelsea neighborhood that injured nearly 30 people.New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio said officials will not offer "easy answers" in relation to a deliberate explosion in Manhattan's Chelsea neighborhood. (Reuters)
The incident comes as foreign leaders, including many heads of state, are heading to Manhattan for the United Nations General Assembly. Secretary of State John F. Kerry arrived Saturday, while Obama is scheduled to head to the city on Monday.
This annual meeting — held more than two miles from the site of the explosion in Chelsea — is traditionally a challenging time for New York, as many roads are shut down and the heavy security leads to traffic jams. Officials said they had already prepared to beef up security, and now they would intensify those efforts.
On the campaign trail, the Democratic and Republican presidential candidates offered varied reactions to news of the incident. As early reports circulated Saturday night, Donald Trump declared that a “bomb went off” in New York City and said: “We better get very, very tough. We’ll find out. It’s a terrible thing that’s going on in our world, in our country and we are going to get tough and smart and vigilant. … We’ll see what it is. We’ll see what it is.”
Clinton: 'Important to know the facts' of NYC blast
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Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton said it was "wiser to wait" for information on the blast in New York City September 17, before reaching any conclusions about the situation. (Reuters)
Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton said it was "wiser to wait" for information on the blast in New York City September 17, before reaching any conclusions about the situation.Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton said it was "wiser to wait" for information on the blast in New York City September 17. (Reuters)
Hillary Clinton condemned what she characterized as the “apparent terrorist attacks” in Minnesota, New Jersey and New York.
“This should steel our resolve to protect our country and defeat ISIS and other terrorist groups,” Clinton said, using an acronym for the Islamic State. She added, “I have laid out a comprehensive plan to do that.”
Moyed Abu, 28, a manager of OMG, a jeans store on 7th Avenue, said he and two employees were in the store at the time of the blast. Abu said they assumed initially it was construction noise — but immediately saw dozens of people, though not everyone, running in both directions, Abu said.
“I saw that some people started to take pictures,” he said. “In this situation, it’s better to just leave! It’s not safe!”
The Chelsea explosion occurred about 11 hours after a pipe bomb exploded in a Jersey Shore garbage can, shortly before a scheduled charity 5K race to benefit Marines and Navy sailors. No one was hurt.
Officials said that device, too, would be sent to the FBI lab in Quantico, though Cuomo noted the pipe bombs used in New Jersey “appear to be different” than those in New York.
New York Police Commissioner James O’Neill said officials would explore a possible connection between the two cases but noted, “At this point, there doesn’t appear to be one.”
Two law enforcement officials said residue of tannerite — used primarily for making exploding targets for firearms practice — was found in material that had detonated in New York. The explosive material found in New Jersey was a black powder.
The two officials said a cellphone was used to detonate the explosives in both New York and Seaside Park, N.J. Bollwage said there was no cell phone with the devices in Elizabeth.
In another incident Saturday night in Minnesota, a man who made reference to Allah and asked at least one person whether he or she were Muslim stabbed and wounded nine people inside a Minnesota mall. He was shot to death by an off-duty police officer. On Sunday, the Islamic State claimed that the attacker was “a soldier of the Islamic State” and “carried out the operation in response to calls to target the citizens of countries belonging to the crusader coalition.”
A law enforcement official said Sunday that officials were examining all the devices, reviewing surveillance footage and combing through social media. Another official said that there was no clear suspect as of Sunday afternoon but that the investigation was in its very early stages.
“Whoever placed these bombs, we will find, and they will be brought to justice,” Cuomo said.
Some New Yorkers, though, said they felt uneasy waiting. Leonard Glass, 55, who walked 20 blocks from the upper West Side of Manhattan to the site of the explosion early Sunday afternoon, said that no one had taken responsibility for the explosion made it worse.
“I hope this is something else,” he said. “Not terrorism.”
Zapotosky, Wang and Berman reported from Washington. Renae Merle in New York and Ellen Nakashima, Brian Murphy, Kristine Guerra, Sari Horwitz, Sean Sullivan, Steven Overly, John Wagner, Julie Tate and Derek Hawkins contributed to this report, which has been updated since it was first published on Sunday night.
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What the scene of an explosion in New York’s Chelsea neighborhood looked like
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The blast in Manhattan injured 29.
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The blast in Manhattan injured 29.
Sept. 18, 2016FBI officials mark the ground near the site of an explosion in Manhattan’s Chelsea neighborhood.Rashid Umar Abbasi/Reuters
A community event over the weekend included chess games in the city’s Chatham neighborhood. (Mark Guarino for The Washington Post)
On a weekend afternoon in a city scarred by escalating violence, Kris Pinder watched his children play at a park festival in Roseland, a neighborhood on Chicago’s South Side.
The harmonies of a gospel choir bubbled up through loudspeakers while clippers buzzed across the scalps of little boys in barber chairs. Basketballs flew across a nearby court, and tennis balls bounced over nets on another.
By the end of a violent Labor Day weekend, Chicago had reached a grim milestone, recording more homicides through Monday night than the city experienced during all of last year. This tally came with a late surge of gunfire, as the Chicago police said there were 13 homicides over the Labor Day weekend, most of them on Monday, along with 43 shooting incidents, both numbers that topped those seen in the city a year earlier.
All told, by the end of Monday police said there were 488 homicides in Chicago so far this year, more than the 481 killings they logged last year — with nearly four months left in 2016. The surge in violence on Labor Day came after an average of three people were killed each day in August, marking a particularly brutal stretch in a bloody year.
But in Roseland, where a woman was fatally shot five days before the festival, people came together over the weekend for a gathering that was one of dozens across the city over the long weekend aimed at helping parts of the city under siege from escalating gun violence.
“The children need to see that everything is not all bad,” said Pinder, 33.
Police have said that most of the city’s homicide victims were people killed by gunfire. In August alone, there were 92 victims of homicide, the city’s deadliest month in more than two decades and more killings than most big cities across the country recorded in the first six months of the year.
Eddie Johnson, the Chicago police superintendent, said the violence was due to repeat offenders in “impoverished neighborhoods” utilizing what he described as an absurd proliferation of guns on the streets.
“It’s not a police issue,” Johnson said at a news briefing Tuesday. “It’s a society issue … people without hope do these kinds of things.”
Police have attributed the spike in gun violence in Chicago to known, repeat offenders using illegal guns. Johnson again called for tougher penalties for people who commit gun crimes, echoing a plea he has made this summer in the face of the violence.
“I’m frustrated,” he said Tuesday. “The city should be frustrated. Frustrated that despite these weekends, we still see repeat offenders get back out on the street far too soon.”
For many in the city, this ongoing bloodshed has filled them with fear and anxiety; in a survey earlier this year, residents were found as likely to think young people in the city would become victims of a violent crime as graduate from college.
Over the weekend, a group of 75 organizations, block clubs and churches staged pop-up events in the areas of the city most impacted by the violence — the southern and western neighborhoods that have been home to most of the increase in killings, police say. The surge in violence has given an urgency to the block parties, cookouts, chess matches, gospel concerts, stage plays and pickup basketball games.
“When the amount of violence skyrocketed this summer, people realized if we don’t do something, it’ll get out of hand,” said Kaaron Johnson, 28, at a gathering in Bronzeville, another South Side neighborhood.
Last year, Chicago saw 481 homicides last year, police said, a number that authorities revised upward from the 473 homicides they had previously reported. They also had said there were 90 killings in August before increasing that number as well. Police said the homicide totals increase when someone dies of wounds suffered during a particular time period or if an investigation winds up determining a death was a homicide. (While official police statistics put the city on the verge of 500 homicides this year after Labor Day, data collected by the Chicago Tribune — including killings not included in the homicide total by police — showed that the city topped that figure early Tuesday.)
Chicago is on pace for more than 600 homicides in a single year for the first time since 2003. The country’s third-biggest city has had more killings so far this year than the two larger cities — New York and Los Angeles — combined.
While crime rates nationwide remain far below those seen just a quarter-century ago — between 1990 and 1995, Chicago had at least 800 homicide victims each year — homicides have spiked in a number of big cities across the country this year and last year. Chicago’s violence has drawn attention for the sheer scale of the bloodshed, and it has reverberated on the presidential campaign trail.
Some other cities have also seen more killings this year than last, while still others have reported declines. Through late August, police say there were 227 homicides in New York, down from the 234 killings at the same point a year earlier; in Los Angeles, there were 182 killings, down slightly from the 186 a year before. On Tuesday, the New York police announced that there were fewer crimes reported there over the summer than they had seen in decades, adding that crimes like murder went down in August.
“We have further reduced violence and serious crime across this city, yet again,” New York Police Commissioner William J. Bratton, who is on the verge of retirement, said in a statement Tuesday. “The tremendous focus on a small group of criminals has resulted in these unprecedented declines in crime — as violence has increased in other American cities significantly.”
Eddie Johnson, the Chicago police superintendent. (Ashlee Rezin/Sun-Times Media via AP)
Compounding anxieties among people who live in Chicago’s most heavily impacted areas are a series of memos from the Chicago Fraternal Order of Police asking the city’s police force not to work voluntary overtime during the holiday weekend.
In one memo obtained by the Chicago Tribune, the stated reason not to work overtime was “to show unity and to protest the continued disrespect of Chicago Police Officers and the killings of law enforcement officers across our country.”
Dean Angelo, president of the Chicago Fraternal Order of Police, said the memos were not aimed at City Hall with the union’s contract up next year, but were aimed at officers uneasy after police were attacked and killed in Dallas and Baton Rouge.
“This isn’t a work slowdown. … This is telling the guys you take your family for granted; we take ourselves for granted,” Angelo said in an interview.
Many people cooking hot dogs, passing out school supplies or watching their children get free haircuts over the weekend said they don’t blame individual officers. Instead, they said their anger is reserved more for what they called bureaucratic infighting.
“People are fed up,” said Hal Baskin, 64, a lifelong resident of the Englewood neighborhood who helped organize several events there Saturday. He called the union’s suggestion un-American. “We don’t care about their political agenda, we care about lives,” he said.
Here's what a database of complaints against Chicago police officers shows
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Chicago police officer Jason Van Dyke, who faces murder charges after shooting Laquan McDonald, had at least 17 citizen complaints against him, according to a University of Chicago database of police records. Here's what else the records show about complaints against Chicago cops. (Gillian Brockell/The Washington Post)
Chicago police officer Jason Van Dyke, who faces murder charges after shooting Laquan McDonald, had at least 17 citizen complaints against him, according to a University of Chicago database of police records. Here's what else the records show about complaints against Chicago cops.Watch: Here's what a database of complaints against Chicago police officers shows (Gillian Brockell/The Washington Post)
The memos were also sent as the embattled Chicago police force is being investigated by the Justice Department, a civil rights probe launched after video footage emerged last year showing a white officer fatally shooting Laquan McDonald, a black teenager.
After that shooting, a task force assembled by Mayor Rahm Emanuel (D) examined the Chicago police — the country’s second-biggest local law enforcement agency — and released a blistering report in April lambasting the way the department treats minorities.
Angelo said this weekend that he felt like police officers in the city were being misrepresented by the media as well as by city officials.
“We’ve got no support politically,” he said. “We occasionally get, ‘Most of them do a good job.’ A lot of time when we hear something positive about the police, there is the proverbial ‘but’ that follows.”
Chicago’s violence has also been pushed into the national consciousness through repeated mentions by Donald Trump, the Republican presidential candidate. Trump has sought to portray himself as the law-and-order candidate and has invoked the city’s violence during campaign events and his acceptance speech at the Republican National Convention.
After Nykea Aldridge, cousin of NBA star Dwyane Wade, was shot and killed while pushing a child in a stroller, Trump posted on Twitter and claimed it was evidence of “what I have been saying.” Wade said that the comment “left a bad taste in my mouth” because it appeared like it was meant for “political gain.”
Trump’s campaign defends tweet after death of NBA player’s cousin
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Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump's campaign on Aug. 28 defended his tweet about the killing of Nykea Aldridge, the cousin of NBA player Dwyane Wade, and his outreach to African American voters. (Bastien Inzaurralde/The Washington Post)
Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump’s campaign on Aug. 28 defended his tweet about the killing of Nykea Aldridge, the cousin of NBA player Dwyane Wade, and his outreach to African American voters.Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump’s campaign defends his tweet about the killing of Nykea Aldridge, the cousin of NBA player Dwyane Wade. (Bastien Inzaurralde/The Washington Post)
Just days before weighing in on Aldridge’s death, Trump claimed during an interview on Fox News that a “top police officer in Chicago” had told him there was a way to stop the violence “within one week.”
He did not name the officer or elaborate on what this officer would do, and Trump’s campaign did not respond to a request to identify him. The Chicago police say no senior officials met with Trump or his campaign, but they added that he is welcome to offer his input.
“If you have a magic bullet to stop the violence anywhere, not just in Chicago but in America, then please, share it with us,” Johnson, the police superintendent, said in response last week.
Activist Phillip Jackson said that when he heard about the police union’s overtime memos, he decided to rally community groups together for what he called a “Community Peace Surge,” a play on the titles of the “Purge” movies, during which crime becomes legal and violence takes over the streets.
Through social media and word-of-mouth, the idea grew into a mixture of official events, such as park festivals, and homegrown activities, such as neighborhood cookouts. Jackson, who operates the Black Star Project in Bronzeville, said most people know the police can’t stop the gunfire. But he said it felt like officers were abandoning their posts during times of great need, which he said confirmed the mistrust of police that lingers on in these areas.
“Dean Angelo basically said, ‘You guys are mad at us, so we won’t work,’ ” he said. “Yes, we are mad at you for shooting down young black boys in the street. What is a community supposed to think?”
A Chicago police spokesman said the union’s calls on overtime were not a factor in the weekend deployment. There were volunteers to work and leave was canceled only for specific units — such as those focused on gangs and guns — to keep those officers deployed, said Anthony Guglielmi, the department’s chief spokesman.
Chicago police detectives at the scene of a fatal shooting in the city’s South Side last month. (Joshua Lott/Getty Images)
Most of the events in Chicago received no money or help from the city or philanthropic foundations, organizers said. In Bronzeville, six women pooled $700 and rented a bouncy house for tots, hired a DJ and bought hot dogs and other summer treats.
“This is the first time we’ve seen this kind of thing in years,” Kaaron Johnson said at the Bronzeville gathering. “We wanted the community to know it’s safe to come out and have a good time.”
For some of those out over the weekend, the fun shielded an underlying anxiety. On Sunday, one 13-year-old sat on a street curb in Bronzeville watching his friends practice dance moves together. He said he was scared because “people keep dying over here.”
Police say murder arrests and gun arrests are both ticking up in the city, and the department said it has seized or collected more than 5,900 illegal guns. On Saturday, the police said they arrested 77 people in police raids, dozens of whom authorities said were documented gang members.
Parents and organizers say they realize a weekend of activities is not a solution to the bloodshed, but they hope it could be the beginning of one. The Labor Day weekend is typically a deadly one in Chicago; last year, nine people were killed and dozens more shot.
Still, other people in Chicago said they have given up. Despite the sunshine, music and friendly crowd at the Roseland festival, Jonas Lee said he was not happy as he watched his two daughters, both girls wearing pink tiaras and black leggings while they walked with their pet pug.
“I don’t like them outside at all,” Lee, 37, an exterminator, said at the event. He said it was because a family friend had been shot in the head while sitting on his porch this year. “If it could happen to him, it could happen to anybody,” Lee said. His house is on the market, and Lee said he plans a move to Indiana to escape the “never-ending” violence.
Others echoed the commitment to retaking the streets after living in fear. People felt unsafe “because of the violence that has overtaken our city,” said Laura Pinder, 61, as she watched her grandchildren — twin boys and a girl — play at the park in Roseland.
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