Did Lori Really Say This?

What are regular taxpayers supposed to think of this?

• “The city should have been better prepared for spring break, to make sure that kids who can’t afford to go off to Florida for the week actually have something productive to do,” she said. “Obviously I don’t think anybody anticipated that this was something that was trending on Facebook, there were going to be hundreds of kids gathering in the downtown area, but that’s why you need to be prepared to have a plan.”

We don't recall going to Spring Break until well into college. These weren't college kids wilding downtown. These were juveniles, none of which should have any expectation of going to Spring Break for a few years yet.

So Lori wants businesses and taxpayers to foot the bill for a trip to Disney World? It might be a better idea than Dahleen Glanton had in the Tribune the other week:

• Summer is approaching, and Chicago is facing the same problem it has year after year. Black kids are hopping on the Red Line and coming downtown. The notion that there is something inherently wrong with young people wanting to hang out in the city is absurd. But what happens to these African-American kids once they get here is shameful. They are either shackled and arrested or thrown back onto trains heading south.
  
  [...] But think about it for a moment. If black kids can’t go downtown, where are they supposed to go for fun?
  
  [...] So, we have two obvious choices: We can continue to exhaust limited police resources following kids around on horseback and hauling them in for childish behavior like jumping a Chicago Transit Authority turnstile, misdemeanor reckless conduct or “disorderly mob action,” whatever that means. Or, we can invest in neighborhood recreational centers and community-based programs designed to keep teenagers actively engaged and off the streets.
  
  Or there’s a third option. The next time 500 African-American kids decide to congregate downtown, why not greet them with a summer jobs fair?

Wow.