It's A Bleak Landscape Around Chicago's United Center

CHICAGO (Aug. 22) -- Welcome to Chicago's West Side, host to the Democratic National Convention.

It was the scene of much of the 1968 rioting after the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and it remains a bleak urban landscape today.

"The area where the United Center is located was where the King riots were in '68 and much of the deterioration that occurred in '68 has not changed since then," said Ted Manley, a professor at De Paul University. "The poverty in those areas has either remained the same or increased over the last 30 years..."

Crime has soared and businesses have fled, taking with them opportunities for the neighborhood's young people.

People who live in the area describe difficult conditions.

"You see teenagers having babies, babies having babies, and a lot of males are out here selling drugs," one woman said.

Another woman put it this way: "You can be two years old and know everything about life, you gang-banging at five. I'm sorry, you know how to use a gun at about age six, maybe four."

One man said, "This is urban youth, this is what is happening to people in the poor range. I think something needs to be done about this."

For months, Chicago has worked to clean up the area surrounding the United Center. The city has even covered vacant lots with wood chips and planted trees. The wood chips and the trees may make things look better, but Chicago's West Side remains one of the most impoverished neighborhoods in America.

On the streets next to the United Center, young men and woman who live in the Henry Horner housing project daily confront the choice: hard work at low-paying jobs or a life of crime on the streets.

Two men disagreed whether there are enough jobs for young people.

"Yes, there's more than enough work for the people who want to work," one man said. "There's a lot of people who just don't want to work."

"I got to correct you on that," another man said. "There's not enough jobs for young people. There's not enough jobs. I don't think so. I'm just telling the true facts."

Antoinette Jenkins is 17 and the mother of two. "I have two kids, and it's very hard for me to find a babysitter, so I have to take care of my kids most of the time," she said.

George's Music Room is one business that has stayed on the West Side for more than 20 years. It has become as much a community center as a business. It's also a neutral zone, generally untouched by the gang violence that rips apart neighboring blocks.

"I could move to any community in this city, you know, which is considered a better neighborhood, but who's to stay here?" said owner George Daniels. "Somebody has to stay home."

A mentor to the area's young people, Daniels says rampant crime and lack of jobs are the twin ravages of his community. So is the perverse incentive created by a world where drug dealers are the ones with all the money.

"Our children need to recognize that it's okay to have a job, it's okay to make a living, it's okay to have bills, it's okay to struggle to pay them," Daniels said. "That's life and it's not the end of the world if you don't have the money to buy those Nike gym shoes and all these other things that really have nothing to do with living and surviving in the community."

Daniels pins his hopes on the very young -- a generation he predicts will rebuild Chicago's West Side.

This story originally appeared on CNN's "Inside Politics."

It's A Bleak Landscape Around Chicago's United Center

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