Rahm explains Monday's shootings. Safe Passage is only during the time the children come to school and leave school.

(AP photo)

"I'm like any parent — I'm wary," said Willie Dixon, one of several CeaseFire workers walking the Uptown streets around the shooting scene Tuesday. Dixon's 7th-grade son attends Brenneman. "I'm very concerned, but I've got to keep faith." 

When you leave home today, bring an umbrella. Why? Rahm's back from wherever. I know this because it's raining bullshit.  Yes, the BS was really flying yesterday at the ribbon-cutting ceremony for the expanded Jones College Prep in the South Loop -- a ceremony from which 2nd Ward Ald. Bob Fioretti was purposely excluded even though it's his ward.

After hearing about Monday's shooting of five people along a safe-passage route in Uptown, Rahm called  the shootings "an early warning sign to all of us to be more on our toes than we were already on our toes."

An early warning sign? On your toes? What the hell does that mean?

Yes, stand on your tippy toes all you want. I mean the shooter's car was parked right in front of McCutcheon Elementary School, 4865 N. Sheridan Rd. and now there's bone, blood and bullet casings along the route was planned for children who are being moved to Brenneman Elementary from Stewart Elementary, one of 49 schools and one program closed by CPS.

I thought the real early warning, completely ignored by Rahm and Byrd-Bennett, came back in May, when one of their own appointed experts on school closings, retired Cook County Judge Charles Winkler, voiced his opposition to the closing of Stewart, saying school officials and police could not guarantee the safety of school children who will now have to walk farther to school.

“Is there really enough time to get everyone up to speed so the 14,400 children from the closing schools are provided safe passage,” Winkler wrote. "Will an understaffed Chicago Police Department be able to provide enough officers to assist the Stewart children? Will CPS hire a private security company to furnish properly trained personnel?"

Winkler had urged Rahm to at least put off at the planned shutdown of Stockton and Stewart schools in the Uptown community for at least a year.

Rahm explains away Monday's shooting by saying his battalion of yellow-vested volunteers haven't been posted yet along the Safe-Passage route. In other words, mass shootings in Chicago have now become the status quo.

Yes, take your umbrella.