As he left the courthouse on his final day serving as head of the U.S. Attorney’s office in Chicago, Zachary Fardon handed reporters an open letter. He was one of 46 U.S. Attorneys sacked by President Donald Trump, in part because he didn’t fit within the White House’s (and U.S. Justice Department’s) new criminal justice scheme. In the five-page document, he offered his prescription for saving the youth of Chicago, now perhaps the most embattled city in the United States.

Brick and mortar. Create a place. Call it anything. Fund it with federal, state, or philanthropic funds, or some combination. But do not continue this madness of annualized state or federal grant funding to where all these not-for-profits have time to do is fight for those peanuts, compete with each other and hope to survive. That serves no one. There is plenty of money and good will in this town. And there are millions of federal dollars spent across this town every year. So, let’s find that money and put it to use by creating youth centers, brick and mortar, funding social workers and experts, and intervening to save the lives of kids and young adults.

This is precisely the kind of alternative to incarceration that has been pushed for decades by those working to stop the criminalization of black and brown kids. And Fardon’s advocacy of it probably helped get him fired.

[For more of this story, written by Brentin Mock, go to https://www.citylab.com/politi...-a-trump-era/519411/]