I watched Chicago promise food equity. Now my neighborhood has empty shelves

On the South Side of Chicago, we all know the script. The government announces with great fanfare some new program that is going to come save us and make our lives better. Ribbons are cut, and the aldermen and bureaucrats toast themselves as saviors, another notch of the "good" in their belts. Then time passes and, as sure as a 30-point game used to be for Michael Jordan, the program fails and there’s no one around to own up to the failure.

We recently experienced another failure when, on July 25...