Mayor Michelle Wu just gave a master class in pitching a common sense idea to progressives.

As the Herald reported, Wu rolled out a lengthy summer safety plan earlier this week. Her six-pronged plan targets resources and interventions in hot-spot areas prone to violence.

When ShotSpotter proponents defended the technology that alerts police to gunfire, opponents painted it as racially biased as the units are placed in neighborhoods where the most gunfire occurs.

In other words, areas prone to violence. Yet it’s unlikely Wu will be blasted for racial bias in targeting those same areas for gun violence interventions. Why?

Wu knows how to talk the talk.

It’s all about the “root causes” of violence: systemic racism, poverty and environmental injustice.

“It’s not a Band-Aid,” Wu said at a Tuesday press conference in Mission Hill. “It focuses on root causes, not symptoms.”

Addressing root causes is a noble goal, but the symptoms — crime, shootings, gang violence — need to be addressed ASAP.

Wu’s plan builds on the city’s gun violence intervention strategy introduced last spring with data from a workshop that found most of the serious gun crimes occurred among a small number of people in four neighborhoods, Dorchester, Jamaica Plain, Mattapan and Roxbury, from 2018-2022.

“We focus year-round on a small number of individuals who drive the crime,” Police Commissioner Michael Cox said. “We found over time that these individuals repeatedly offend over and over again, and if we focus on those individuals, we are focusing on the right people that drive the violence in our city.”

That is targeting the root cause of violence in Boston, and doing something concrete about it. But the subject of policing Boston streets is a hot-button issue among the progressive set, hence the flare-up over ShotSpotter and gang databases. Wu, however, rolled out the buzzwords to soothe the vapors: her plan would be “practical and compassionate, sustainable and specific, trauma-informed and healing-focused.”

In March, Wu launched the Youth Job Guarantee, pledging that any eligible Boston Public Schools student who wants a summer job can get one, according to the city’s web site. This is a fantastic move. But those students should be able to go to their jobs and return home safely, and that’s where the BPD comes in.

The BPD’s job gets tougher in the summer. Crime usually heats up as the weather does. More people gather outside, which means more opportunity for “conflict,” Cox said.

It’s all about defusing situations, getting to the scene of gunfire quickly to save the life of a shooting victim, and arresting violent criminals so there’s one less shooter on our streets.

It’s not a “progressive” to-do list, but if those efforts are funded and supported by progressive leaders, then that’s fine by us.

Editorial cartoon by Gary Varvel (Creators Syndicate)