In some Chicago neighborhoods, barbecue decks sit empty during the summer. For children, school vacation is a time to stay indoors, away from the threat of gunfire. Even a walk or bike ride down the street can invite danger.
Chicago police hope to curtail the annual spike in violence through a new “Operation Safe Summer” initiative intended to curb small crimes before big ones happen. At the same time, some residents and activists are taking to the street with their own programs. Below are a few snapshots of the struggle to retake summer.
Rogers Park: Recipe for change
Summer began last month with a weeknight shooting of two children, 14 and 9.
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The victims survived, but a Paulina Street soup kitchen wants better enforcement of a citywide curfew to keep kids out of harm’s way.
The Good News Community Kitchen has become an unexpected force in crime prevention.
Leaders say that’s partly because of two murders nearby in 2004. Since then the kitchen has fought successfully for extra local police patrols and is now pushing for more summer jobs.
“We don’t want to turn the neighborhood into a police state,” said Daniel Romero, a kitchen coordinator.
North Lawndale: Human chain
In the shadow of liquor stores and vacant lots, more than 1,000 people joined hands on a Friday night last month and prayed for an end to violence, forming an unbroken chain along a 36-block area as part of a “Wrap Around Lawndale” community safety initiative.
The New Life Covenant Oakwood Church in Bronzeville launched the effort to take back the streets from those who would hijack summer. Their inspiration was Sherry Scott, a parishioner. Five of her nephews were gunned down in the eighborhood since 2003.
Local groups plan to continue the public show of faith through the summer.
Brighton Park: From marches to cameras to prayer
Fresh graffiti appeared along 43rd Street last month. And already, some of it has been crossed out in a spray-paint debate over who owns the street.
Neighbors have answered by marching, by quizzing teens about shootings and by persuading the city to install a surveillance police camera on a notoriously troubled corner.
Now, the neighbors, calling themselves “Familias Unidas,” are planning an outdoor mass this month to pray for an end to a problem they say has only worsened.
“These are our kids dying out there,” Eulalio Gonzalez said. “People forget that.”
Roseland: R.I.P. T-shirts
Over the drone of his spray gun, William “Surf” Ryals paints the faces of the dead on T-shirts with the abbreviation “R.I.P.,” knowing that summer will bring more casualties to memorialize.
The small shop at 116th Street and Michigan Avenue, Airbrush by Surf, is where loved ones often bring photos of the deceased for Ryals to use as references for T-shirts or to convert into iron-on patches.
Meanwhile, three miles north at the faith-based Developing Communities Project, youths arrange monthly peace walks, hoping their message will keep the faces of others off memorial T-shirts.
AUSTIN: Hip-Hop Tuesdays, sponsored by Austin District police and the Austin Weed & Seed Collaborative, gives youths a reason to stay off corners where violence and drugs can entice–and out of the funeral home just up the street.
SOUTH CHICAGO: Where sneakers dangle from phone wires, signifying gang initiations, police are sending a signal of their own: outdoor roll calls on the street. The first took place at 84th Street and Burley Avenue, not far from where a restaurant worker was shot to death June 25.
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