Iesha Hollins, a resident of Chicago’s Austin neighborhood, told a group of dozens of Oak Parkers and West Side residents gathered in a church Thursday night that the children in her neighborhood live in a “different reality” than people outside its borders.
“A lot of the children I deal with in Austin don’t know anything outside of Austin, and that’s very sad to say,” said Hollins, who runs a youth development nonprofit organization called Root2Fruit. She spoke as part an event hosted by Oak Park-based Suburban Unity Alliance that was dubbed “Bridge for Peace: Oak Park and Austin Communities Call to Action.”
Anthony Clark, an Oak Park and River Forest High School teacher and founder of SUA, said the idea for an event aimed at developing strategies to curb crime and gun violence by bringing members of the Oak Park and Austin communities together had percolated since the death last year of Elijah Sims, a 16-year-old OPRF student who was fatally shot in the Austin neighborhood.
Attendees first gathered Thursday night at the corner of Chicago Avenue and Taylor Avenue across from a BP Gas Station, which was the site of a shooting Feb. 11 in which a Chicago resident was struck by a bullet in the leg. Meeting across from the station was a way for both Oak Park and Austin residents to “take ownership” of the area, which is near Austin Boulevard, the north-south street that divides Oak Park from Chicago.
The Austin neighborhood experiences higher levels of violence than Oak Park, and because of that some people in Oak Park don’t want to build relationships with their West Side neighbors or they’re afraid to visit that community, Clark said. He said SUA’s goal is to tear down the metaphorical wall that exists between the communities and build relationships or a metaphorical bridge.
Clark said he also hopes to leverage Oak Park’s relative affluence and resources to assist those on the other side of Austin Boulevard.
After meeting on the corner, the dozens who showed up for the SUA event walked five minutes down the road to New Life Ministries C.O.G.I.C., on the Oak Park side of Austin Boulevard. A diverse group of people of varied ages and racial backgrounds gathered in the sanctuary of the church to share their own personal experiences with crime and violence in the neighborhood. Several adults in attendance, including Sims’ mother, Sharita Galloway, said they had lost children to gun violence.
Hollins said her organization teaches youth how to be entrepreneurs and “how to survive outside of where they live.” She described the daily violence endured by many of the young people she serves — particularly the young men — losing children to gun violence and standing beside a man as he was shot and killed.
Her son, Lester Bradford, a 14-year-old freshman at Al Raby High School, told the crowd that people in his community are “getting killed day by day.”
Hollins and Clark both disputed a perception that people who live in Austin don’t care about the violence occurring around them.
“We have to get some help,” Hollins said. “It seems like we don’t want better in Austin, but there are a lot of people fighting in Austin.”
Clark added that when Austin residents are “yelling and screaming” for help, Oak Parkers should join their cause.
Deno Andrews, owner of Oak Park restaurant Felony Franks and contender in the race for village board trustee this spring, said that for the first 30 years of the 46 he’s lived in the community, “I never stepped foot or spent a penny in Austin.”
When he moved from northwest to northeast Oak Park in 2000, Andrews said his “whole world changed” and he met folks “who had a much different reality three miles away from where I grew up.”
Andrews urged the Oak Park residents listening to spur economic development in the community — which he cited as a key factor in curbing violence — by patronizing the businesses there and getting to know the people who live there and helping them to find jobs when they need one.
“I think it’s time us Oak Parkers spend money in Austin,” he said.
Christina Waters, a mother of three who lives near the BP Gas Station, said she’s tired of the increased violence in the neighborhood, and she believes the community can make a difference by being out in the streets and calling out nefarious activity when they see it.
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“When you see something, say something,” she repeated three times.
Waters and Clark both advocated for a joint community watch as a potential strategy to mitigate the violence and crime and passed out fliers encouraging attendees to join a Facebook group to get involved in the effort.
Derrick Green, a coordinator for the faith-based organization, Jehovah Jireh#1 Outreach Ministry, an Austin-based organization that aims to stop violence in the streets, said the Austin community needs more than jobs, it needs businesses and a culture that instills pride rather than desperation in the youth who live there. He urged the group to give money to or attend one of the organization’s events.
“We will go where there is a need. But we need help. I hope you guys are here today to give us some type of assistance,” he said.
Lee V. Gaines is a freelance reporter for Pioneer Press.