Within the span of 26 hours last weekend, two mass shootings in Bronzeville injured 12 people — including critically wounding a 17-year-old — both within blocks of one another and minutes away from the Chicago Police Department’s headquarters.
But while a federal crime crackdown looms over the city, a possible move only bolstered by the violent Labor Day weekend, local street outreach workers remain focused on their efforts to clamp down on the violence in the neighborhood.
“I can tell you we’re going to continue to do our job,” said Bamani Obadele, community engagement director for Acclivus, Inc., a community organization that provides violence intervention programs to help people in Chicago’s most vulnerable neighborhoods. “We’re not taking any days off.”
City violence data reviewed by the Tribune found that, after last weekend, 10 mass shootings have occurred in Bronzeville since the start of 2019. Cook County court records indicate charges have not been filed in any.
On Saturday night, seven people were injured after an unknown assailant drove by and opened fire on a crowd standing outside on the 3500 block of South State Street, near where the former Stateway Gardens public housing complex stood until the early 2000s.
Obadale said that according to initial accounts from community residents and Acclivus outreach workers who were at the scene, the gathering followed a Stateway Gardens reunion held earlier that day at Dunbar Park about a mile to the northeast. Obadele said a conflict arose at the gathering and one person left, but then returned with a gun and start shooting.
A woman who lives near the scene of the shooting, who asked not to be identified for her personal safety, said she heard more gunshots than she could count.
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“The gunshots was hitting the poles, the wall,” she said. “And (there was) a girl hollering, ‘Somebody help me! Somebody help me!’ I didn’t come out of the house to go see because I figured they might come back around.”
Jordan Harris heard the gunshots from his home a mile away.
“I kind of heard it off in the distance,” the 32-year-old said. “You know, there are so many gunshots in Chicago that it’s almost hard to distinguish them from fireworks, but you can kind of hear the familiar cadence.”
A wave of police sirens followed, Harris said. When he stepped out onto his patio, he saw lots of police down State Street.
“(It was) just a sea of blue,” he said.
Harris didn’t find out what had happened until Sunday morning. Later that day, he passed by the scene of the shooting as he walked to work at Starbucks on the corner of State and 35th Street.
Harris, who was born and raised on the North Side but has lived in Bronzeville for eight months, said that he wasn’t surprised by Saturday’s shooting because growing up in Chicago, “You kind of, unfortunately, get used to that type of thing.”
Though he recognized there can be spurts of violence, Harris noted, “You do get a lot of quiet nights” too.
“Being from Chicago … you get used to Chicago always getting used as a talking point, especially for gun control and all that type of stuff,” he said. “But that’s usually from people that are outside looking in, that are just kind of looking to politicize it and (don’t) actually really (care) about what happens inside the city.”
Former Ald. Walter Burnett, potentially the next head of the Chicago Housing Authority, told the Tribune last summer that violence near current and former public housing sites is often fueled by long-standing personal conflicts.
CPD records show two of Bronzeville’s other mass shootings have occurred near the site of the former Stateway Gardens high-rises.
Just before 3:30 a.m. on July 7, 2024, a group was gathered in the 3700 block of South State Street when another drive-by shooting left a man dead and four other people wounded, CPD said at the time. Four years earlier, in the same block, a mass shooting left six people wounded.
However, Acclivus stressed caution in viewing current and former public housing sites and the histories they carry as hotspots unto themselves.
Early Monday morning, five people were wounded on the 3600 block of South Cottage Grove Avenue near the site of the former Ida B. Wells Homes development — at a gathering that followed a reunion picnic for block residents, according to Obadele.
But organizers of the reunion maintain their event went on without a hitch and that what happened afterwards was an unrelated outlier.
The reunion picnic, which took place at Washington Park Sunday, ended at 7 p.m., Deon Willis, a former Ida B. Wells resident who assisted with organizing the event, told the Tribune. The picnic is a tradition for not only former Ida B. Wells residents, but anyone who used to live on 39th Street from State to South Lake Park Avenue, Willis said.
They call themselves “the 39’ers.” Typically, after the picnic, Willis and other 39’ers from Ida B. Wells would go over to Ellis Park in Bronzeville to hang out and continue talking, Willis said. But this year, something was different.
When Willis got to Ellis Sunday night, he saw a “massive crowd” of primarily young people that he didn’t recognize, he said. He likened the gathering to the “teen takeovers” that have cropped up downtown and in surrounding suburbs in recent years.
“The park was packed like it was a concert,” Willis said. “Like they was in Soldier Field.”
Willis didn’t end up staying.
Acclivus was aware of several CHA reunions planned for Labor Day weekend but didn’t have any potential hotspots on its radar ahead of the holiday, Obadele said. Still, the organization prepared as much as it could for what was expected to be a busy weekend.
Acclivus has regular street outreach teams that engage with and provide services to high-violence areas across the city’s Near and Far South sides. In anticipation of Labor Day weekend, Acclivus increased street outreach hours and had staff on hand to respond to emergencies.
Response efforts have continued on through this week. In the wake of any shooting, Acclivus outreach teams go door-to-door passing out information, handing out safety tips, offering counseling referrals and talking to anyone who wants to speak further about what happened, Obadele said. The idea is to let residents know they’re available to help but it also allows Acclivus to get ahead of any potential retaliation, Obadele said.
This summer alone, Acclivus mediated nearly 600 conflicts across 21 sites and large community events, according to Katrina Waddy, public education director for the organization. In tandem with its street outreach work, Acclivus also has behavioral health and workforce development teams to combat violence from a public health lens, Obadele said.
Bronzeville is among nine focus areas for the organization. More than four years ago, Acclivus opened an office at 254 E. 35th St., a quarter of a mile up the road from police headquarters, after an uptick in violence in the community.
CPD data shows that in recent years, shooting and homicide totals in the Wentworth District (2nd), which covers the Bronzeville and Kenwood neighborhoods, have fallen dramatically. In 2021, the district recorded 21 killings in the first eight months of the year. So far this year, the district has seen seven killings.
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Amid continued threats from the administration of President Donald Trump to deploy federal forces to Chicago, Obadele urged away from “knee-jerk” reactions to last weekend’s spurt of violence.
“What I’m saying is that the process (works) and … trust the process,” he said. “I think as long as we have these community violence interrupters working in many of these communities, especially these high-violence communities, you will continue to see that reduction.”