Sitting Down.. Part I

 Written on Wednesday, August 31, 2011 at 3:14am

Last Sunday, August 28th 2011 at about 4:30 pm  I heard the gunshots while standing on my front balcony. The force of the sound caused me to instinctively drop down, rendering my watering pot useless. As gunshots have become shamefully common in the Uptown neighborhood of Chicago’s north side, only a couple of seconds had passed before I deemed it safe enough to stand to finish watering my optimistic flowers. To my horror, I stared in disbelief as a young man attempting to run, stumbled past my front door bleeding heavily from a wound in his leg. I frantically raced into the condo, searching clumsily for my cell. I dialed 911 with shaky fingers while watching the injured kid lie down on the corner, his own blood pooling beneath him. I suspect that my conversation with the 911 operator was less than kind as I couldn’t understand the sheer lack of urgency in her voice, my vocabulary degenerating to a simple “F*cking get someone here NOW!!” I looked on as people began streaming towards the kid from all sides until the area resembled an oversized rugby scrum, but no one had covered his gunshot wound.  “Someone HAD to apply pressure,”I kept thinking. I shouted down to the familiar crowd of neighborhood kids that someone needed to put pressure on the wound or he would bleed too much.  They looked my way and one man shouted back “Don’t worry baby, we got this.” However, a boy immediately took off his shirt and leaned down to press it against the injured kid’s leg. As we waited, the sound of the sirens grew louder and people shouted and wailed. Kids with obvious gang colors and tattoos passed below my balcony loudly promising revenge.  As the police arrived, people began dispersing. Retaliation was inevitable..

Tonight the streets are more quiet than I have ever seen them. As I type, I have watched more police cars and SUVs drive by than when the president came for his birthday.(Ironically, there was a shooting that very night..the car parked in front of my husband’s had six bullet holes.)  Tonight, few people are leaving their homes, and certainly not the kids who wear their gang colors like giant targets on their bodies.  No one is headed out for a lovely summer evening stroll as it has been a busy week. About four hours after Sunday’s afternoon shooting, two more men were shot four blocks over. One man, a certain Brian, A.K.A Big Baby, was shot fatally in the head. This afternoon around 1pm, the police asked a group to disperse one block away from here, only to have shots brazenly fired in their very presence, leaving two more with gunshot wounds to the leg. Tonight the streets are deserted.   

As these shootings have increased, I find myself becoming obsessed. I spend hours searching the internet for gang information. If someone coughs to loudly, I race to the balcony to observe.  I took pictures of the sidewalk blood to make it impossible to forget, my camera and phone now always in reach. I watch the neighborhood cops intently with a distaste for their obvious antipathy mixed with anger at their helplessness to change things. I look directly at the kids on the corner and I nod to them, hoping they realize that I do not wish to see any more of them bleeding all over the sidewalk, yet I also do not wish to see them dealing drugs beneath my balcony.  I’ve ordered books on gang culture and structure and I do endless facebook searches to find local kids.. (one would be amazed at how many profiles are listed under ‘Vice Lord.’) I’ve image searched gang signs, tattoos, territory tags, colors etc.. I have no idea what this new knowledge will do for me but still, I am simply obsessed with a culture that I have no way of understanding. 

As I am sure many nearby people feel..I feel incredibly helpless. I have not lived in Uptown long as I recently married my husband and his condo. I have gone to positive loitering, and I have put in a few volunteer hours with the locally based ‘Inspired Youth,’ but it all seems incredibly small in comparison to the problems of this area. (However, teaching a young pianist to play Bruno Mar was pretty rewarding.. despite not being my finest moment of musical taste,)  Unlike some others in the area, I do not wish for these kids to ‘move on’ or simply disappear as they will only reappear elsewhere and their lives will continue down the same terrifying path. I look at them and I see strength, youth and potential, but they are putting me and everyone else around them in danger, They are risking their own lives and the lives of their little sisters and little brothers. They are risking the lives of their own children. There is no excuse for that. 

As I am incapable of doing nothing, I will challenge myself to step up...to sit down.  As I have been watching my corner obsessively already, I will challenge myself to set time aside each afternoon before I leave to teach, to sit on my balcony and to simply say hi and smile at everyone who comes within hearing. What do I hope to accomplish?  Honestly..I have no idea.  Perhaps I want it to be known that someone, however inconsequential, is watching, Or maybe, I just want to chip away at my own fears and biases...

I had thought that to find diversity, I had to fly to France or Spain. I used to think that to see true conflict, I had to travel as a teacher to Peru or some other such place, but in all actuality, diversity and horrifying conflict are already at my very doorstep..bleeding on it ...