There’s a stigmatic drought that has hovered Chicago for decades, a distinct label that hasn’t left our side since Al Capone ran the blocks of this metropolis. A cycle that has taken the lives of thousands of men and women, each with a different story to tell. In the news, Chicago is this war zone. President Trump drops fear into the minds of America, using us as an example of failure as if the product of our City, is shit. Chicago may have its downfalls but we’re talking about the city of broad shoulders, the city people came to WORK. Millions of people around the world can unite as one and say, we survived Chicago and the memories that linger.
Downtown is our heart. Pumps the blood of it’s people to the center of our universe. Every single day millions of people visit the city center from all over the world. Places like Navy Pier and Millenium Park flock 25 million visitors a year, making billions on attractions and taxes. Yet after the sun sets and Chicago heads home, some are left with the raw reality their surroundings. Gang land is among us.
One of the biggest cities in the States, Chicago is split into 77 different neighborhoods. Coincidentally, there are thousands of street gang organizations throughout the city, reigning over 200,000 men and women in the area. In Chicago, they are our cousins, our siblings, our child, our parent, our grandparent, our friends, or the one we love. Is gang culture out of control in Chicago? Absolutely. Yet it’s second nature to some hidden on the corners of these blocks, knowing nothing other than the four corners they are allowed to stand on.
We’re talking about children, sucked into a life of their surroundings. Some in single parent households struggling to make ends meet, being raised on the street. Some in loving middle class neighborhood homes, just getting caught in the wrong crowd. Growing up in these neighborhoods it’s easy to get spun into the lifestyle. The mind of a 14 year old child isn’t capable of making critical decisions, let alone a decision that will forever alter your life. We aren’t talking about a few years of your childhood that can be forgotten, I mean a branded stamp that can follow you while your holding your grandson, old and grey. A broken arm or a violation out will never erase your life in the streets. Being forced to commit crimes to prove your loyalty to an organization, not realizing that life eventually catches up to you and karma has a way of bringing everything full circle.
As a product of South Chicago I know what it’s like to mourn. Mourn the life of a child, never being able to feel existence as an adult. Mourn the life of a father, gunned down in front of his children. Mourn the life of a friend, locked away for life for avenging the life of his mother who was killed in front of him because of his own actions. Mourn the life of a cousin, who was at the wrong place at the wrong time. This was my norm. These men and women society calls thugs were my family and friends.
In recent news, rapper 6ix9ine has been taunting Chicago artists and clowning Chicago culture. Making a mockery of the millions of lives that have been taken from their families and loved ones. A lifestyle that has damaged the life of hundreds of thousands of people, the last 10 years alone, myself included. A joke to a man who has no ties to this City, people here are mourning. Even after the dirt has been laid and the roses have withered, trauma exists. It’s been almost 10 years since Alex has been killed & there isn’t a day in my life I don’t think about the circumstances that followed. A young mother awakened to 2 men with bandanas over their faces and guns drawn at my head as her 2 year old sleeps on the couch below us. Pistol whipped and bound, the thought of being raped by masked assailants still taunts my head. I’m left with scars that can never be healed by the average healer. Time has proven no justice, as my Post Traumatic Stress Disorder consumes portions of my life. Yet, I am a joke in his eyes. The life of my child, left fatherless is a joke. The hundreds of young women and men who he taunts from broken homes and limited means, has become a game for the price of his head.
Broken homes and limited means. The compilation of a loss of direction and lack of attention that claims the life of kids left to be raised on the street. Alex was one of those kids. One of the biggest hearts I’ve ever known, he’d give the shirt off his back and the food off his plate for the ones he loved just so they had a sense of comfort. A sense of love and affection, that I know he craved as a child. Left by his father and mother to be raised by his grandparents, the last Christmas I spent with him was alone in his basement. His grandfather gave him $20 and left him and his brother to fend for themselves as they went to enjoy a family dinner at his aunts home without him. Before he died, he gave kids just like him hope that they weren’t alone. We met when I was 16 years old and he showed me who he was, despite every attempt not to. To everyone else, he was so deep in his lifestyle that all anyone could see was his actions. He built this wall so thick and tall that not even his closest friends could fight. So deep in his own lies to cover the pain that hovered him for so many years. A broken child that had been failed by the system, failed by his family, and failed by society.
When I got pregnant with my son, he played with the idea of being a father. It wasn’t until I caught him standing on his corner and lured him into my car that I know he realized that a father was one thing he couldn’t commit to. 4 1/2 months pregnant, I cried for him to want to be involved while showing a picture of our child in my womb. *POP, POP, POP* Shots flew past my car in the direction of where he just was. He jumped out the car “You see?! THIS is why you can’t be around me. Get the fuck out of here!” As he slammed my door with such intent, I knew deep down inside at that moment that something had changed. A trigger in his mind that had went off with those shots. He may have wanted to be around, but he couldn’t be around. He knew that his lifestyle could not provide the surroundings that he wanted so much as a child. He knew that his life had been so deep in his surroundings, his child could reap what he sowed. A generational karma that he saw effect the lives of his friends children all the effects of a parent’s mistakes.
It took a while after he died to understand why he stood away. He denied my son like a plague after he was born, an effort that hurt my feelings to the core. Now I see why. My son never had a chance to have memories to keep his father alive but I truly believe we are alive today because of his distance. An act that has been a hard pill to swallow after witnessing the gruesome murder scene of the man I once loved and his best friend. 8 months later being made a victim in my own home because I was guilty by association. Having the police treat me like a criminal because I had a child by one, a feeling I would never wish upon anyone who had just witnessed trauma.
It isn’t easy for anyone to understand the complexity of my mind but as my husband says, it starts and ends with Alex. A being that saved my life when I didn’t even realize it. A being that gave me the greatest gift of my life, at a time I contemplated killing myself. I was numb to the feeling of love until he gave me the gift of Frank.
As a mother of a fatherless child and a woman who survived South Chicago, it is important for me to tell my story in its entirety. I wouldn’t be the person I am without the experiences that would’ve broken many. I have been ripped of my innocence but my past has given me hope. Hope that my child will never have to witness the cold and bitter truth of the city he was born in. That the God who kept him asleep during our robbery and had me pray for my assailants, even as I was bound and blindfolded, has had mercy on his father’s soul.
I truly believe that Christ is a loving and forgiving soul. That the actions of all can be redeemed with a good heart. That he hears the prayers of all broken young men and women who have been stripped of their innocence and made mistakes that only he knows. That Alex has a chance to feel the love and comfort from his grace, something he so longed for his mere 21 years of life.
The streets have raised millions of kids in Chicago. This isn’t a game, this isn’t a joke, and this isn’t New York.
Chicago, is a world of its own.