Brave in Chiraq: Countdown to summer

More than half of the 425 people killed in Chicago last year were under the age of 25.

With young people out of school for the summer, they’re at greater risk for violence no matter how much they might wish to distance themselves from it. In the first month of the summer of 2015, about 50 people have been killed – just one month after school let out.

Local newspapers and television stations often report on the numbers killed, shot and injured. National journalists have covered Chicago’s crisis in tones that either glorify or overstate the myth of Chiraq, a term made famous by rappers like King Louie and Chief Keef. A word once meant to sound an alarm has now become a shorthand for the entire city, particularly neighborhoods on the South Side like Englewood or Auburn Gresham.

But in Auburn Gresham, the heart of what is so often referred to as Chiraq, youth leaders, parents and clergy are trying to build a lasting peace. These are the people who live and work here, go to school and church here and most courageously, they grow up here. They persevere despite almost insurmountable challenges from death to family hardship to dwindling state funding needed to maintain crucial anti-violence programs.

The Ark of St. Sabina offers everything from basketball and crafts to a music studio and creative writing workshops for kids and teens. The building is on the Catholic St. Sabina Church campus in the Auburn Gresham neighborhood on the South Side of Chicago. 

A 'gone, but not forgotten' memorial for community members killed stands at the front of St. Sabina campus. As of July 20, 254 people have been killed in Chicago this year.

One such program is The Ark of St. Sabina, an after-school initiative for kids ages 6 through 12 inside a Catholic parish with a mostly African-American congregation. Its efforts are year-round, but they truly begin in Chicago’s springtime, just a few months before public schools let out for the summer and the temperatures begin to rise.

“This is the time, like, you won’t make it through the summer,” said Lamar Johnson, 25. “Even a rapper said this summer will be a bloody summer, that’s definitely the case.”

Johnson is the youth services coordinator at The Ark. He remembers seeing violence in his neighborhood from a young age, hearing that friends or family were shot, arrested or sent to prison. "We knew that it could be us," said Johnson. "It shouldn't be us but we knew it could be.”

The Ark provides basic programs like a basketball league, arts and crafts, a music studio, creative writing and poetry to keep children busy both after school and throughout the summer, when they’re most at-risk. An extension program, the BRAVE Youth Leaders, carries those children through their teenage years, encouraging and training them to become mentors, leaders and activists in their communities.

Johnson said the programs, particularly for the younger set, give them a place to call home every day during a particularly important time in their lives.

“Especially in this city, their lives are being shaped by their influences and their environment,” he said. “This is a very crucial and vulnerable time for them, so they need some direction.”

Kalyl Paylor, 13, plays basketball at The Ark of St. Sabina. 'Playing ball here has been a gift. I really love the game, and I hope to continue to play it throughout all my life until I retire.'  

Kids like 13-year-old Kalyl Paylor are struggling. He went to a school that was overrun by fighting and gangs, with a staff that “couldn’t do anything about the kids.” After he and his mom couldn’t take the stress any longer, they enrolled Paylor at The Ark, a sort of safe haven for him, now, when school and the neighborhood get to be too much.

“The best thing that happens here, to me, is making friends,” he said. “There are a lot of people here you can get to know well. I feel safe, I can trust people. Here is like home for me, basically.”

Leonard Goodrum (right), 21, a staff member at The Ark, said most of his family is in gangs. 'Some of them went to jail, some of them dead ... but I don't think that's what I want to be.' Watch the video above to hear more of Leonard's story.

As a mother, Pam Bosley has experienced both the stress of trying to keep her children safe from the crosshairs of violence in their area and the pain of actually losing a son caught in it. In 2006, Terrell Bosley, 18, was shot and killed in a church parking lot. Since then, his parents have become some of Chicago’s most vocal anti-violence activists, with Pam Bosley now the youth services director of The Ark of St. Sabina.

“When Terrell was shot and killed, I wanted to stay busy,” she said. “So then I talked to Father [Michael] Pfleger, and I told him I really want to do something to stop the violence because I cannot afford to lose another child. I need to do something to stop it.”

Pfleger is one of the most recognizable faces of the anti-violence movement in Chicago. Just last week, he vehemently criticized a scheduled concert (via hologram) for drill rapper Chief Keef, a Chicago native, that would benefit the family of a Chicago toddler who was killed when a car struck his stroller. Pfleger posted about Chief Keef on Facebook. “Instead of having a concert … why doesn’t he man up and acknowledge it’s time to stop the violence and apologize for his part in it!!!!” The concert was postponed.

Rev. Michael Pfleger is a prominent anti-violence activist in Chicago. Here, he directs a peace rally march with the BRAVE Youth Leaders from St. Sabina.

Before the Chief Keef headlines, Pfleger, leader of the Faith Community of St. Sabina, and Bosley were focused on keeping St. Sabina’s programs, like The Ark, running. The programs are paid for with a combination of funds from private donors and government grants. This year, the state of Illinois abruptly cut funding, jeopardizing summer and year-round anti-violence programs like these, crucial to children and families growing up neighborhoods overrun with guns.

“You’ve gotten to the point that violence is such a regularity, that it is part of growing up,” Pfleger said. “We're in danger of losing a generation to cemeteries, a generation to prison, a generation to being emotionally damaged. It’s destroying a generation.”

The BRAVE Youth Leaders, the extension program for older kids at St. Sabina, focuses on giving opportunities to teens to become mentors and leaders in their neighborhoods. Roushan Barham, 18, found it harder and harder to stay away from the temptations of gangs after the murder of his cousin – shot 10 times getting ready to take his mother to dinner – and the arrest of an uncle for an alleged shooting and drug dealing. He joined BRAVE – which stands for Bold Resistance Against Violence Everywhere – to become an anti-violence advocate, going out into neighborhoods to talk directly with gang members, “even if they have attitude,” he said.

Roshaun Barham, 18, said joining the BRAVE Youth Leaders has helped him deal with his emotions after experiencing violence close to home. 

“When I first came it was hard to talk, because I was still heartbroken. But as you progress you get to hear everyone else’s stories. It makes you want to open up,” Barham said. “Most kids say that coming here is the only place they have and the most positive thing that comes to their life.”

Most of the teens in BRAVE have lost somebody they know, and they’re simply “tired of losing loved ones to violence,” Bosley said. The kids have grown incredibly close, despite being from different schools and different neighborhoods. They’ve banded together for peace rallies in local parks, organized marches and hosted events like a talent show during May’s “iCare month,” designed to promote peace ahead of the impending summer vacation.

Last summer, St. Sabina hired more than 1,100 young people in Chicago for its programs. Due to the Illinois funding cuts, only about 320 jobs will be available this summer, Pfleger said.

“We know that that could spike violence, as well, because now the kids don’t have anything to do,” Johnson said. “Just think about it – you’re 16 years old, now there’s no incentive. I might just stay on the block. And we know how that will end up.”

Rev. Michael Pfleger and Pam Bosley (far right) developed the BRAVE Youth Leaders program to give Chicago teens an opportunity to grow into mentors and leaders in their communities' anti-violence efforts. The teens often talk directly with gang members and make themselves visible in local parks. 

On June 19, before the first official weekend of summer, when Chicago schools began to let out, the BRAVE Youth Leaders hosted one more peace rally at St. Sabina. Hundreds turned out. Emotions ran high. There had already been 198 murders in the city at that point.  

Pfleger stood atop the steps of his church and preached, aggressively, from a mic’d pulpit. Citing the more than 1,000 shootings in Chicago since January of this year, he compared Chicago’s current struggle with violence to the civil rights movement that culminated in a march across the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Ala.  

“Chicago’s peace is our Selma. We can’t afford to be just nostalgic about what happened 50 years ago,” he said. “We have to become like them. And we have to cross the bridge of our day. Brothers and sisters, the Edmund Pettus Bridge of our day is violence in the city of Chicago.”

BRAVE Youth Leaders and community members march after a peace rally at St. Sabina, just before the first weekend of summer, after schools have let out. A month later, Chicago's homicide total reached 254 for the year. 

As of July 20, 254 people have been murdered in Chicago, including 10 just this past weekend, according to the Chicago Tribune. The state of Illinois has not restored funding to the BRAVE Youth Leaders.  

At that June 19 peace rally, Johnson led the group in this prayer:

God, we come with motivation, demanding peace. Father, you said in your word - blessed are the peacemakers for they shall be called the children of God. So God, we come this evening demanding peace. We come calling for peace. Because the violence has become untolerable. The hate has become untolerable. Father, we understand that the blood cries out from the ground, and we must respond and take action. So God, we pray that you bless our efforts, give us the strength to stand against the kingdom of darkness and say we will not tolerate killing. We will not tolerate hate. We will not tolerate gun violence or any violence that shall plague our streets. But we will demand peace today and for this summer, and even for the rest of our lives. For this is our prayer tonight, in Jesus’ name. Amen.

Video produced and edited by Peter Holderness. Text by Jessica Galliart and Scott Smith.