Roy Exum
Chicago’s South Side has had gangs for over a century. There are the Vicelords, the Chicago Hoodz, the Black Gangster Disciples and the Blackstone Rangers. You can talk all you want to about Al Capone and the mob, but the South Side, called “The Black Belt,” marches to a different drummer. These gangsters don’t come to play.
In the past five years there have been 300 children slaughtered by gangs in Chicago. These deaths are the by-product of the most dangerous city in America. So far this year there have been 1,752 shootings with 295 dead and this is just August. This week so far? A total of 45 have been shot, five fatally. The word is the Mexican cartels are trying to muscle in on Chicago’s families, selling better dope more cheaply, and the bullets are flying – get this -- in a 21-percent increase over last year.
But wait … over on Bishop Avenue there is a grandmother of five who is known in the neighborhood as “Miss Yvonne.” She has attended eight kids’ funerals and, after four-year-old Jacele Johnson was shot in the head, she got a big piece of plywood and a can of spray paint. “Kids at play! Don’t shoot!” and placed it on the back of a stop sign.
Well, signs went up on all the stop signs in the neighborhood and former gang members like Joe Walker and Dwain Brown – who now have children of their own -- approached the gangs, asking just read our signs: “Stop the violence. Let our kids grow up.”
Since the signs went up there hasn’t been a gun shot on Bishop Avenue. Shootings are down 14 percent in the neighborhood and that’s climbing. “Used to be you would hear gunshots once or twice a week but now all you hear is kids laughing and playing," said Miss Yvonne.
Everybody credits the crude but effective signs. "We were trying to make it a surprise for the neighbors too, and when we put them up they was like unbelievable,'" Brown told CBS News. “We can't be accountable for what's happening on any other block but we can be accountable for what happens over here," he said. "So what can we do different -- the signs."
Chicago Police Chief Garry McCarthy regularly meets with gang members and parolees after shootings but praised the Bishop Avenue attempt to curb gunfire. "We introduced them to the concept of group accountability," said McCarthy, which means that if a child gets shot, everybody will take some responsibility.
McCarthy loves the strategy. “I don't care if it was done in crayon, if it's spray paint on a piece of cardboard and it's effective, let's get more spray paint and cardboard," said the police chief, who is at wit’s end over the shootings and murders.
So now let’s bring this home. What if the good people who live in Alton Park, who cringe over the safety of a four-year-old like Chicago’s Jacele Johnson, took a four-foot by eight-foot piece of plywood and sprayed “Don’t shoot! Children at Play!” Or what if people at the East Lake Courts, who are tired of reading about their neighbors’ gunshot wounds, begged, “Think about our children! Please let them grow up.”
Well, maybe we’d have a chance. What if black people … not the cops or the Salvation Army or Habitat for Humanity … placed a sign at the corner of Chamberlain and Glass Streets with the words sprayed, “Think about your own child! Don’t shoot.”
Maybe I am a dreamer, but if it works in the worst place in Chicago, why not try it here? Not long ago presidential candidate Ben Carson went to downtown Harlem and his message from the sidewalk was simple. “Of course black lives matter. But instead of people pointing fingers at each other, and just creating strife, we need to be talking about how do we solve the problem, in the black community, of murder.
“For a young black male in the inner city, homicide is the most likely cause of death. That is ridiculous. And most of those occur at the hands of other young black males. We need to be talking about why is that occurring. We need to be talking about how do we instill values into people again, so that they do in fact believe that their brother’s life matters.”
Is that beautiful or what? Your brother’s life matters! Put that on a piece of plywood and tack it to the back of a telephone poll on Dodson Avenue. Listen to what Dr. Carson told Megyn Kelly on her Fox News show, The Kelly File: “The whole value system – the values that created strong families, and gave people the kind of foundation they needed to be able to resist the influences on the street, those are not there anymore.
“People are easily taken … that’s a major problem,” the former neurosurgeon spoke candidly. “You look at these young black men. A quarter of them are in the penal system by the time they’re 20 years old. That’s ridiculous.”
Then he told a greater truth: “They’re not bad people – they’re good people, but unfortunately, they’re not getting the right kinds of influences. So that’s gonna happen to anybody, I don’t care what color they are, if you put them in that situation.”
Let’s stop the shootings. Black lives matter, children most especially. Don’t shoot.
royexum@aol.com