Gun violence

This week is my last week with these guys. I'm pretty sad.

One thing my eyes have been opened to during this summer is how much gun violence is going on in Chicago. If you google Chicago shooting there are news reports of numerous shootings each day. Over 4th of July weekend there were over 74 shootings. A few weeks ago there were 17 shootings from Friday night to early Monday morning. Four of them were fatal. During class on Monday one of my boys got news that one of the fatalities was his brother. It was hard to see him go through that. We sent him home and he was gone almost all week. The day he came back he was the same as always.

I check the shooting news every day to see if any of my boys were victims. It is surprising how many places you can be shot and survive - even the head. The saddest stories are the little kids who get shot. A four year old girl shot in the stomach riding her scooter, a six year old boy riding in the car with his mom, and a dad who was shot six times while putting his toddler in the car and trying to shield him. Apparently that shooting was part of his gang initiation.

The gang war is bad too and a majority of these shootings are gang related. On Thursday we went on a bowling field trip. There were over 130 boys from the different groups in the mother program. A lot of them were rival gang members. Even the group we rode with on the bus were rival members to the guys in our program. I found out on Friday that it could have been really bad. I actually thought the field trip went well. It was chaotic with that many young guys together but I thought they were pretty well behaved. Apparently I was oblivious to the tension.

We have had the leader of a community group across the street come over and complain that when our group of guys stand outside it upsets the gang members who stand on the corner. When they get upset his group has to scatter. He has called the police and now the police park outside our church to watch the corner. One day when I was driving home I turned at the corner and as I was stopping at the red light a guy walked up to my window and made his fingers into guns and "shot" them at me. I just kept driving and he followed me down the street a little. The guys in my class said he was probably messing with me, but the mentor in our group said it was probably a threat. What are you supposed to do when someone points finger guns at you? Awkward!