This city bordering on losing its soul
Crosses. A sea of wooden white crosses — 42 inches tall, 21 inches wide and 25 pounds each. More than 700 of them — many bearing red wooden hearts and faces of those slain. They flowed conspicuously up Michigan Avenue last New Year’s Eve.
Crosses. Symbolic of the bloodshed in my beloved birth city, where death by murder still tolls inexorably — inexhaustibly — in the hood. And yet, the beat goes on, like it’s all good. . . .
I, like some apparent tourists who took up a cross for those murdered in Chicago in 2016, carried De’Kayla Dansberry’s — stabbed dead in the chest, at just 15.
Laying aside my reporter’s pen and pad, I marched with activists in the frigid streets with my wife, daughter and son who carried their own cross. But as clear as the blue skyscraper- tipped skies was that “we” were not enough.
More than 2.7 million people in this city— where a lighted Ferris wheel spins over the glistening lake and the Magnificent Mile shines like a diamond — still, not enough showed up to carry each of the 750 crosses crafted by Greg Zanis, a suburban retired carpenter.
Zanis’ labor of love sought to draw attention to the crisis here, where at least 754 were murdered and about 3,500 shot in 2016.
But after all these years, I finally realize something: This city, my city, is deaf. And blind. And it is bordering on losing its soul.
At least, certain parts are deaf and blind. Mainly that “Chicago” that remains insulated from the daily shots fired and the sight of warm corpses that dot tree- lined neighborhood blocks.
In the other Chicago, street violence continues to breed palpable fear that keeps children from playing outside. Walking to and from school is a potential daily matter of life and death. Simple things, like strolling to the store, jumping rope outside or playing in the park require proceeding with caution.
The other Chicago is Rockwellian — a world- class twinkling city of dreams, a collection of fine museums, galleries and a presidential library to come. This Chicago is a picture- postcard city of Broadway plays and symphonies, of downtown high- rise living, of band shells and vast emerald parks that perennially fill with the sounds of jazz, blues and Lollapalooza that spill into the summer breeze.
No matter how loud the music, it cannot drown out the agony emanating beyond Chicago’s Magnificent Mile from the city’s hyper- segregated “insignificant isles.” Where the children die, and their blood cries, under a school- day sun.
And yet, not enough of Chicago cares about that other Chicago where violence, poverty and racial segregation glare — nearly 50 years since Dr. Martin Luther King’s assassination sparked riots I witnessed as a little boy on the West Side, where red- hot flames licked the night sky.
How else can it be explained in this city that once found a way to reverse the flow of the Chicago River, this resilient city that emerged even from the Great Fire better, stronger?
With all the great minds and universities here, with the collective Midwestern mettle and soul of all the good and decent people in this great city, why can’t we find the resolve to at last end this crisis? To make Chicago — over here and over there — safe?
When will we finally realize there is only one Chicago?
Amid the talk of percentage declines in violence in 2017, I am struck by the most significant numbers: Nearly 650 murders, at least 2,758 shootings.
I am struck by memories of the crosses from last New Year’s Eve.
At one point, I carried four, until two brothers showed up. There were enough crosses for us all.