It is said that March comes in like a lion and goes out like a lamb.
The opposite is true of gun violence in Chicago.
As the weather warms in our city, our rates of gun violence go up in direct relation to the temperature. We recently witnessed this terrible truth during the summery last weekend of February. Over that weekend’s 48 hours, when temperatures were in the 60s and 70s, 21 people were shot, with four of those human beings dying from their gunshot wounds. Then, from March 12 to 13, when temperatures were again over 60 degrees, nine people were killed in a violent 24 hours.
Even if statistics tell us shootings were down 13% in 2023 over the previous year, we have every reason to believe that with the arrival of spring and onset of summer, gun violence will tear across Chicago like a lion. And we have every fear that this gun violence will take the lives of too many human beings and too many of our children.
There is no doubt that our government has a major role to play, organized by Deputy Mayor of Community Safety Garien Gatewood. For sure, the efforts of Chicago’s community violence intervention groups have important roles to play, making a difference on the front lines of potentially violent situations. There is no doubt that every job created for our youths by our business leaders and Park District makes a real difference.
But we write this Sunday, during the holy season that includes Easter, Ramadan and Passover, to discuss the roles each of us can play in diminishing the gun violence that will roar forth as Chicago weather warms.
We challenge our colleagues, the faith leaders of Chicago who stand at the center of so many communities and neighborhoods, to focus these coming months on a simple, straightforward issue: How do we keep our kids alive this summer?
Keeping Chicago’s children alive this summer must be addressed, consistently, in our synagogues, mosques and churches. We know that hate is on the rise, that wars and suffering are tearing apart different regions of our world, and that a national convention followed by a divisive election is headed our way very soon. But the pressing urgency of other issues cannot crowd out of our pulpits the violence that surrounds those pulpits. The weight of the wider world is not an excuse to ignore the potential fate of our own children. Now is the time for faith leaders to speak, and to take action, to protect our children.
Our houses of worship should be places where we talk about gun violence and where we listen about this matter of life and death. In addressing violence from our pulpits, we should speak to the value of children making right choices, to the importance of parents’ active involvement in the lives of their children. We can urge parents to remind their kids how valuable they are, to talk to them, to support them, and actively to know where they are and where they are going.
Even as we talk to our youths, we need to listen to them as well. We need to begin by being curious, asking our children: What do you need to keep you safe this summer? Whether as parents or institutions, we need to create conversations in which kids can share their hopes and their fears. And then we need to work with them to minimize their fears and work toward making their hopes real.
Listening to our children, we need to be willing to put into action what they need to keep them safe from gun violence. These might be church programs, communal basketball games, safe passage to transportation for summer jobs, continued programs of education, and many more activities that will demand our time and effort. We will learn a lot by listening to our youths. We can hold these conversations at home or in our houses of worship; we can also encourage the leadership of Chicago Public Schools and of our police to do the same and hear what our kids need from them to keep them safe.
We all have a role in changing the consciousness of our city, in uniting our many neighborhoods across lines of difference to come together and keep our kids safe from gun violence. For certain, we faith leaders can play a major part in creating a shared sense of mission and urgency. But every resident of our city can talk to their own kids, or their neighbors; they can walk to the local school or park or church or mosque or synagogue and ask what they can do to help.
Our involvement in preventing gun violence is literally a matter of life and death.
As the mild spring weather gives way to the heat of summer, the beauty of those seasons will be tempered by the blood of violence. May we all play our part, in coming months, to stem that violence and to see to the health and safety of our children.
Chicago faith leaders Rabbi Seth Limmer and the Rev. Otis Moss III, the Rev. Ciera Bates-Chamberlain and the Rev. Michael Pfleger joined the Tribune’s opinion section in summer 2022 for a series of columns on potential solutions to Chicago’s chronic gun violence problem. The column continues on an occasional basis.
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