How Long Will I Cry? (3 page)

But the violence festers. It tears at one’s
soul. I’ve met kids who experience flashbacks, kids who have night
terrors, kids—like Thomas—who become filled with rage, kids who
self-medicate, kids who have physical ailments (Lafeyette would get
stomachaches whenever there were shootings), kids whose very being
is defined by the thunderous deaths around them. For many, it’s a
single act of violence around which the rest of a childhood will
revolve. And then there are parents who must bury a child, who swim
under a sea of what-ifs and regrets. One mother and father I knew
visited their 15-year-old son’s gravesite every day for nearly a
year, including grilling meals there. A mother whose 14-year-old
boy was executed by a gang member grieved so deeply that for a
period of time she only had a taste for sand. Another mother so
mourned the loss of her son she left his bedroom just as he’d left
it as a kind of memorial: his slippers by the end of his bed, his
basketball balanced precariously on his dresser and his collection
of M&M dispensers lined up on a closet shelf. In this
remarkable book, you’ll meet a number of parents who have lost
children to the city’s violence. One of them, Pamela Hester-Jones,
says of her son Lazarus, “He loved art and loved to dance. He liked
jazz music, and he loved to draw. He loved to swim, he loved going
to play golf, he loved going to the movies, he loved Hot Pockets
and vanilla ice cream. … I let my son Lazarus go outside. I would
never do it again.” Is that what we’ve come to? That the world is
such a threatening place that it’s best not to let your children
leave their house?

These are parents and communities who have
lost loved ones. They’ve lost ground. They’ve lost hope. They’ve
lost trust. They’ve lost a part of themselves. Drive through the
city’s West and South Sides, and you’ll be greeted by an array of
Block Club signs, and on each of them, neighbors have listed not
what they celebrate, but rather what they dread: “No gambling
(Penny pitching or dice playing.)” “No drug dealing.” “No alcohol
drinking.” “No sitting in or on cars.” They speak not to their
dreams, but rather to their fears. These are communities, to borrow
a term from the world of psychology, that are hyper-vigilant, that
are back on their heels, trying, understandably, to keep the world
at bay.

In
How Long Will I Cry?
, one former
gang member told his interviewer, “We’re telling each other,
‘You’re not alone in this.’” It’s something many need to remind
themselves of because more than anything the violence, the
killings, push people away from each other like slivers of magnets
of opposite poles. Neighbors come to distrust neighbors. Residents
come to distrust the police, and the police come to distrust the
residents. The police decry the no-snitching maxim, and think it’s
solely because residents don’t respect the police. There is,
indeed, a history there, most notably the torture committed by
Commander Jon Burge and his underlings—though what really had
people incensed was not so much that it had occurred but that for
so many years those in positions of power, from Mayor Daley on
down, refused to concede that it ever happened. But people also
don’t snitch because they don’t trust each other, because they no
longer feel a part of something, because they no longer feel
safe.

Which brings us to the blunt, discomforting
truth about the violence. Most of it occurs in deeply impoverished
African-American and Latino neighborhoods, places where aspiration
and ambition has withered and shrunk like, well, a raisin in the
sun. Look at a map of the murders and shootings, and it creates a
swath through the South and West Sides, like a thunderstorm
barreling through the city. How can there not be a link between a
loss of hope and the ease with which spats explode into something
more? There’s a moment when we were filming
The
Interrupters
, and Ameena Matthews, one of the three Violence
Interrupters whose work we chronicled, reflected on what she calls
“the 30 seconds of rage.” She described it like this: “I didn’t eat
this morning. I’m wearing my niece’s clothes. I just was violated
by my mom’s boyfriend. I go to school, and here comes someone that
bumps into and don’t say excuse me. You hit zero to rage within 30
seconds, and you act out.” In other words, these are young men and
women who are burdened by fractured families, by lack of money, by
a closing window of opportunity, by a sense that they don’t belong,
by a feeling of low self-worth. And so when they feel disrespected
or violated, they explode, often out of proportion with the moment,
because so much other hurt has built up, like a surging river
threatening to burst a dam.

Then there’s the rest of us who reading the
morning newspaper or watching the evening news hear of youngsters
gunned down while riding their bike or walking down an alley or
coming from a party, and think to ourselves, they must have done
something to deserve it, they must have been up to no good.
Virtually every teen and young man shot, the police tell us,
belonged to a gang, as if that somehow suggests that “what goes
around, comes around.” But life in these communities is more
tangled than that. You can’t grow up in certain neighborhoods and
not be affiliated, because of geography or lineage. (An
administrator at one South Side high school estimates that 90
percent of the boys there are identified with one clique or
another.) Moreover, it’s often safer to belong than not to belong
for you want someone watching your back. And honestly, as Ameena
suggests, many if not most of the disputes stem not from gang
conflicts but rather from seemingly petty matters like
disrespecting someone’s girlfriend, or cutting in line, or simply
mean-mugging. This doesn’t explain the madness. Not at all. It’s
just to suggest that it’s more complicated and more profound than
readings of a daily newspaper or viewings of the evening news would
suggest.

Let’s be frank, these neighborhoods are so
physically and spiritually isolated from the rest of us that we
might as well be living in different cities. When was the last time
you had lunch in Englewood? Or tossed a football in Garfield Park?
Or got your car repaired in Little Village? Or went for a stroll in
the Back of the Yards? To understand—I mean really understand—what
it’s like to grow up in these communities requires a leap of
faith—or maybe it’s just a leap. For reasons that no one can really
explain, Chicago has been the epicenter for very public and
horrifying youth murders—Yummy Sandifer, Eric Morse, Ryan Harris,
Derrion Albert and now Hadiya Pendleton. And each time public
officials shout, “never again,” and then do very little to
strengthen these neighborhoods, do very little to ensure a sense of
opportunity—real opportunity—for the kids. Let’s be frank, we’ve
abandoned these places, just walked away. We tore down the public
housing high-rises, and in places like the State Street corridor
have rebuilt just a little over half of what was promised. We talk
of dismantling neighborhood schools in communities where the local
school is the very fiber that holds things together. A place like
Englewood is pockmarked by boarded-up, abandoned homes, so many
that on some blocks there are as many as every other structure.
Where’s the outcry? Sometimes it feels like even a nod of
acknowledgement would do.

Yet in the midst of all this, people go about
their lives. They hold down jobs. They raise families. They go to
school. They play basketball and skip rope. They attend church and
get their hair done. They shop and grill and mow their lawns (and
the lawns of neighboring vacant lots). They tend their gardens and
rake their yards. They gossip and share a beer. In other words,
despite the five people each day (on average) who are shot, people
still are immersed in the routine and banal. They seek some
normalcy. So lest we forget, those in Englewood share more than you
might think with those, say, in Lincoln Square. Maybe it’s not a
leap of faith that’s required, but rather just simply a faith, that
everyone wants the best for themselves and those around them.

It’s the power of what follows here, the
frank and often profound reflections of those who have been there,
of those who have lost. In their words, often philosophical and
poetic, they move us to see what they see and to hear what they
hear. They make us all feel less alone.

LOVE WITHOUT CONDITION

T-awannda Piper

The beating death of 16-year-old Derrion
Albert, near Fenger High School in 2009, focused worldwide
attention on the horrors of street violence in Chicago. The video
of that incident—which went viral on the Internet and received
widespread airplay on TV—was a profound shock for many viewers. It
shows young men bludgeoning Derrion Albert with scrap lumber, then
continuing to beat and kick him as he crumples to the street.
Off-screen, meanwhile, we hear someone—presumably the man holding
the camera—laughing approvingly and, as if watching a prizefight,
shouting “damn” when the attackers land new blows on the
victim.

But if the video is a testament to the
viciousness and callousness of urban violence, it also documents an
act of great courage and humanity. Just before the film concludes,
the blurry image of a woman rushing into the crowd appears in the
frame. Along with other bystanders, she lifts the limp body of the
boy and drags him into a nearby building, the Agape Community
Center on 111th Street.

Her name is T-awannda Piper, a longtime
community activist in the Far South Side neighborhood of Roseland,
where the attack took place. A dignified and thoughtful woman of
deep faith, Piper has not spoken publicly about the incident since
immediately after it took place. The following narrative is based
on her first in-depth interview on the attack and its aftermath—a
conversation she agreed to only after careful consideration.
“
I want to make sure that, whatever comes from this project,”
she says, “it is going to benefit the people I love, the community
I love, as well as the city at large.”

I moved to this community in the summer of
1998. I am originally from Washington, D.C. I attended college in
North Carolina, got involved with a ministry called Campus Crusade
for Christ as a student. I grew up in an at-risk community and felt
like the Lord was leading me to go back and work with young people
who were considered at risk. One of the places Campus Crusade owned
was in the city of Chicago. That ministry is called the Agape
Community Center and it’s on the Far South Side in Roseland.

Agape means God’s unconditional love. Love
without condition. Every Thursday night for many years, the Agape
Center had what we call Teen Night. Teenagers from all over the
Roseland neighborhood, from all different high schools, would come.
We’d have snacks, we’d have games, and then we’d have some time
centered around the Bible. And on a given night, we could have 60
to 80 kids there. And what I loved about that was there were some
kids who were involved in gangs, but the Agape Center was neutral
territory. They did not bring that to the center. They respected
our rules: remove your hats, pull your pants up, take your earrings
out. So just to see that kind of ministry happen with young people
was amazing to me.

The attack on Derrion Albert took place as I
was setting up for our Teen Night on a Thursday afternoon. There’s
a window at the receptionist’s desk of our building. It’s the only
window we have on the first floor. For security reasons, all of the
other windows are on top of the building. And the receptionist said
to me, “T,” she says, “there’s a group of kids in front of the
building looking like they’re getting ready to fight.” I ran over
and said, “Call 911 and tell them ‘mob action’ on 111th.” If
there’s a group of kids outside fighting and you say, “mob action,”
it gets the police there quicker. That’s why I said it. I had no
other reason.

But then, I looked out the window and I
looked at the TV monitor for our security cameras. I was just
immediately overwhelmed, because there were a lot of kids out
there. And so I ran upstairs and I told the other staff in my
building, “We need your help.” I was just yelling out loud, “We
need your help downstairs. There’s a group of kids outside of our
building fighting.” I came back down to the front desk, and that’s
when I saw the attack on Derrion.

Almost immediately when I got to the window,
I saw a young man take what looked like a two-by-four—it was a big
piece of wood—and hit someone over the head with a board. And so, I
saw the injured boy fall to the ground and try to get back up, and
another young man came and punched him. They began to kick him, and
the next thing I remember was the second hit with the board. I
turned to my co-worker and said, “They’re gonna kill him.” And
before I knew it, I was outside of the building.

There were a bunch of co-workers standing
there at the time, and I don’t know how much they saw or didn’t see
of the attack. But later, one of the women who works with me was
like, “We’re not surprised that it was you who ran out there.”

See, I’ve always just really felt burdened to
give back and work alongside young people who may not have had the
exact experience as I had, but something very similar. I started
out as a statistic with all of the odds against me, so to speak. I
was born to a drug addict. My mother was addicted to heroin, and
just about any drug that was out there, she used. I mean, she was
full-blown out there, and is still struggling today.

I have a twin brother. My maternal
grandfather took us in when we were born, and we lived with him
until we were about 5 or 6 years old. Then, we relocated in
Southeast D.C. with my mom. She had gone through a recovery
program, and we went to live in public housing with her. And after
about a year or so, my mom did not make it through her recovery—she
became addicted again. And to get away from investigations with the
Department of Children and Family Services, we moved to Harrisburg,
Pennsylvania. She ran off with us with a boyfriend there. And her
addiction did not stop, so eventually my grandparents got us back,
and we moved back to the Washington area. I would say that half of
my life was kind of lived in instability, because I was staying
with a distant family member there, or a distant family member over
here, and then we moved here, and then I was back with my mom here,
and so there was a lot of moving around.