Loren Taylor, a volunteer with The Black Star Project and the Chicago Justice or Else LOC monitored and compiled stats from the weekend. “The single most important finding that came out of the data is that the Community Peace Surge was most effective in those areas where we had an already existing partnership with an organization that was doing ongoing work that was taking place before the peace surge, was intended to take place after the peace surge and quite likely would have happened anyway. We just came in to enhance it,” said Mr. Taylor.
Organizers pointed to the South Side area of Chatham, where they and other groups have been working for several months, as a bright spot amid the dismal news of Labor Day weekend violence. There were no shootings or homicides in Chatham during the weekend organizers said, which points to progress and work local groups are doing there is paying off.
Daniel X of the 10,000 Fearless and T.J. Crawford of Breaking Bread shared that during the past several months, they along with other activists, have worked extensively in Chatham. “Leading up to the Community Peace Surge, we started off on Friday evenings by conducting our ‘Fearless Fridays’ which is what we do every Friday. We go out and engage the people directly, we pass out information, we shake hands, we wave, we do all of these things as a group of community activists and individuals from the community actually participate,” said Daniel X.
Officer Kevin Quaid of the public affairs office of the Chicago Police Department confirmed in a telephone call with The Final Call that there were no homicides in Chatham during Labor Day weekend and only one shooting he said that occurred in the wee hours of Friday morning, Sept. 2. Organizers did not include that incident in their statistics because the alleged victim reportedly crashed his vehicle near the area and then reported he had been shot in Chatham.
Mini chess tournaments, street corner hip hop and spoken word cyphers, martial arts demonstrations and neighborhood clean-ups were just some of the activities that took place in Chatham.
Organizers presented a list of 20 “lessons” they learned from the weekend.
“Number one, you’ve got to have critical infrastructure; you’ve got to have standing institutions addressing this problem. You cannot just pop up as we do in Chicago with policemen a week before a violent holiday and say ‘we’re going to protect the city.’ It doesn’t work,” said Mr. Jackson.
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