No matter where I live, Chicago will always be home. Yet even though I no longer live and work in the city, its violence is something that still makes my heart stop. As I was scrolling through Facebook this morning, I paused for a few minutes to watch the following news story a friend posted. Mark Suppelsa, one of the city’s most famous anchors and reporters, spent 12 hours in one of Chicago’s most violent neighborhoods, Englewood. I know kids from this neighborhood – I worked with them at my last job. The amount of violence they experience in their young lives is horrifying. And it needs to stop. Listening to the youth in this story nearly made me cry. They just want a way out. Unfortunately for many of them, they will never find it.
This certainly isn’t one of my more cheerful posts, but as I saw kids affected by this sort of violence on a daily basis, I simply can’t ignore it. Hopefully, even in my tiny corner of the Internet, I can raise a bit of awareness. Because that’s all most of these kids need. A bit of hope.
To read or watch the story, click here.
