Father Michael Pfleger: ‘Time out for yellow police tape landmarks' in the ‘hood’.

By Chinta Strausberg

 

Hundreds braved the chilly weather and attended the Chicago Voices For Peace rally Saturday held at the James R. Thompson Center where more than a dozen talented Spoken Word artists dissected violence along with Father Michael L. Pfleger and award-winning actor Harry Lennix who called for an end to violence and a restoration of peace.

Their melodious Spoken Word artists voices rang throughout the Thompson Center and did so in a very rhythmically way aimed at educating people about the importance of restoring peace to communities that are stifled by self-hated, misguided trigger-happy youth and draped with “landmarks” of yellow police tape, Teddy Bears and artistic signs of R.I.P.

Pfleger thanked the crowd for coming out in the cool weather but he said the children are worth the effort and the deceased should be honored and never forgotten.

“Maybe we should be a little cold. Maybe we should be a little bit uncomfortable because it’s a cold and uncomfortable day for parents today who buried their children. Every day is a cold and uncomfortable day, not just in the fall and the winter,” said Pfleger.“

“It’s a cold and uncomfortable day for the genocide that is going on in this country, not in Rwanda, not in Darfur, but right here in America where black and brown children are dying on our streets and nobody seems to care because they said it’s black and brown children,” he said “If ten children on the north shore were killed last week, there would be a different reaction in this country.

“It’s a cold and uncomfortable day for children who are afraid to go to school every day or back and forth to their classrooms and wondering if they would get home safely or even if they could be in their home and be shot that night,” said Pfleger.

“It’s a cold and uncomfortable day when so many of our neighborhoods their landmarks are Teddy Bears, yellow police tape and balloons where somebody got shot last week or last night or last month and we’ve seen our classroom desks empty where somebody used to sit. You talk about post-traumatic stress….

“It’s not just coming back from the war overseas. It’s a war that goes on here in America against our children. The only problem is because this is not declared money for it. If we declared that there is a war on our children or there is a war on poverty, if we declared that, we’d have some money put in to try and stop it in this country but we don’t care,” bellowed Pfleger.

“It’s a cold day and uncomfortable day for those last night that slept under bridges and viaducts on 18th Street and Lower Wacker,” he said. “The thing is after this is over with, we can go back home,, but the people who lost their children, their children ain’t coming home and the people under the viaduct don’t have a home to go back to,” Pfleger said thanking the audience for coming.

“We will not be silent. We will not be immune. We will not get used to children dying,” he led the audience in a chant. “We will fight. We will shout, and we will work until every neighborhood is safe, our children are safe and can grow up and become what God called them to be. Stop this madness. Stop the violence. Save our children,” Pfleger said. “We will not forget them. They were shot like animals in this country.”

A native of Chicago who grew up in South Shore and taught at the Bass Elementary School at 66th and Racine in Englewood, award-winning actor and producer Harry Lennix attended the rally to give the youth hope.

Lennix told this writer, “Every year we would lose a child through violence. Senseless violence in terms of random bullets at times scattering, shooting the crowd and kind of thoughtless, reckless disregard for life and I think that comes from a lack of knowledge….

“Anything that I can do to address that, anything that I can say to give a word of encouragement for people to feed the ability in themselves, that I think we ought to make every opportunity to do so and that is why I am here today,” said Lennix.

And, the Spoken Word artists echoed similar sentiments but in a very talented way. Introduced by Mack Julion, the M.C., the first act was the World Premier Team. Dressed in blue, the youth showed off their gymnastic talents. The others had a clear anti-violence message and a list of consequences they say will ensue if the shooting doesn’t stop.

Rhymefest  had just returned from L.A. to his community in Woodlawn.  In 10-days,  he said 9 people had been killed “outside of my doorstep, four of them right in front of my house. These are people who’re getting it on the backend. We can get justice on the front end,” hes aid.

Explaining how in the entertainment field a person can get paid on the front end or the back end,  Rhymefest said in life the front end ”looks like a good education. It looks like staying out of the prison industrial complex. It looks like family. A lot of us are harboring the person who is going to shoot the next person.

“Now, you know your son has a gun. You know your daughter is hanging with the drug dealer, but you’re not doing anything about it thinking it’s not going to affect you in your home but guess what you’re going to get it on the back end.

“We’re going to get what we deserve on the front end and the front end is staying away from the back end because the back end is going to prison. The back end is deaths in our community. The back end is losing our love ones. The back end is seeing a child, your sister, your brother die in the streets like a dog.

“We deserve justice on the front end,” said Rhymefest. “Justice on the front end does not come from the fifth floor of that building,” he said pointing to City Hall. “Justice on the front end starts in your house. Justice on the front end starts in your school, and stop calling your community your hood…. It’s your village and you have to walk through it like a village.”

Rhymefest said there are things that are happening in his community he doesn’t agree with like “selling Shisha Sweets out of the cheeseburger shop. That is disrespectful to our community.” While he says people tell him they don’t shop in the neighborhood, he said, “but you live in the neighborhood; so when your child dies from the conditions that are set in a neighborhood that you don’t do anything about, you are, in effect, responsible for your own child’s death.

“If you let that death happen on the front end, if you don’t do anything about the conditions on the front end, it’s always going to hit you in the butt,” he stated Other Spoken Word artists had a similar message.

Awthentik, a popular Spoken Word artist, broke it down saying, “It seems like our young boys can’t see they are still in slavery although they work long hours outside in the heat with cotton on their backs, big chains around their necks as they join together singing the latest Negro rap lyric, no education and living in a run down apartment shacks. You see, we’re a lost generation and understand nothing to the fullest and it’s sad because the only thing getting through these kid’s heads today is bullets.

“They come up with this American dream but how are we suppose to dream but how are we suppose to dream when our dreams got nightmares, when our hopes got insecurities…. How am I suppose to dream when I can’t even sleep because where I am from it’s hard to rest with police sirens fill the streets, when the yells and screams of hatred cloud our airways and tears come so often that they begin to drown in the face and the Statute of Liberty is drained…meaning justice and liberty to everybody with a fortune.

“And there are a lot of teenagers pregnant with dreams but life is handing out abortions….. “ While the rich gets richer, she said the poor “stay locked behind poverty bars. We get hated on, discriminated against because our income is too low.

“As I go through life watching suburban kids turn up their nose once I tell them I’m from the West Side of Chicago, school counselors tell me my performance in school is going to be affected because I’m from a one-parent household, crack heads come up to me because I’m 22 asking me do I smoke blows.  Naw, I’m selling dreams….
“And, I’m OK being from the dirty West Side because dirt is the only way a rose can grow and sometimes keeping my head up above water gets hard but water is the only way the ship can row. Many problems is the only way a human can flow and the percentage of black college graduates is low which is sadly because today the new style is you drop out of high school, get pregnant just to keep your daddy’s baby so I’ve come to give sight to a blind generation and to expose the truth of society and the nations…. “

“Today, the value of a woman is in her full hips and the man ain’t unless you pop the full clip….” Awthentik said it’s a risk to go to school because classes are cut
and we can’t move forward because this generation is stuck. These kids is X because some households have no moms and dads and we can’t live Dr. King’s dream because look at the war Willie Lynch had…..”

And, there were other Spoken Word artists like K-Love, Def Poet M’Reld, Deana Dean, Mel Rob, Celeste Che “Rhymefest” Smith, a Grammy nominated hip-hop artist. Also speaking was V-103’s Tony Schofield both of whom called for an end to the violence that is taking the lives of so many children.

The Urban Dolorosa, multi-cultural movement aimed at uniting Chicago’s communities especially those hot spots where children have been killed by violence. The purpose is to have a “memorial pilgrimage…to stand together to remember the children killed” by the senseless violence that is giving this city a black eye.

Memorial events to honor children killed by violence will be held on: Nov. 1st, 7 p.m. at Saint Sabina, 1210 W. 78th Place, Nov. 2, 5:30 p.m., Chicago Temple, 77 W. Washington, Nov. 3rd, 7 p.m., New Mount Pilgrim, 4301 W. Washington, Nov. 4th, 7 p.m., Holy Cross, 46th and Hermitage, and Nov. 6th, 5:30 p.m. at the Hyde Park Union Church, 5600 S. Woodlawn.

Photo Caption: “We will not be silent. We will not be immune. We will not get used to children dying,” he led the audience in a chant. “We will fight. We will shout, and we will work until every neighborhood is safe, our children are safe and can grow up and become what God called them to be. Stop this madness. Stop the violence. Save our children,” “We will not forget them. They were shot like animals in this country,” said Father Michael L. Pfleger.

HARRY LENNIX: “What our children need is knowledge.”

Mothers who lost their children to violence listened intently at more than a dozen Spoken Word artists who called for an end to violence and a restoration of peace.

Che ‘Rhymefest’ Smith:

“Now, you know your son has a gun. You know your daughter is hanging with the drug dealer, but you’re not doing anything about it thinking it’s not going to affect you in your home but guess what you’re going to get it on the back end,” said Rhymefest.

Photo Caption: By Chinta Strausberg

Chinta Strausberg is a Journalist of more than 33-years, a former political reporter and a current PCC Network talk show host.  You can e-mail Strausberg at: Chintabernie@aol.com.