I never like being around my phone late at night. That’s bad news time. But I’m the pastor, and I always keep my phone by my side for better or worse.
It went off several nights ago, with a stream of texts coming in about a shooting at Washington Park. It’s not even a mile away from our community center on the South Side of Chicago. It was a Saturday night, and families were gathering there for a reunion of former Robert Taylor Homes residents. For those of you who don’t know, the Robert Taylor Homes were housing projects that had been torn down, and many of these former neighbors had to find their own way. But on this night, they had come back together and brought chairs, food and their children. It was going to be a fun night at the park at the end of a hot day.
News reports said the crowd had remained in the park past its 11 p.m. closing, and nearby police were helping clear it out. At 11:37 p.m., several masked men opened fire. Someone shot back. After all the chaos and screaming, 15 people were hit by bullets, and Rontonio Guterz, a father of three young girls, was dead. He had been shot six times. His family went from going to a party to planning a funeral.
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By the time the weekend ended, Chicago had seen more than 40 people shot and three people killed. Gov. JB Pritzker posted on X that the Washington Park shooting “left Chicago mourning” and that “gun violence has no place here.”
Mayor Brandon Johnson put a statement out on X and highlighted the impact of gun violence. That was about it. Blood on the streets and clichés from our leaders.
What dismays me is not that the violence happened. Rather, it is the tolerance. I’ve seen communities elsewhere in America go into an uproar over one death and demand lasting change.
On the South Side, 15 people are shot at a picnic, and our leaders can’t even muster a sincere thought. We have been trained into dystopian numbness, and this numbness is surrender.
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The harder truth is that we know what the problems are in our neighborhoods, and we refuse to solve them.
What has bothered me over the years is that we don’t care when the shooter is Black. If it had been a White shooter, you can bet there would have been more action from our leaders. But when the shooter is Black, it’s, “Let’s bury this stink and move on.” Why do we do this?
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When someone is shooting in the park, nobody is looking at the race of the shooter. People are screaming, “That’s the shooter, that’s the shooter!” Mothers are grabbing children. Men are hitting the ground, and no one wants to be in the path of that bullet.
The shooters have not been caught. So we have 15 people shot and one person dead. No consequences. What I want to know is this: Why don’t these lives matter? Gov. Pritzker said that Black Lives Matter. Mayor Brandon Johnson brags about his Blacker-than-thou administration and demands diversity reports from city bidders. Yet where is he? Do these lives not matter? Why does Black matter only when they want it to?
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The evil in this is that these are human beings. Fathers. Mothers. Children. Neighbors. So many things before Black. I cannot verify whether these shooters are Black, but it is likely they are, given the context and facts at hand. But it matters nothing to me.
They’re not Black; they’re criminals. See how much simpler life is when you go beyond race to truth. They’re criminals, and they need to be brought to justice.
Accountability is not racial justice. It is justice. We need to open our eyes wide to the problems in these streets. We must see reality for what it is. And we must have the courage to deal with reality. If our leaders choose their politics over reality, then it must be the people among us who rise up and say enough.
We must be the ones who demand not racial justice, not social justice, but justice.