Yolanda Fields, executive director at Breakthrough, speaks during a press conference near the intersection of South California Avenue and West Polk Street in the East Garfield Park neighborhood, Wednesday, Nov. 2, 2022, two days after 14 people were shot in a drive-by shooting during a vigil and balloon release.
Pat Nabong/Sun-Times
Community leaders gathered Wednesday near the scene of a Halloween night mass shooting in East Garfield Park, offering messages of perseverance while calling for additional funding to address violence and disinvestment on the West Side.
Fourteen people, including three children, were wounded around 9 p.m. Monday when gunmen in a car opened fire near the corner of California Avenue and Polk Street, where a large group of people were holding a vigil for a woman who recently died from cancer.
“As a community, we are pressed on every side by troubles. We are not crushed,” said Yolanda Fields, executive director of Breakthrough Urban Ministries. “We are perplexed, but we are not driven to despair. We are hunted down, but never abandoned by God.
“We get knocked down, but we are not destroyed.”
Yolanda Fields, executive director at Breakthrough, speaks during a press conference near the intersection of South California Avenue and West Polk Street in the East Garfield Park neighborhood, Wednesday, Nov. 2, 2022, two days after 14 people were shot in a drive-by shooting during a vigil and balloon release.
Pat Nabong/Sun-Times
Fields, whose organization does anti-violence work and provides other services in the community, told reporters that 10 of the gunshots victims were related to the woman who was being mourned, including two of the three children.
But instead of focusing solely on the attack, many of Wednesday’s speakers pushed for investments to address the root causes of gun violence and its effect on communities.
U.S Rep. Danny Davis (D-Ill.) called for “a massive infusion of cash money, resources, to really reconstitute urban communities on the West Side of Chicago” and across the country — “the same kind of money” being sent to support Ukraine’s fight against Russia.
U.S. Rep. Danny Davis attends a press conference near the intersection of South California Avenue and West Polk Street in the East Garfield Park neighborhood, Wednesday, Nov. 2, 2022, two days after 14 people were shot in a drive-by shooting during a vigil and balloon release.
Pat Nabong/Sun-Times
Under Gov. J.B. Pritzker and Mayor Lori Lightfoot, the state and city governments have launched programs dedicated to funneling resources into historically violent areas of Chicago.
Lightfoot’s signature “Our City, Our Safety” program dedicated more than $450 million over the past two years to fund violence reduction efforts, jobs programs, affordable housing and homelessness support services and other programming.
In declaring gun violence a public health crisis last November, Pritzker dedicated $250 million for community-based grants focused on violence prevention and youth development and intervention initiatives.
But the speakers agreed more help is desperately needed.
“Whether it’s on the West Side or the South Side of Chicago, the resources that we are bringing back to our communities, you can barely see them because it has been oppressed for so long,” said State Rep. Lakesia Collins, D-Chicago.
She said parents like her are “frightened.”
“I’m afraid that every day, I might receive a phone call about my 17-year-old or my 14-year-old or my 9-year-old who are simply going home from school or going to the store or wanting to go to the park,” said Collins, who was flanked by Ald. Jason Ervin (28th) and Deputy Mayor of Public Safety Elena Gottreich.
Police stand on the street while members of the media set up during a press conference near the intersection of South California Avenue and West Polk Street in the East Garfield Park neighborhood, Wednesday, Nov. 2, 2022, two days after 14 people were shot in a drive-by shooting during a vigil and balloon release.
Pat Nabong/Sun-Times
Three children — 3, 11 and 13 years old — were seriously wounded in Monday’s shooting, though the full circumstances of the attack remain unclear. Chicago Police Supt. David Brown has told reporters that shots were fired from a passing car. A source told the Sun-Times that police rifle rounds were among the shell casings recovered.
Lasundra Ward said a group had gathered for a vigil for one of her relatives, a 36-year-old woman who had died days earlier after battling cancer.
“I was out there holding a balloon when it happened,” Ward told the Sun-Times at Wednesday’s event. “There was nothing but adults and little kids out there.
“We don’t understand what happened.”
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