Photos: Protesters Marched To Rahm's House With Coffins To Decry Gun Violence Toll
By aaroncynic in News on Dec 22, 2016 3:56PM
Dozens marched to Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s home in Ravenswood Wednesday evening in a vigil for the more than 770 people killed in Chicago this year.
Carrying flowers, battery-powered tealight candles and several mock coffins with epitaphs for public housing, mental heath clinics and police accountability on them, they marched in a silent funeral procession from the American Indian Center to the mayor’s house after a series of speeches.
“I am broken,” Camiella Williams, who said she has lost nearly 30 loved ones, told the group. “Words cannot describe my pain. I have given 10 years of my life as an 18 year old fighting for this city and all I got was 28 loved ones—black African-American males who had aspirations. They matter, their lives matter. The city is silent. They want to party, celebrate the Cubs. You mean to tell me that we’re at 771 homicides and they expect to give Rahm a pass.”
The group included relatives of victims of violence, community activists, faith leaders, all who decried Chicago’s violence epidemic. Chicago has seen the highest amount of homicides in more than 2 decades. And while city officials often appear flummoxed when it comes to solving the problem, many attendees said that it’s Emanuel’s policies that have exacerbated it. Though many homicides in the city are often portrayed or seen as random events, they’re interconnected, and a direct effect of the loss of public schools, mental health clinics, affordable public housing, and other policies that concentrate money and resources in already wealthy, mostly white areas while letting poor communities of color suffer.
“We’re gathered here tonight to tell the stories of how their deaths came to be,” said community activist H. Demetrius Bonner. “When we tell the story of our losses as a community, our compounding losses, we shouldn’t write it as 770 discreet and disconnected tragic events. These deaths are more than just tragic events or headlines. These deaths are ongoing—make no mistake—they’re outcomes of political and economic processes that are making a growing number of our citizens— especially black citizens—disposable.”
The group left the coffins, covered in the flowers and electronic candles, on the Mayor’s front lawn.
“When we want to talk about inter-communal violence, that comes out of poverty,” said Kofi Ademola Xola of Black Lives Matter Chicago. “That comes out of being colonized. Our young people have colonized minds. We all are fighting out of our colonial state because American culture and values are violent...We can’t talk about why is violence happening in our community until we look at the mirror of American culture and values."