Young people march against gun violence on South Side: ‘Allow us to live’
Hundreds took part in a march organized by Pastor John F. Hannah and New Life Covenant Church to demonstrate and pray for safer neighborhoods in Chicago and stricter gun control policy on Saturday. | James Foster/For the Sun-Times When Hermenia Holloway-Kirkwood’s son Tyrone Brooks Jr. was killed 10 years ago, she couldn’t understand the series of events leading up to it. Reminded of her son Saturday morning, Holloway-Kirkwood watched young people line 79th Street, and she cried both for her son and for the violence she sees in the city. “He didn’t have a gun, he wasn’t in a gang. He was just in the wrong place at the wrong time,” Holloway-Kirkwood said of the robbery-gone-wrong that ended with her son being shot in the chest. “It broke my heart to see this [march] because I didn’t know this was going to happen today, but I think it’s great to talk about this and to do it in this way.” Chicagoans gathered at 79th and Greenwood for the annual “Prayer on the 9” initiative, inspired by the “March for Our Lives” demonstrations staged by students nationwide earlier this year in the wake of the Marjorie Stoneman Douglas High School shooting. Saturday’s march was organized by Pastor John Hannah and the New Life Covenant Church Southeast, concentrating on the everyday shootings — like the one that took Holloway-Kirkwood’s son — that plague many Chicago neighborhoods. Hannah also partnered with two youth-based organizations — Champs Mentoring on the South Side, and […]
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