Before the start of St. Sabina’s annual twilight community peace march on Friday, Christine Blanton spoke up for her slain child and she wasn’t the only one.
A sea of hands and photographs of victims, like Blanton’s daughter, Derricka Patrick, rose into the air behind the Auburn Gresham church, prompted by rally speakers asking the crowd of more than 200 youngster and adults to raise their hands if they’d lost loved ones to gun violence.
Blanton’s pregnant 29-year-old daughter, a popular and outgoing hairstylist, was shot and killed in her car in January 2022 in a still-unsolved slaying. “It’s too much killing going on,” Blanton said. “It’s really senseless. We need to really do something about it.”
Blanton was among numerous other mothers who attended the march through the community, with a message that organizers also hoped would extend to the rest of the summer and beyond: “A gun is not the answer.”
Among the marchers led by longtime senior pastor, the Rev. Michael Pfleger were local stars, Grammy Award winning poet, J. Ivy and rapper G Herbo. They were joined by Chicago Fire Commissioner Annette Nance-Holt, and aldermen, David Moore, 17th, and Ronnie Mosley, 21st, as well as community groups.
The evening’s guests spoke of the pervasive gun violence and the trauma it can inflict across the community, but urged solidarity to battle the problem.
“We’ve all felt it,” said J. Ivy, who said he lost a brother to gun violence when he was 13 years old. “We all have that story, but it’s a story that needs to end. “There’s so much love in this city, so that story, that part of the story, it needs to end.”
The rapper and South Side native born Herbert Wright III, was among those who raised their hands.
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“A lot of times, we don’t think that we can endure a lot of this pain, a lot of this trauma and a lot of these everyday things that we experience, but we can endure these things because you’re strong enough to endure these things, and God put us on this earth to endure these things,” he said.
To help curb violence, Pfleger pledged that he and members of his church would be “out here every single Friday evening” organizing and marching around the city throughout the summer when an uptick in violence is most expected.
“Our children are becoming endangered species, and we must stop the madness,” Pfleger said.
Following the rally, a roughly hour long march moved west on 79th Street, the crowd moving to a miniature drum line and worship music blaring from speakers leading the way.
The march stopped at 79th Street and Ashland Avenue, where a 69-year-old woman was killed last month. Pfleger told the group the answer to stopping violence was not to fear going out worried that something will happen but rather showing up “in the streets” and “walk the walk” as a community, creating fear within the people with guns instead.
Pfleger added: “If we are out, let those who want to do wrong be afraid of us.”
