I Almost Got Shot In Chicago

I remember the first time that I ever saw a human being laid down in the streets by gunfire. It was a cold winter’s night back in Harlem in 1986 at the height of the crack epidemic. I can still his legs twisted beneath him in a grotesque pose, the street light glowing on his copper colored flesh. And I remember the apathy that accompanied his demise. I can remember my utter shock as I listened to two young brothers ahead of me replaying their version of the homicide. “Oh well,” one of them said, “That’s just the kind of thing n—s up here have to learn how to handle.”

In the era of crack, young drug dealers driving top of the line Mercedes Benz and Jaguar cars became targets for another outgrowth of the game: robbery. Kidnappings, home invasion, strong-arm takeovers, and extortion forced drug dealers to buy expensive high caliber automatic weapons. There was much money in the game in Harlem and it seemed like everybody wanted a piece of it. The game caused a great many closed casket funerals. Many of the people who died in the crack wars were in their teens or barely out of them.

In those days, hip-hop rose its voice against the carnage. The Urban League joined forces with the crème de la crème of New York hip-hop to create a posse cut called, “Self-Destruction.” Kool Moe Dee’s line stood out to me most. He rapped, “I never, ever ran from the Ku Klux Klan / and I shouldn’t have to run from a black man / because that’s self-destruction.”

Even as people grew wise to the dangers of rock cocaine and the profit margin slimmed, the proliferation of guns in the hood never slowed. In 2002, I took a position as an adjunct professor at a small Christian college in East Oakland, California. The news that crack was no longer in demand hadn’t reached that outpost of the city. I remember waking up one night to the sound of 9-millimeter gunfire. I dove to the floor as weapons traded rounds somewhere in the dark beneath my window. Minutes later, a ghetto vulture (police helicopter) was swooping down on my block, shining its light on my apartment building courtyard. When I ventured outside the next morning and walked up the street, I found a shrine erected in a local park. Someone must have collected the Remy Martin bottles, candles and teddy bears together during the wee hours of the morning as we slept.

As a minister of the gospel, I couldn’t help but wonder what the response of the faith community would be to the carnage and bloodshed on a landscape dotted by churches. I visited a community church one night soon after and found myself insulted because I had worn a sweater and a button down shirt instead of the traditional blazer and matching suit pants. I wondered: How welcoming would the parishioners be to the young men down the block with their pants sagging almost down to their knees and gold grills covering their front teeth?

I wasn’t in East Oakland long before I awakened to the fact that gun violence was a way of life there. Eventually, the victims went from people whom I’d read about to people that I knew, people I’d served. The dead weren’t just faceless names in a newspaper. Soon, they would be my neighbors.

All of this caused me to question my religious practice. Christianity is built on the principle of a loving God who was incarnated into human flesh and born to some of the poorest people in the then known world. It is the story of a great rabbinical teacher who situated himself around people who today would be pimps, gun runners, con artists, meth addicts, and hit men.

He didn’t merely tolerate such people. Jesus went out of his way to find himself in their company. He was derided by the religious aristocracy as a “friend of sinners.”

It seemed to me that if Jesus, the cornerstone of the Christian faith, became the shepherd who chased for lost sheep, any group bearing his name would also be associated with outsiders and people in need of hope. Too often, I found that wasn’t the case. A great number of inner city churches are insulated fraternal organizations where members find camaraderie and fellowship in the company of like-minded people, often those of the same economic strata. The urban poor who live in the vicinity of the church building are often not welcomed in as equals if they are welcomed at all.

In the years following my first exposure to the wanton violence that met me in Oakland, I became involved in the struggle to stop the killing and to promote community. I served the formerly incarcerated, the homeless, the mentally ill, the undocumented, and the elderly. I helped found a ministry to serve human trafficking survivors. I wrote books to offer people caught up in the game a vision of a world beyond “the life.” In 2015, the Oakland, California, City Council approved a proclamation honoring me for my efforts to stop violence in the streets. My work has not been limited to Oakland. Since 2005, I have served the people of San Francisco’s Tenderloin, one of the most troubled hoods in Northern California. And yet, the violence and the generational aftermath that it brings haunt me. I am always looking for an answer. “What do you think we could do to stop this killing?” I ask that question to community activists, survivors of human trafficking, noted theologians, and neighborhood kids. The question of how to stop the killings brought me to Chicago for the first time last year.

I first read about Father Michael Pfleger when I was seminary student in 1996. He is anything but low profile. He has been featured on 60 Minutes and Nightline. Articles about him have appeared in the New York Times, the Washington Post, Ebony Magazine, and USA Today. St. Sabina’s Church, a Catholic house of worship on the Southside that he has led since 1981, has been visited by many of the great, black luminaries of our times from Maya Angelou to Coretta Scott King. Spike Lee’s 2015 film, Chiraq, is built around a fiery, white priest who walks the streets of Chicago’s hood crying out for an end to the violence. It is no secret that the role played by actor John Cusack is an approximation of the real-life Father Pfleger.

Located in Auburn-Gresham, one of the neighborhoods in the city most impacted by violence, St. Sabina’s is fighting the war to build the beloved community. “Father Mike,” as he is affectionately known, has brokered peace with warring gangs. Under his leadership, the church built Samaritan House for the homeless and an 80-unit building for senior citizens called, Elder’s Village. There is a church-owned employment agency, which serves a community with a high unemployment rate. There are after- school programs, community basketball tournaments, dances, and a myriad of other activities to give the kids in the community constructive uses for their free team.

Though Father Mike is white, the passion for which he speaks of black life and the fact that he has faced death numerous times to serve his congregants brought me to Chicago. In June of 2017, I flew to Chicago to attend the End of the School Year March for Peace that Saint Sabina’s Church holds yearly. The violence tends to escalate in the summer as boredom and mischief lead to trigger play.

I had opportunity to observe Father Mike before we actually met. The afternoon that I pulled up in my cab, I spotted him on the corner. He was surrounded by several school-aged children. He seemed to not only know their names but everything about them: “Now Cynthia, how did you make out in that Math class that we’d been talking about?” he asked one child. Then, he skipped to the next youth to ask about a scholarship she’d applied for. With thousands of people gathering on the front steps of his church within an hour, he had plenty of other things to think about, but apparently, none of those thousands was any more important than any of children around him then.

At the outset of the rally, Father Mike came out from a side door of the church. He had several security guards around him. As he walked the huge marble steps in front of St. Sabina’s, a bank of outstretched media microphones and cameras cut him off from one direction. As he tried to circle around, he found himself surrounded by a hundred marchers. One elderly man looked down at his grandson and said, “That’s the type of man you’ll want to get to know.” At least two thousand people stood at the base of the steps. Some held framed picture portraits of dead children and siblings. The pastor preached a mighty word that day. He told the people of the community to hold on, hope, and fight. Even before I joined the throng to march off through the community to make my faith witness, I knew that I wanted to come back the next year.

This year’s March promised to be different. Gun violence and gun ownership were hot button issues now. Students of Parkland High School in Florida, where a gunman slaughtered innocent students, promised to be in Chicago for this night of peace. Chance the Rapper and Jennifer Hudson would be making their faith witness. Peace activists from other states would be in attendance.

As my taxicab zoomed through the Southside, I raked my hand absently minded over my head and instantly realized something. I needed a haircut. It was about 5. I was two hours early. We were in the hood. And as Ice Cube said in his song, “Why We Thugs,” “Every hood is the same.” I had the cabbie pull over close to the first barbershop I saw. It kind of reminded me of the spot where I get my haircut in East Oakland except it had a little bit more of an edge to it.

It was hot and muggy in Chicago on June 15, 2018. Young brothers stood around the open mouth of the shop staring into the glow of their phones. I squeezed past them. There was only man cutting hair. He waved me in with his clippers, “Come on in, Unc! I got you!” He was a friendly enough sort. He spoke a mile a minute, hosting two conversations at once. His speech was peppered with four letter verbs. The brothers guffawed as he talked about his sexual antics with a woman who had come in to use the bathroom and left without so much as a “Hello.”

None of the seats matched, though they were all black. I took a seat next to a 25-year old man who looked like a 5’8” Michael Jordan. He instantly took out a cigarette, lit it, and flicked the ash in the tray between us. Apparently the conversation had ceased when a stranger walked in, but now he picked it up right where he had left off.

“Yeah, I’m about money. Sometimes, one of my customers will send their granddaughter or grandson to get something from me. I keep ‘em safe. I make sure don’t nothing happen to them. That’s bad for business. Yeah, I’m about this money. Some of these O.G.’s be talking about ‘them over there are our rivals.’ Man, miss me with that old B.S. If I’m getting money with a n——, I don’t care who he affiliated with. I’m about money, and if you try to stand been me and my money ,you gon’ get blown up!”

I took a good look at him. He wore a diamond-studded watch, a gold chain, and a pair of sneakers that will more than likely come out on the market next year. He wasn’t boasting or tough talking. I didn’t get that from him. He was telling us about the world that he lives in and how he manages to survive in it.

The barber interrupted the hustler’s tale of capitalism gone wrong by calling the name of a man seated in a barber chair directly across from me. It was his turn to get a cut. As he rose from his seat, the room became a vacuum of suspended animation. I saw the threat play out in the widening of the hustler’s eyes. Faster than you could possibly read this sentence, he leapt out of the seat next to me, diamond watch and all. He had one foot planted in the direction of the door when I heard BLAM! The whole place went from chaos to absolute silence in the tick of a millisecond. All eyes were aimed at my feet. Inches from my big toe there lay a shiny, black Glock 11 handgun. It belonged to the man who had been called to get this haircut. The pistol had fallen from a holster affixed to his back when he had risen to his feet. There it lay two feet away, the business end pointed directly at me. If the gun’s owner had not clicked on the safety before he locked it, chances are great that I would have been shot.

Did I get up and leave at the point, you ask? How could I? I hadn’t gotten my haircut yet; plus, there was that persistent question which the incident opened for the door for me to ask: How can we stop the killing?

When I gave voice to that question, the hustler next to me drew a blank. “Ain’t no way to stop it he said. I can’t think of one.” Some of the other patrons mumbled or rolled their eyes toward the ceiling. Their city is ankle deep in blood.

I looked into the piercing glare that the hustler offered me and thought, “Could he be right? Is this just the way things are to be?” At that moment, the front door darkened. Two figures blotted out the sun, and again the room flooded with dread. They were young, thin, 5’9, maybe 18 or 19, with dreadlocks tossed about their heads. Their hollow eyes, flitted around the room as though they were looking at the inside of bank vault. They glanced from one patron to another – judging, measuring, weighing – and then they nodded at each other and walked out.

A grumble swept through us after they left. Waiting patrons in their earlier twenties and those in their sixties all recognized the two voiceless sightseers and knew them by name. They were bad news come to call with pistols.

The man with the diamond watch waited 60 seconds and bolted from his seat. He ran to a luxury automobile across the street. I sat back waiting to hear the turn of key in an ignition, but he sauntered back inside, satiated and in a state of calm, and slumped back into his seat. Just what had he raced out to his car to retrieve? He didn’t tell us, but he did resume his sociology lesson.

“Yea, it used to be that when one of these fools did something you didn’t like you could pull up on them and lace their boots with some real O.G. talk. No more. Now they’ll tell you, ‘Hold on, O.G.! I’ll be right back.’ And you’d better not be there when they come back because they’ll kill you. Human life don’t mean nothin’ to these youngsters. They will aim a pole at you and air you out in a second.”

If the two stick up kids came back, they would not be the only ones with guns. According to the brothers in the barbershop, guns were easy to get in Chicago, easier to get than in most places. That’s why the murder rate was so. Not only outlaws, but also people who aren’t in the game felt the they needed guns to protect themsleves. The whole scenario reminded me of a song called “Gun” by the late Gil-Scott Heron.

Brother Man nowadays living in the ghetto

Where the danger's sure enough real

Well when he's out late at night

And if he's got his head on right

Well, I lay you 9 to 5 he's walking with steel.

Brother Man says he's afraid of gangsters

Messing with people just for fun

He don't want to be next

He got a family to protect

So just last week he bought himself a gun.

Everybody got a pistol, everybody got a 45

And the philosophy seem to be

At least as near as I can see

When other folks give up theirs, I'll give up mine.

When ten minutes had passed and the gunmen hadn’t returned, conversation in the barbershop changed. “Man,” one fellows said, “The cops got this whole hood on lock. They everywhere. You know Father Mike is having that big march tonight.”

“Yeah,” his friend chimed in. “My wife and my kids are over there. They’re feeding the whole hood tonight.”

Talk of what’s happening at St. Sabina’s Church continued. What they had to say about it was better than any commercial that could ever come from a Madison Avenue ad firm. St. Sabina’s was their church, even if they weren’t official members. Nobody knew if violence in Chicago could be permanently abated, but everyone knew of one place, one house of God, that at least raised the possibility. Some of these men had lived rough lives. They were scarred and tatted up. Some had done time for gun possession and maybe worse. Still, they believed in God, and they saw and believed in the works that the church and the priest did in the name of Jesus Christ.

You see, Father Mike and the members of St. Sabina’s don't confine their ministry to the inside of the building. At one time or another, everybody in that room had spent time face-to-face with Father Mike. At one time or another, everyone in there had been fed by the church or had a loved one utilize some community-based service offered by St. Sabina’s.

In a corner of the world where everything is in black and white, there are no abstractions; either you do or you don’t. The believers from St. Sabina’s Church are known doers.

And there was the answer to my question. An energized faith community willing to show the compassion of Christ out on the concrete, can transform a community. Don’t Father Mike and his congregants do so with consistent presence in that war zone? It’s not heaven on earth yet, but all the statistics say that it is safer than it once was. Faith can stop the killing. That was the answer I would take with me when I left Chicago.

Finally, the barber called me to his chair. “What you need, unc?” He asked.

“Bald fade,” I answered.

Twenty minutes later and $25 poorer, I was done. It was almost time for the rally to start at St. Sabina’s Church, and I was ready to hear what Father Michael Pfleger had to say.

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