Chicago’s Youth Confront Gang Violence

By Asiah White

It’s almost a given these days that the violence in Chicago multiplies by the year, and it’s one of the biggest issues that confronts our city.

Within the last few years the gun violence has spiked, garnering national attention. From 2014 to 2016, the gross number of violent murders nearly doubled. The nation demands answers and solutions, but the issue is far more complex than is often portrayed by the media.

The youth often blamed for this often don’t want to be involved in violence or crime. In CTVN’s documentary on the subject, “Everyday: Chicago Violence Impact” an anonymous youth had this to say:

“The people that’s not in gangs, I mean– they get affected by it because they might be in the wrong place at the wrong time. They can’t help where they live or go to school.”

The area of some teens upbringing has a lot of do with their involvement in the violence. If you grow up in one area, you are subjected to the gangs and groups from that area. Majority of the time the different neighborhoods have a history of conflict. As a local teen put it:

“I grew up in a neighborhood where it was a lot of gang affiliation, and I thought it was kinda cool. It got me when, they killed my brother, it made me want to go out and do violence, but I knew that wasn’t the way out.”

The trouble with ending violence is only scraping the surface of the actual issue. “Somebody got to lead the path to show Chicago the right way to do it.” wishes a student at Joshua Johnston Fine Arts Design School.

Here’s what you can do to help: offer mentoring groups in the different local neighborhoods, create more jobs and extracurricular activities, or support CTVN. Here at CTVN we believe in the youth, so join us in making a change. The community doesn’t want to solve this problem with guns and more violence, it’s time to use love and humanization to help the problem.