'Stop killing our future'
Josh Jefferson
Issue date: 10/12/09 Section: News
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Men, women and children congregated together to pay tribute to the fallen, to speak for those whose voices had been silenced.
The familiar faces of campus leaders were seen amongst the crowd speaking to new faces as the bitter cold slowly went to work on the assembly.
The dull roar was silenced as a young woman made her way through the crowd.
Dressed in a black T-shirt that read "Stop Killing Our Future" in bold white lettering, she approached the small red portable PA system and called the gathering to order. After a moment of prayer, Pavielle Foster, senior law enforcement and justice administration major, began to share her story.
"I lived two blocks from where Derrion Albert was killed," Foster told the assembly. "So when I saw the video or when I read the articles or saw his mom and other people I felt obligated to do a vigil or some type of memorial for Chicago public school students."
Foster went on to tell the story of when she was seven years old and her uncle was involved in a shootout while she, her mother, stepfather, grandmother and an aunt were still inside.
"Police officers shot up my house, bullets came through my window, a couple people were shot around the area, my uncle then received 30 years for that, having a shootout with the police," Foster said. "It's not just for teenagers, this is for kids in Chicago period who are living in bad neighborhoods. We as people need to do something about it. So I today take a stand for anti-violence, so I hope that you are here to do the same thing."
With that statement the flood gates opened and others were given the opportunity to share their stories and experiences giving a voice to growing up in neighborhoods permeated with violence.
"A lot of us see people on campus walking around shaking up 'Yeah, I'm a gangbanger. I'm a thug. I'm doing this. I'm doing that,' and they think it's cute, they think it's fine to be a college student gangbanger. That's not fine. My friend wasn't a gangbanger, he was killed for nothing," said Yejide Awolola, a graduate assistant at the Gwendolyn Brooks Cultural Center.
As student after student made their way to the front of the crowd to share their stories, a common theme emerged: a shared sense of sadness with the status quo in predominately minority neighborhoods, and a call to action against the violence and the desensitization of residents in the minority communities. Each student's story contained elements that were powerful and often times more chilling than the cold embrace of the evening air.
"We as black people, we need to do this a lot more often," said Antwan Taylor, senior broadcasting major. "It shouldn't take someone to get beaten to death on tape for us to come together like this, you know, it should be like this all the time, and I hope that this can be an eye opener."
Before the end of the vigil, Foster unrolled caution tape placing it in the hands of all the attendants. The tape created a circle around the participants, unifying them as Foster read the names of Chicago public school students who had fallen victim to violence over the last two years.
As she read, the crowd stood in silent reverence, breaking the tape when all the names had been read to signify their commitment to ending the violence.
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