Monique Steward






There have been twenty-two students killed this school year. Violence has taken over the streets in Chicago. The police have been harassing Black teens in Chicago because they think all teens are alike. When kids see the police they take off running because of the way the police are going to treat them. When the police catch the running teens, they instantly put them in handcuffs just because they made them run. Parents see their kid get locked up and they only thing that they can say is that my teen is a good teen but inhabits a violate world. It’s a classroom worth of students that is dead. Arne Duncan compared the disaffected young men pulling triggers to suicide bombers in the Middle East, saying all have last their fear of death. As killing scenes repeatedly fade in and out, what remain in the shadows are the jarring circumstances that exasperate these teenagers and destabilize their worlds. Michael Mack, a Dunbar student says he avoids trouble on his way to school, only to spend each day in classrooms where a dispute over a dollar can be like a spark in a gas can. Ezell another student is stuffed in a squad car and grilled by the police then tries to play like it’s another day. Erica Delatora, a senior at Farragut Career Academy walks the blocks of Little Village and South Lawndale where many of her friends have been murdered, she sees it as a list of field trips she’d been on. On Homan, on Drake, and on Damen seven of her friends were killed.