South Side - News, Photos and More on the Windy Citizen

Imagine a grandmother of two, who helps her granddaughter get ready for the prom and cooks fried chicken for block club meetings. Then imagine that same grandmother going head-to-head with a gang member.

Imagine Betty Jo Swanson.

Gangs are intimidating, but they have proved to be no match for Swanson, a long-time resident of the Auburn-Gresham neighborhood on Chicago’s South Side.

When gangs and crime started to dominate the community during the late 1980s, Swanson and many other residents who stayed didn't let the gangs take over; they made their presence known.

Twenty-eight South Side gang members were arrested Wednesday, the result of a year-long federal investigation which authorities say will make Chicago's streets safer.

"Today, residents of the South Side of Chicago got one of their blocks back," U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald said as he announced charges against 28 members of a faction of the Damenville Gangster Disciples, called the 5-4 Crew.

According to authorities, the gang is headed by Isaiah Hicks of Harvey, who was the main focus of the investigation.

He wears a button on his lapel and a handkerchief in his suit pocket. The smiling face of his son, Blair, is on each. Ron Holt’s accessories represent more than just a proud father showing off. Instead, they are a constant reminder of the gang violence that killed Blair Holt a year ago.

The day after Blair’s death on May 10, 2007, Ron, a 17-year veteran of the Chicago Police, heard a call to take action against the violence.

David Rojas dreams of going to college, but the high school sophomore is afraid to think that far ahead. Instead, he focuses on making it through each day alive.

"I live one day at a time," said Rojas, 17. "I can't step forward, because I don't know what's going to happen right the next day, or like in a few minutes . in my community, it's unpredictable."

It's the gang violence that makes each day a trial for teens in Little Village, Rojas' South Side neighborhood.

The scene is intense. A man holds his 9mm to another’s head and pulls the trigger. The body slumps hard to the sidewalk, blood everywhere, as the shooter runs away without remorse.

Sound like a movie, or maybe a bad dream? It’s reality for some West and South Side kids.

With the increase of shootings and youth violence in many Chicago neighborhoods, many children playing outside are dealing with pressure and worry that goes far beyond making it across the monkey bars.

MEDILL NEWS SERVICE

Ebony Young knows the life of a teenager is hard -- which is why, just a few days shy of her thirteenth birthday, she tried to end her own.

"I didn't like anything about myself," Young said one year later. "I didn't like my looks, I needed attention, I just had an attitude. I was just in emotional distress."

But a phone conversation with her mother during her recovery from a prescription drug overdose changed her life. Unbeknownst to Janice Brown, it was the eighth time her daughter had tried to commit suicide. And she vowed that this would be the last.

"I just told her, you have tried this so many times, obviously God wants you here," Brown said. "You are a queen; you cannot do this to yourself."

These words resounded with Young, and a week after she left the psychiatric hospital, she committed to the idea of faith, community service and making sure that all teens her age know that they indispensable.

Young said her first stop was church, where she had to reestablish her relationship with God. While religion had always been a part of her life, Young said, after she recited an excerpt from biblical story of the Tree of Knowledge at a service last year, she knew her energy could be focused somewhere else. Other churches and local South Side community groups started to ask Young to recite at youth events, which prompted her to come up with new material.

The past hardships of her life inspired her to write her first poem, aptly titled, "I am a Queen."

"I was just sitting at my computer thinking, and then I started to write," Young said. "I knew many other girls don't know they're queens."

Young's schedule began to fill with requests to recite her poem at various venues including CAPS meetings, even Christian comedy tours. This led to a new rendition, "I am a King."

Young said she used her poems to address some of the behaviors she witnesses in her South Side neighborhood and by her friends at school, who were into drugs, violence and disrespect.

She said that sometimes when she tells her friends at school of her transformation, they "just don't get it -- it doesn't click." But this just gives her more of a purpose.

"Sometimes they think it's a joke," Young said. "Some wish they can do the same things. And I say, you can."

But according to Renee Albrecht-Mallinger, Young's seventh grade math teacher at Daniel Hale Williams Preparatory School of Medicine on the South Side, Young's presence is very influential.

"On the first day of school I told her that just from walking into that class, I could tell that she was one of two or three people who had control," Albrecht-Mallinger said. "She has a unique ability to have her peers follow her."

Albrecht-Mallinger admires Young, who maintains honor roll status, perfect attendance and an active life outside of school.

"Her force is so admirable, she will go anywhere she wants to go," her teacher said. "If she chooses a direction, she will get there."

But Young is still sorting that out. While she loves to write, her true love is with math and science, and she is leaning toward becoming an optometrist when she graduates college in 9 years.

And right now Young is focusing on starting her own organization, EDY Kings and Queens Inc., through which she will donate money to organizations and build an interactive Web site for teens.

In the last year with the help of her mother, Young raised over $2,000 by selling candy and having bake sales to help various organizations and families around Chicago.

Her most recent donation was to Grandfamilies Program of Chicago, where she decorated a bedroom for a grandmother who was raising her grandchildren.

"I've watched my grandmother take care of my nephew for years," Young said. "[This woman] was really struggling to take care of her grandchildren. I was really touched by their story."

She has also donated about $1,000 to victims of house fires, and $300 to provide testing for sexually transmitted diseases for teens. Her next projects are buying headstones for young victims of violent crimes and translating her poem into different languages.

Young's poem is in the process of being copyrighted, and the paperwork for her organization is filed. She's also in the process of learning how to balance a checkbook and manage a bank account for EDY Kings and Queens.

She admitted it's a lot to handle, but said there's nothing she'd rather be doing.

"I feel that when my younger kings and queens are in need, it's the time for me to step up if no one else will," Young said. "As long as I'm living that's what I'm going to stay dedicated to -- reaching out to the queens and kings of the future generation." ------------------ Sidebar(s) ------------------ ------ Headline: I am a Queen Body:

When I look in the mirror I see a black, beautiful Queen
I am a Queen
Treat me as I am not as you please
You know better than me no
Matter what race you may be
So why treat me like a fool, never ever would I be

I am a Queen
What do you see?
Is the eyes blinded with hatred
And is the mind closed to see my potentials

I am a Queen
When I walk in a room
You will see the spirit of peace and happiness upon me?
When I open my mouth you will hear love, kindness
Knowledge and wisdom spoken softly upon my lips

I am a Queen
I represent all queens of the past and future
I get wisdom from the past queens
And knowledge from the queens of the future
I am a black queen

And on this day I will know who I am and whose I am and I will take
five minutes out of my day to tell another African-American teenager the
greatness of our past and present Queens ------

MEDILL NEWS SERVICE

"What would Dr. King want us to be doing today?"

Bishop Paul J. Hall asked an audience of South Side community members at a Martin Luther King Jr. Day celebration Monday. "Dr. King would want us to be getting guns off the street."

Moments later, a man walked down the aisle of the Paul Hall Community Center and handed the bishop an air rifle.

Shortly after, a family in the audience turned in two small caliber revolvers, one pistol, .38-caliber ammunition and shotgun shells.

In a joint celebration commemorating the life and death of both Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., and the more than 30 Chicago public schoolchildren slain last year, nearly 50 South Side residents gathered at a prayer-and-candlelight vigil at the community center, seeking to put a stop to the gun-and-gang violence that is sadistically claiming Chicago's youth.

"We are here to remember not only Dr. King, but we're here to remember the young people who were killed last year.. ," Hall told the crowd. "We're here to be serious about stopping the violence."

To show how serious they were, the community center offered a reward for every person who turned in weapons or weapon-related materials to Chicago police.

"Over here we have a bag of bullets, the most dangerous bullets in the city -.357-magnum helicoids," Hall continued. "When they go into somebody, they explode - and they can pierce the protective vest of a police officer. But I'm glad they're in here and not out in the streets."

Positive poetry and speeches read by South Side teenagers - who were also the ones to light the candles for their comrades - are what many attendees deemed the highlight of the program.

"Most of our teenagers are not corrupt, they need attention, they need time, and we need to try to uplift them instead of degrading them," said Theresa Johnson, a South Side resident.

Jackson also stressed the need for parents to be more supportive in their teens' times of need.

"When we were growing up, we didn't do everything right either. But our parents stood behind us," Johnson said. "Sometimes they stood behind us with a belt, which people don't do now, but they did stand behind us."

Ebony Young, a 13-year-old student at the Daniel Hale Williams Preparatory School of Medicine in Bronzeville, read a self-written poem, "I am a King" at the ceremony.

The poem, inspired by her mother, stressed the need for Chicago's youth to think of themselves as kings and queens.

"Some of our kings are inflicting violence on each other," Young said. "When I was going through mental distress and I wasn't feeling good about myself, my mother always told me that I was a queen. And I know now that I am a queen. And there are a lot of teenagers who don't know that."