It is Tuesday, April 27, 2021. A month has passed. The afternoon is quiet. There are no protesters, mourners, family members, organizers, or activists in the alley where my brother was murdered by a man whose failed attempts to resuscitate him only highlighted the fact that his life was an afterthought. I start by kneeling before the memorial shrine, but the energy here demands me to sit. I am sitting on the floor and a tear charts the course of my cheek. The wind blows and I say your name: Ibaye, hermanito Adam.
The alley is heavy. The parking lot is visibly empty but spiritually full. Ancestors mourn. Spirits of children cry because there is another soul to add to the roster for games to play in the celestial playground. The candle I lit flickers in the wind as I tell myself that I need to stand, but my legs are protesting. My hand grips the updated timeline that the Chicago Sun Times released earlier today. The ink from the paper staining my fingers tries vehemently to justify the blood that stains the hands of those who rob our community of future leaders. The updated information succeeds at highlighting the violence and criminal activity that plagues many areas of Chicago. It nods at the extensive gang history that residents are all too famiiar with. It even attempts to celebrate the response time and overall efforts of the Chicago Police Department (Howe, J., and Boyle, A., 2021). However, all of the updated information that the press can produce cannot erase the fact that a community is again mourning. A mother is learning to live with the unimaginable that Lin-Manual Miranda sang about in Hamilton:
“There are moments that the words don’t reach
There is suffering too terrible to name
You hold your child as tight as you can
And push away the unimaginable.”
(Miranda, L., 2015)
The killing of hermanito Adam is about more than the relationship the police has with the community. The pain reverberates throughout the community and demands that we look at the relationship we have with each other. Less than three weeks following the robbing of hermanito Adam’s future, the life of 7-year old Jaslyn Adams was stolen by two community members who shot into the car she was sitting in with her father as they ordered a meal from McDonald’s (Harris, C., 2021).
Adam Toledo was affiliated with The Almighty Latin King Nation, but his affiliation cannot be highlighted with such fever that one becomes blind to the social conditions that make affiliations a haven for violence. We cannot remove the spectacles of totality to focus on the scenes that validate our perspective.
The duality of perspectives that fuel the arguments on what happened on March 29th, will not bring Adam back. Grants issued to organizations seeking to curb street violence will not bring Jaslyn back. The perspectives need to be articulated so that dialogues may be conceived and understanding birthed. Programs need to be nourished with money. However, neither of these will produce progress until we, as a people, understand both the collective and individual roles we play when it comes to the empowerment and improvement of our community.
Too often, we are called together to mourn, yet we divide before a change is manifested.
Too often, we scream to say the name of the departed, of the stolen, of the murdered. The problem is not that their name is not passing our lips. The problem is that it is the next name we are saying as we prepare to learn of the next one that needs to be said.
©Dr William “King Mission” Ross 2021
Harris, C., (2021, April 26). Man Arrested After Fatal Shooting of 7-Year-Old Girl in Front of Her Dad at McDonald’s Drive-Thru. People. https://apple.news/Af1FLZlEuROOBg-_a8Jswgw
Howe, J., Boyle, A., (2021, April 26). A Detailed Timeline of the Adam Toledo shooting. Chicago Sun Times. https://chicago.suntimes.com/news/2021/4/26/22386140/adam-toledo-shooting-timeline-video-police-cpd-little-village