News Story

    For my first Humanities course called Journalism, we studied the inverted pyramid, the 5 W's, how to tell real news from fake, and how to document from great sources to tell a vivid story. A Field Experience during this course that was very informative was on a virtual zoom call and it was very cool as we got to get tips from one of the best journalists in the industry. His name is J. A. Adande a sports columnist who graduated from Northwestern University. He told us his story as starting out looking up to others and taking a play from their playbooks and learning how to ask better questions. He went into depth of celebrities he did interviews with and spoke as to how to do your research before interviewing a person. He found it crucial to not waste their time by asking things you can look up. From this course so far we also learned about how headlines were made and how you have to be unbiased when it comes to reporting news. For this assignment, we are covering an issue in a community that we find intriguing and needs some light shed on. For mine, I’m gonna talk about gun violence in Englewood, Chicago.

On June 28, 2020, 20 month-old Sincere Gaston was killed in his car seat as mother drove home from the local laundromat. This incident occurred in the afternoon near Halsted and 63st as someone fired 8 stray bullets into their car, 1 hitting Sincere in the chest, and mother Yasmine grazed in the head. Police and investigators claim that the father Thomas Gaston was the intended target, as he lived a life of crime before in his past. And their family criticized CPD for making such an ignorant claim prior to their son’s death. During this hectic year of all things building up we’ve had Kobe die, natural disasters, a global pandemic, slaughtering of black people, and in my own neighbor, innocent children being murdered in cold blood. Sad to say this isn’t a new issue and has been going on for generations, but I'm appalled at this rate of killing. It seems people are becoming used to it as if it was a natural occurrence like the sun rising then setting again. Well, that's the reality of many Chicagoans on the south side. 

Enough Is Enough.2 July2020,www.chicagotribune.com/news/breaking/ct-chicago-violence-children-20200702-aydwzqdtqrdztfdeuncl2i3xcm-story.html. 

During my interviews over the weekend, I asked how does it feel hearing a child being killed? Here’s what my neighbor had to say. “I feel terrible knowing I can’t do much to stop it or prevent it from happening and it hurts to know that I can possibly be killed next”.- Lavelle age 16. Asking my grandmother the same questions she stated,” No parent should have to bury their child, it's a horrible thing.” Deborah-age 70. Sincere wasn’t the only victim to Chicago gun violence as over the summer 7 other children were shot all in a matter of two weeks over the Father’s Day Weekend. Sincere Gaston was the youngest of four children aged 3 or younger to be shot in a 10-day span in Chicago. The most recent was a 3-year-old girl, who was shot and critically wounded Tuesday in Englewood prior. 

These shootings ultimately happen because of gang conflicts and misidentifications. Most concerning is no one seems to care anymore and it's becoming normalized not only by the people who live in these communities but also by the media, and to citizens all across this nation. People are at risk every day just stepping out of their homes and it shouldn’t be this way. Statics show that in the first six months of the year, Chicago saw a jump of more than 25% in homicides, reaching 295, which is 60 more than the same period a year ago, according to a review of crime statistics. And 96 of them were during a 28-day stretch covering most of June. We still have 2 months left of this year. Let's hope these senseless tragedies come to an end.

In previous years there have been many attempts to combat Chicago's ruthless gun violence. One local organization that gained attention in 2012 but was organized in 1999 called CeaseFire started efforts to stop violence. CeaseFire began to gather gang members from different gangs and bring them together. They would come together to talk and bring about peace in their neighborhoods. They often would go to St. Sabina which is a church on the south side and hold a peace circle. A famous slogan that I remember till this day is “Don't Shoot, I wanna grow up”. Asking my final interviewe the question, what can be done that hasn’t been done in the past to help solve the problem of gun violence? “I think that it starts with the individual person and them evaluating themselves, only the individual themselves can put their guns down and make their own decisions.”