PHOTO/ANDY WILLIS
Editor’s note: On Friday July 26 at the corner of 75th and Stewart in Chicago, two women, Chantell Grant and Andrea Stoudemire, were shot to death. This is the corner where M.A.S.K. (Mothers Against Senseless Killing) has operated for over four years to bring peace to a community abandoned by the city for decades. Someone on Facebook said it was a “waste of time.” Addressing 100 gathered there on Sunday, July 28, Maria Pike, an activist and mother who lost a child to gun violence, reiterated her reply below:
Someone just posted “It’s a waste of time.”
As you all know, M.A.S.K. does not do marches, rallies, etc. because they believe their activism is better served by what they do for the community they care about, and engage in things like buying pampers, feeding the kids, the youth, the homeless, the alcoholics, giving advice when asked and providing a safe haven for the children in the neighborhood (while they are there weather permitting) during summer. Their beach is the concrete underneath their feet (an improvement from the dirt mixed with junk), the two 4ft. baby pools and recently a couple of fans donated by a Hyde Park mom. Their monies come from individual pockets, volunteer pockets, meal trains, donations of labor, etc.
And something happens during those daily interactions, their neighbors start seeing eye to eye, their compassion moves to empathy and they build relationships with the people they serve.
We may all disagree, agree to disagree and shade each other every once in a while, but what no one should even question is the reason why M.A.S.K. even exists and its resilience to storms, figuratively and real.
Four women have been shot in recent weeks in that area. One a domestic violence situation, (two of three last night were women) at around 10 p.m., the two women have died; as far as I know one of them is someone who brought her three kids to play and be fed daily. Is this personal? You bet your dismissive self it is! One mother has left three orphans that other mothers from the suburbs, the Northside, the Southside, the Westside have served because they cared and they wanted them to thrive in this God forgotten place, these are black moms, white moms, brown moms, Asian moms, Jewish, Muslim, Sikh, Christian, Catholic, Agnostic! These women are deserving of being treated as human beings and not a statistic.
We moms get the desperation her kids must be now feeling, their broken hearts, the uncertain future, how unfair it is to not only be poor, disenfranchised, but discarded like your simple but telling comment alluded to. Someone chose to spray bullets on women, on mothers and WE have something to say about that. The war on the status quo seems to have failed us and we are MAD, we have something to say about this hate and disregard for the lives of others. SO it is not “A WASTE OF TIME.” Life looks different outside a computer or phone screen. Me and other moms will be there as women who lost sisters. This is hate against women as well. That is all.
