Major blog

Topic: Violence in my community  

Most people that don’t live in uptown think uptown is just a nice peaceful community. They really don’t understand what goes on during the day and night time. They don’t understand what people in uptown go through. I am resident of Uptown and I have been living in uptown for 17 years. This summer the violence has increased in Uptown. The first day of summer one person was killed on Lawrence. It seems after that everyday somebody was shooting or somebody was getting shot. This is different from all my other summers because I didn’t have to worry about walking down the street and getting shot. You know that violence is increasing because innocent bystanders are getting shot too. This, to me, shows the shooters don’t care who they are injuring or even killing anymore. Articles on Uptown update blow up their website in articles like the one below:

 “Last night at 7:30pm, three people were shot in a drive-by shooting in the Racine/ Sunnyside area of Sheridan Park. One woman was critically injured after getting shot in the chest. No reports about her health status are available at this time. A woman and a man who were with her at the scene were also shot in their legs.” 11:26 p.m. CDT, July 3, 2012

I interviewed some people in my community and out of my community because I wanted to know if they felt the same way as me. Here are some of the questions I asked community members (what do you think? You can respond in the comments):

1 .Do you think violence in uptown increase?

2. Do you think that most if the shooting is gang relate?

3. Have you lost a family member or a friend to gun violence?

4. Do you feel safe in uptown?

5. Do you think the violence will ever stop in uptown?

6. Do you think the police care?

7. What do think we as the community should do to stop the violence?

People in the community felt like the violence in the community has increased this summer. One thing that stuck out to me when i asked “what should we do as the community to stop the violence?” somebody said that it’s too late; that we should have done something about it before it got too out of hand. I feel like that is somewhat true because now that people have lost a lot of people that they love, they are not going to listen to anybody now. People that do live in Uptown do feel like sometimes they don’t want to walk down street because they shooting getting out of control.

My personal view of my community is the violence has increased this year. But the community is not just all violence. Uptown has good things about the community. For example they just had the rib fest on Saturday and Sunday and also had a pizza fest. These things are good because it shows positive stuff happening in Uptown, and sometimes when people read Uptown Update they probably feel fear because it can add a little extra to the fear part and only tell half of what’s really happening. In Conclusion, I love my community I just want to see a change and less violence in my community.