‘“Jesus wept.” (John 11:35)
Chicagoland, we failed Adam Toledo, we are failing each other, and we are failing ourselves.
Words cannot express the grief and sorrow we feel at Adam’s tragic death. Our collective grief reverberates through our bodies only beginning to absorb the trauma of a 13-year old boy shot and killed by police. We remember Adam’s life and mourn his death; all through a constant onslaught of hurt, anger, opinions, noise, blame, and guilt. And despite it all, we are left with his loss.
Loss for the Toledo family, our families, our neighborhood, our city, and our world.
Without Adam – a son, brother, student, neighbor, friend, and image-bearer of God.
There is no righting this pain.
We need accountability.
We ask for your accountability where we are failing to love, serve, and protect the young people in our community through our actions and inactions.
We demand accountability of the Chicago Police Department through a transparent investigation and just application of the law.
And we need so much more.
We need time to grieve and mourn.
We need to heal from our trauma.
We need each other.
We need justice.
We need peace.
We need to transform our unjust and racist systems.
We cannot normalize the sin of racial inequity that makes Chicago the city with the largest life-expectancy gap in this country.
We cannot normalize the killings of black and brown bodies by the very department our tax dollars fund to protect us.
We cannot normalize the disinvestment from communities of color that starves young people from opportunities to realize their dreams.
We need to reimagine.
We need to recreate.
It is easy to sit and give opinions, rant, and blame one another; but, there’s a lot of work to do and the work is hard.
The work of love.
The work of justice.
The work of healing.
Toledo Family, we commit to do better.
Chicagoland, we need to do better, together.
“Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.” – Martin Luther King, Jr.
