A group of Chicago teens traded their summer plans for government business Wednesday to testify about “teen trends” and implore City Council members to think beyond curfew ordinances when trying to stop the large gatherings from turning violent.
“Just imagine if we had an entire city council that’s supporting youth with the same energy that they have going against youth,” said Damarrion Spann, a youth leader at My Block My Hood My City.
Spann was one of five youth organizers invited to a subject matter hearing that comes as the topic of teen takeovers again garners the attention of residents and politicians alike, including President Donald Trump.
Numerous teen trends have led to high-profile, tragic incidents of violence, in part because of the ease of access youth have to guns. City officials say many large gatherings also go without incident. Chicago police track teen trends, in part by monitoring flyers on social media advertising the get-togethers. Chicago’s Deputy Mayor for Community Safety, Emmanuel Andre, said Wednesday that 49 teen trends are expected to take place, or already have taken place, in June alone.
But despite the dominating role the topic plays in City Council debates over how to thwart violence, the teens spoke to a largely empty Council chamber Wednesday, with many of the 15-member Subcommittee on Youth Employment absent.
Around 3 to 7 alderpeople filtered in and out of the chamber throughout the roughly three-hour meeting, with some joining virtually. The scant audience didn’t go unnoticed.
“Some aldermen are just not ready to be in a shared space with youth, and that’s totally unacceptable,” Spann said.
The low attendance rate didn’t cause the teens to hold back. They lobbied for the city to invest in physical spaces where they can go with adults who can, in essence, be more kid-like.
“It’s not that the youth wants to throw out adults completely, it’s that we just want adults that work with us and understand us, and are able to regress to their own youth in order to do that,” said Jailyn Mendez, 18, a youth leader with the Puerto Rican Cultural Center.
Kids shared what they’d want in a dream community center: live DJ sets, free food, homework help and extracurriculars you don’t get in school, like budgeting tips or craft workshops. They testified about everything from their favorite social media platforms, to what restaurants they want the city to partner with for events.
“I can’t really answer the food questions because I don’t really eat much, I usually go for fries. But the apps… usually TikTok, for real,” said Deja Williams, 18, who lives in West Englewood.
Williams said most days after school he goes straight home “not because I don’t want to be outside” but “because there are few places to go” and “you often have to worry about violence and whether you will be safe or if you will be profiled or harassed.”
Most of the Council members present were progressives or Democratic Socialists who have long railed against stricter curfews as a way to solve violent gatherings.
Ald. Pat Dowell (3rd) is not a Democratic Socialist and voted in favor of a stricter curfew ordinance that passed the City Council last summer, but failed to survive a mayoral veto.
Dowell said she was grateful to hear from youth, but wanted a more “balanced” hearing on the topic that includes Chicago police, the park and school districts, and parents.
“This is an important topic, and we really can’t sugarcoat it,” she said, citing a recent gathering where she says police recovered 53 guns. “We don’t talk about the problems that our good kids might be covering for some of the bad kids that are integrating into those events.”
Ald. Jessie Fuentes (26th), who chaired the hearing, said she wanted to “center the voices of young people” at the first of a series of hearings this summer on teen takeovers, and that the police department will be represented in the future.
Dowell’s testimony sparked some backlash from the panel and impassioned closing remarks from Romya Simone, a Communities United youth leader. She urged council members to view teen violence as a symptom, not a cause, of societal woes.
“If we were to have a curfew, that’s not going to stop the gun violence from happening… How are these young people getting 53 guns?… There are adults who are selling these guns to young people. So how can we better make adults our role models?” Simone said.
Afterwards, she said that having CPD at the hearings “would be very helpful,” but bristled at the idea of “good” and “bad” kids.
“The teens that were here today, we were labeled as we are the ‘good kids,’ representing the ‘bad kids’ for our community, and that made me feel unheard… We are just kids… We are a reflection of our city, that means we get what the city pours into us,” she said.
“If the city is pouring into guns and disinvestments, then that’s what we’re going to represent,” Simone said.