COVID-19

Virus, violence and turmoil — Chicago community struggles with chaotic year

Residents frustrated by political system

CHICAGO -- In harrowing moments, in the sobs of grieving mourners and the incessant wail of sirens, the crises of 2020 have played out painfully within a single Chicago community:

Patricia Frieson posted a hopeful Facebook message in late February when a mysterious new disease invaded her neighborhood: "May the world recover from coronavirus soon. May all be well and happy."

Less than three weeks later, she was gone.

Ron Cashaw is a shopkeeper who has devoted 17 years to building his business. A community mainstay, he plays Santa every year. Alerted one horrible weekend that looters were smashing the windows of his clothing store, he rushed to confront them.

Would he be wiped out?

Teyonna Lofton, a beaming high school graduate, was honored by friends and family with a car parade one spring day. Later, as she waited at a gas station to buy a soft drink, shots rang out, and she fell hard.

She prayed she would not die.

In a chaotic year destined for the history books, Auburn Gresham has written its own grim chapter. This Black community on the city's South Side has endured a deadly virus, gun violence and economic misery -- a constant state of turmoil that mirrors the tumult afflicting much of urban America.

Auburn Gresham was hit early by the pandemic. COVID-19 infections rose quickly. Stores closed during a citywide lockdown. Then the agonizingly public death of George Floyd spurred protests that turned ugly. Businesses were set ablaze. As summer arrived, shootings surged in the 6th police district. Over three months, there were a shocking 175 victims. The youngest, 10 and 11, were wounded in a drive-by attack.

Auburn Gresham has faced hard times before. Guns are easy to find. Fresh produce isn't. Poverty hovers around 20%. But there's never been anything like this: A once-in-a- century epidemic in a community without a hospital. Long lines of the newly unemployed waiting for food donations. Jobs disappearing. Anxious shopkeepers. And police racing from one scene to the next.

"Forty-five years I've been here and never has it been as bad as it is right now in terms of hopelessness, anger and despair. Never," says the Rev. Michael Pfleger, one of the city's most vocal social activists. He presides at St. Sabina, a Catholic church that's a community anchor.

One day in July, a gang dispute erupted in a shootout in front of a local funeral home, wounding 15 and leaving 60 bullet casings strewn about the sidewalk.

Pfleger walked over to the scene, then went home and cried.

Sisters lost

"Take care everyone."

So began the Facebook message that Patricia Frieson posted in late winter.

As a nurse, Frieson had tended to the sick in Arkansas, where she'd relocated as a child to help her widowed grandmother. But her own ailments, including severe asthma and lymphedema, forced her to retire in the '90s. She returned to Auburn Gresham.

Frieson, a regular at the local Pentecostal church, was a devoted sister and loving aunt in a tight-knit family of nine siblings.

On March 2, the family gathered for cake and ice cream to celebrate the birthday of Wanda Bailey, a sister who was two years older than Patricia.

More than a week later, Patricia's asthma flared up and she was hospitalized. Four days later, she was diagnosed with COVID-19. She died the next day -- the first known casualty of the disease in all of Illinois -- as Wanda entered the hospital for breathing problems. She died of the virus nine days later.

They were two of the earliest victims in the country of a pandemic that has ravaged Black people disproportionately. In Chicago, one of the nation's most segregated cities, nearly 43% of the virus' victims have been Black -- more than twice the number of whites.

Groups step up

With stores closing and layoffs widespread, a local group, the Auburn Gresham Development Corp., stepped in, distributing about a half-million dollars from private donations and government funds to help pay mortgages, utilities and other bills.

Others have walked the streets to warn one segment of the population -- victims and perpetrators of gun violence -- of the dangers of a virus they could unwittingly pass on to their families.

The Target Area Development Corp., a social service group that addresses stubborn local problems, supplied its outreach workers face masks to distribute while making their rounds to prevent gang retaliation.

It hasn't been easy making the argument to young men who pay little attention to the virus and already have a fatalistic view of life, says Autry Phillips, the group's executive director.

The violence has stretched beyond bitter rivalries with the pandemic playing a supporting role.

When the virus turned Teyonna Lofton's high school graduation into a virtual event, she basked in her car parade celebration.

Hours later, Lofton, 18, was in line outside a locked gas station, waiting to buy a soft drink. A white SUV pulled in and a gunman started shooting. One bullet struck Lofton in her left arm. She collapsed. And she prayed.

Her mother arrived within moments. Lofton was whisked to a hospital where doctors found a bullet had pierced an artery. She needed two surgeries and a vein had to be grafted from her left leg to increase blood flow in her arm.

Now college is on hold as she undergoes therapy.

"I'm not angry at my shooter," she says. "This happens every day. I'm still here. I'm blessed. I can't complain."

And yet she is frustrated by a political system she believes favors the moneyed business interests and shortchanges the needs of her community. It's a common refrain in Chicago's Black and brown neighborhoods and one the mayor has pledged to address.

Why, Lofton asks, is there no local hospital? Why didn't police respond to her call? "Nobody helps us," she says. "Nobody."