Anthony Vazquez/Sun-Times
Holding fluttering Chicago flags with bullet holes instead of red stars, they marched along Michigan Avenue on Thursday urging city leaders not to forget the “virus of violence.”
“We have blood running in our streets. We have mothers crying. We have whole neighborhoods that are traumatized,” said the Rev. Michael Pfleger, who led the gathering of about 150 people.
Pfleger, senior pastor at St. Sabina Church on the South Side, said the city’s plague of violence in 2020 — 774 murders — has been largely forgotten in a year of dealing with the coronavirus.
“Gun violence is a public health crisis, but it is a treatable public health crisis,” said Pfleger, a veteran anti-violence campaigner.