by Linnet Burden | Nov 24, 2021 | Spotlight
The problem was, he had just been shot – for the third time. And that really made him mad. “I’m just angry! I’m just emotional,” Devontay Williams explained to the men surrounding him. After all, he and four others had just been shot the previous weekend, marking the...
by Linnet Burden | Nov 24, 2021 | Spotlight
It’s been a tough year for Boxing Out Negativity, largely because boxing is a contact sport, not recommended during the time of COVID-19. But it has been through tough times before. When Professor Julie Globokar first discovered it, in fact, it was “basically a...
by Linnet Burden | Aug 31, 2021 | Stop the Cycle
They’re playing to a tough crowd: 96% have prior arrests, 64% served time behind bars and 80% have been victims of violent crime themselves. READI Chicago, the Rapid Employment And Development Initiative, serves a hardened clientele that many wouldn’t attempt to...
by Linnet Burden | Jun 27, 2021 | Spotlight
This is the story Bertha Purnell told me: When my son Maurice was killed, I went a little bit crazy. It started when I got the call and rushed to where he’d been shot, on Laramie Avenue in my neighborhood, Austin. Everything was like a blur and later I remembered I...
by Linnet Burden | Jun 26, 2021 | Spotlight
It was what they call an “Angelversary” – the day Maurice Purnell became an angel, the date he was killed, June 24th. Just six weeks earlier there had been another, that one in honor of Trevon Jeffries, shot down on May 12th. Yet another came six weeks before that,...
