Spring 2023 Newsletter
Twenty-seven miles. A 35-minute drive, with no traffic. That is the difference between living in the safest city in America and living in the most violent zip code in Chicago. Naperville to Garfield Park. The difference between growing up in an environment where children learn, laugh, and live safely and freely to growing up in an environment that is more dangerous than what a U.S. soldier faces in Afghanistan or Iraq.
According to a recent study by online personal finance data company MoneyGeek, Naperville retained its No. 1 rank as the safest city in America for 2023.
JAMA Network, a monthly open-access medical journal published by the American Medical Association, found the 60624-zip code -- which includes our service area Garfield Park -- as the most violent zip code in Chicago.
Their study showed the risk of a young man 18 to 29 years old dying in the 60624-zip code was higher than the death rate for U.S. Soldiers in the Afghanistan war or for soldiers in an Army combat brigade that fought in Iraq.
Among men in the 18 to 29 age range, the annual rate of homicides in the 60624-zip-code was 1,277 out of 100,000 people in 2021 and 2022. This compared to an annual death rate for U.S. troops in a heavily engaged combat brigade in Iraq of 675 per 100,000.
Brandon del Pozo PHD, a Brown University researcher and a former New York City cop, stated, “We fully expect veterans returning from a year at war to suffer from PTSD and to be more vulnerable to alcoholism, divorce, substance abuse, homelessness, and mental illness. If that is the case, I can only imagine what it says about young men who experience even greater levels of risk of violent death year after year in Chicago.”
Twenty-seven miles. A 35-minute drive. Naperville to Garfield Park. Night and day. We work with 17 single moms in the Garfield Park area. We have moms who are raising their children alone as the father of their children have been killed or are incarcerated. They do not receive child support from the grave or from behind bars. They have grown up in trauma. They have seen young lives lost, bullets through their windows, and sometimes feel they are in a world, a city, that does not seem to care. They and their children are running a 100 - yard dash while other children raised in different circumstances are running a 40 - yard dash. It is tough to get ahead. Hope is hard to come by.
Sure, they may have made a few bad decisions along the way, but those who live in glass houses should not throw stones.
Since I have started “Just One Dash,” it has been mentioned to me by some people (not living in the 60624-zip code), why are we helping those who have gotten themselves in their predicament? If they got themselves in their situation, should they not be able to get themselves out if it too? By providing them a wish-list of day-to-day essential supplies, we hope they will have a little more wiggle room to maintain a roof overhead, food in the fridge, clothes on their back, and a few bucks in their pockets. By seeing them every 90 days, we give them hope and offer encouragement that they are not forgotten. These families were born into their predicament. They did not grow up in Naperville and move to Garfield Park. Gun violence in Chicago is not a new phenomenon either, and it is getting worse, not better. Last year, nearly 3,600 people were shot in Chicago -- nearly 10 a day -- and about 700 were killed. Annual murder numbers were near an all-time high in 2020 and 2021.
To those that have donated money since JOD was launched you have my sincere thanks and have my assurance that 100% of those donations went directly to the families we work with. To those who have donated items off our Target or Amazon wish-list, thank you. They have been distributed -- this includes one donor who shipped us shampoo, conditioner, and deodorant via Target but from whom I was not given an address to write back to and thank -- so if you are reading this CC, thank you!!!
Please keep spreading the word of what JOD is trying to do. Unfortunately, Amazon discontinued their Amazon Smile program that steered funds to us on a quarterly basis, and JOD’s Founder and Executive Director is shy and a chicken when it comes to asking for donations. But our families are so grateful to receive their wish-list items and a periodic check in to see how they are doing. There is a lot of work to be done. JOD tries to reflect the idea that we are all in this together -- whether we are raised in the 60540, 60624 or 90210 zip code. At the end of the day, when our time on this planet has come to an end, we all will have the same DASH.