I was 10 when I first read a headline that would one day become all too familiar: "Bloody Summer Approaches". At that point I had spent almost every summer of my life on the South-Side of Chicago, in a middle class neighborhood that I had come to love despite its imperfections. I spent most of the time riding my bike, chasing ice cream trucks, and watching my brother pick fights with the rougher kids from nearby neighborhoods, but guns and death were unfamiliar. My South-Side Chicago summers were beautiful, a little rough, but never bloody, yet every May the headlines returned, always warning me that the safe place I called home wasn't actually safe at all.
As I grew older I began to understand that my truth and the news had something in common, bias. Blinded by my somewhat privileged upbringing, my glimpses into the divested areas of this city were always brief, but with age came exposure. Eventually I had to accept that it wasn’t the ideal safe place I had always imagined, but it also wasn’t the cesspool of violence that sensationalized news coverage daily portrays.
I think the true Chicago lies somewhere in the middle. Between the systemic injustice and idealistic interpretations everyone has of this city, lies a story about tremendous hope in the face of adversity and oppression. One day I realized that if I ever wanted to see that story then I would have to do it myself, which is why I wrote "Drive Slow".
