There’s a special place in my heart for the Second City. Born and raised just 90 minutes north of Chicago, my family and I would find ourselves on somewhere on the South Side, crammed around a kitchen table at my favorite aunt’s house. We came to visit often; for school trips, church conferences and family gatherings. Chicago, in my earliest memories, is shorthand for ‘family’.

So it’s no surprise that when Chicago is dealt a blow, I feel it too. And it hurts. It breaks my heart. I see echoes of my beginnings too in broken neighborhoods, broken homes, broken bodies. I remember violence that took some of my classmates before they could reach their 16th birthday. I remember violence that still makes me afraid to wear red and black in neighborhoods in Milwaukee.

Yet in the wake of tragedy, I still have hope. I’ve got friends in Chicago who are doing good work. I’ve got friends who are writers, teachers, artists working with Chicago kids citywide, teaching them to craft words and manifest change in their lives. I’ve got friends who write grants to fund programs that have been victim of too many budget cuts supporting after school programming for high school aged youth. The above video clip is from a documentary about the people and work of Louder Than a Bomb.

I encourage you to read Kevin Coval’s full post. Louder Than A Bomb (LTAB) is approaching its ten-year anniversary. Through writing, poetry and performance, young people have found safe space to explore the struggles they face as teens growing up in tough neighborhoods, as well as the paradox of being between adult and childhood. They are doing all of this by kicking rhymes and writing poems.

Poems. Yeah, I said it. Poems. I know that writing saved my life when I was coming up. Hear me. Writing saved my life. There’s more I can say about that, but that’s for another time, when we’re better acquainted. But you should know this: there are words that can destroy, but there are words that can create. Create possibility, create ideas, create art, create change. Words that remind us to be the change we wish to see in the world.

Affirm Life.