This story was originally published by The Trace, a nonprofit newsroom covering gun violence in America. Sign up for its newsletters here.
Kendra Snow was working the closing shift at a laundromat in Englewood when her phone began to ring. It was a neighbor, telling her not to panic. Then, the devastating news: Snow’s 16-year-old son had been shot outside of a nearby liquor store. He was alive, but she needed to hurry.
Snow remembers locking the laundromat door and running three blocks south toward the corner of 75th and Stewart. She knew the intersection well. It had long been a hot spot for neighborhood violence, one where both her younger brother and her son’s father had survived shootings. Still, nothing could’ve prepared her for this race toward her wounded son.
“This is my neighborhood. I was like, how did this happen to my son?” Snow said of that night in October 2015. “How dare you? This is my baby.” Once she reached him, she learned he’d weathered two shots in the back.
He survived, but would need months of physical therapy and long-term care that Medicaid wouldn’t cover. His journey toward healing would be long and arduous—a path Snow says he’s still pursuing nearly seven years later.
That journey would also prove challenging for the women in his life, women who loved him and watched him grow up. Snow, her aunt, her sister, and sister-in-law all rallied behind him, stepping in to provide the long-term care that he couldn’t access easily from hospitals or the state.
Snow’s experience reflects that of many women of color in Chicago and elsewhere whose loved ones survive gun violence. In the aftermath of a shooting, they are often the ones who provide emotional labor and care to alleviate the ricocheting impacts of gun violence. This work is vital, necessary for people to forge a new normal for their everyday lives. Sometimes, it extends beyond familial ties and to communal ones. But even when it comes from outside the walls of a single home, it is often unpaid, undervalued, and hidden from public view.
During the early months of her son’s recovery, Snow, along with her sister and sister-in-law, guided the teen through everyday tasks like eating, bathing, and homeschooling. Having to juggle her son’s care along with parenting six other children—while also working two jobs outside the home—was stressful. That stress was compounded by a trauma unique to survivors of gun violence: for months, Snow couldn’t shake the fear that every time he left home, it would happen again.
“It was a battle of getting him back to his normal self,” Snow remembers. “I was absolutely stressed and drained . . . he was like an infant again.”
Snow’s efforts are part of a patchwork of woman-led care that serves Chicago communities where shootings are common. These women lead block clubs, grow community gardens, organize food drives, and provide free childcare. It’s labor that bears little resemblance to the tougher talk of often male-led violence prevention work, with its street intervention, workforce training, and behavioral health counseling. The women foster safety and address community needs, functioning as the hidden scaffolding of the more visible work.
Lewis grew up on the south side, where she watched her community grapple with gun violence and the larger systems that create and compound it: racial segregation, economic disinvestment, concentrated poverty. Her first introduction to racial justice work came in the eighth grade, when her mother took her to protest the killing of Trayvon Martin. Then a child herself, Lewis couldn’t stop thinking about how young Martin was. She’d spend the next several years attending protests, organizing neighbors around various social issues, and earning her bachelor’s degree in sociology from the University of Pennsylvania.
Lewis now channels her community work through her nonprofit, Free Root Operation, which combats Chicago’s gun violence crisis by making food and education more accessible. She started the nonprofit in 2020 as a way to house her various forms of community work under one roof. The organization is funded through individual donations and grants. Lewis says she’s only made enough for the organization’s basic needs, and sustains herself through other jobs. She’d like to see city leaders funnel more money toward community-based organizations at a level that’s at least on par with what Chicago spends on policing, about $1.9 billion this year.
“We only have so much capacity and this work is very taxing—emotionally, mentally, physically,” Lewis said. “Folks need resources to give it their all and not have to worry about where they’re going to find their next meal.”
“Although we need to focus on our boys and our men, a lot of people’s solutions to gun violence end there. We also need to talk about the women who are also stakeholders of this gun violence issue in our communities.”
In June, Lewis launched the Bloom Cohort, a program that pairs 10 Black women, mostly single mothers, with a mentor who helps them complete a goal, like continuing their schooling or becoming a baker. The thinking is that investments in opportunities for the women leading households in communities impacted by gun violence will translate to an increase in public safety.
The idea for Bloom came from her conversations with Black women who kept saying they were struggling to find time for things outside parenting and work. Lewis witnessed her mom, who raised her alone, navigate a similar experience. And after years of community work, Lewis is having a related conversation with herself.
“I’ve spent so much time trying to free other people. When I was younger, doing the work, going to protests, I wasn’t making any room for my own healing,” Lewis says. “I realized I needed the same type of care I was putting out.
“I am so much more than what I can do for other people.”
Harsh penalties for gun crimes don’t make communities safer.
After Mayor Lori Lightfoot expanded the citywide curfew in response to a shooting, teenagers spoke about Chicago’s gun violence crisis and their relationship to the city.
We need money for schools, after-school programs, and mental health to change the status quo.
