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We Walk for Her march has youth demanding action over deaths and disappearances of young Black and brown women

Dozens of people took to the streets Tuesday evening on South Martin Luther King Drive as part of the We Walk For Her march to raise awareness for their cause: the many Black and brown girls who go missing, with little to no action taken to find them by law enforcement and local and state officials.

Wearing white T-shirts printed with the face of a Black girl with Afro puffs and a mask, youths and adults from groups like the Kenwood-Oakland Community Organization, GoodKids MadCity, H.E.R. Chicago, Mothers Opposed to Violence Everywhere, Protect Black Girls and Long Walk Home walked together while chanting in unison: “When Black girls are under attack, what do we do? Stand up, fight back!”

“The war on missing girls, especially Black women and children have been plaguing communities and cities for years,” said Tanisha Williams, a youth organizer with Kenwood-Oakland Community Organization. “Today, women are going missing at a higher rate like we’ve never seen before. The youth leaders in community organizations … have stepped up to speak up for those who can’t, and to say: ‘Find our girls.'”

This was the fourth We Walk For Her march and young community organizers said they will continue to hold the annual event until the missing people of color are a top priority for those in office, families of the missing have closure, and cases are resolved by law enforcement with more transparency.

Esi Koomson, a Kenwood-Oakland Community Organization youth leader, spoke to media about needing and wanting more transparency from Chicago Police Department detectives who are put on these cases. She said too often when women go missing, the community only hears something initially and nothing after that, or the case is just closed.

“How is the case closed if we don’t know if this person is found or if they have been murdered or what happened? Why are these cases being closed if we don’t know what happened to them?” she asked. “We are demanding transparency from elected officials, the mayor of Chicago, the state’s attorney, and every elected official — that these cases are being solved. We’re asking that systems are put in place so we don’t have to be out here every year.”

Shannon Bennett, executive director of the Kenwood-Oakland Community Organization, has been working on the issue of centering loved ones missing and murdered (mostly women of color) with officials for some time. A visit to the organization’s website reveals some faces of missing Chicago girls whose stories have yet to be resolved — chronicles that begin as far back as 1980 with Sheila Quinn, who at age 4 wandered off from her ninth floor apartment in the Harold L. Ickes Homes. While awareness has been raised and task forces have come and gone through the years to address these particular concerns — and there’s been a reduction of backlogged DNA testing cases with new technology used by state police — more policy changes need to be made, Bennett said.

“There’s a couple of layers to this, and it’s a constant struggle,” he said. “In a pandemic, we had people’s attention, but we know that consistency, that realness (the groups being out here) is what really changes things. Sometimes it’s a small group. So just watch us; watch our smoke.”

Zaid Shah walked in the march with his 8-year-old son and 6-year-old daughter, saying such marches are necessary.

“I have nothing but women in my life, so this is very important to act on. This is nothing that you need to sit on. It’s very well a part of me,” he said.

Destinee Patton, 11, came from the West Side to walk with her mom, Eboni Wilson. Patton said this is her second time marching and she’s aware of the missing women and girls after seeing their stories and faces on TV news. Patton said she will write about the experience when she’s back in school and is asked about her summer activities.

When asked what it means to march like this as a family, Wilson said, “Having a daughter and knowing that it could be my daughter one day, Lord knows that I don’t want that to happen. So this means a lot to us.”

Miracle Boyd, a member of GoodKids MadCity, a group of young people dedicated to fighting violence where they live in Chicago, rallied the crowd with a walking speaker and microphone. Her adrenaline was palpable prior to the march. She said Mayor Lori Lightfoot and others should be at the march to show support and some urgency toward the issue.

“We need her to come out and talk to the community members that are out in the streets doing the real work,” the 19-year-old DePaul University student said. “It’s a cry for help; we just need someone to listen. So far no one has been paying attention to the urgency of finding our missing Black girls and women.”

Boyd said the issue hit home for her with the case of Daisy Hayes, a 65-year-old who disappeared in May 2018 from the Chicago Housing Authority senior citizen apartment where she lived.

Hayes’ former boyfriend, Jimmy Jackson, then 72, was seen in surveillance video leaving Hayes’ apartment with a bulging suitcase and dragging it through the lobby to a dumpster outside. The next day, a garbage truck emptied the dumpster and transported the contents to a landfill in Monticello, Indiana. Hayes’ family is convinced her body is there, but police and officials still have done nothing to follow up on the family’s concerns. They told Hayes’ family that it would be too costly, and that the body wasn’t needed for prosecutors to pursue charges.

“Her body is still in the landfill,” Boyd said. “There has been no efforts to go get it, so her family can have a proper burial for her.”

Ald. Jeanette Taylor, 20th, agreed about the need for more urgency on Black and brown missing girls and women by elected officials. She said legislation is needed to make sure elected officials do their job and help with solving these cases. Taylor said the Hayes case happened in her ward and that makes this cause “near and dear” to her. Taylor said she doesn’t want business as usual where more Black women go missing and nothing is done now that the state has reopened.

“The taxpayers deserve a return on their investment; we’re saying look for the women that are missing in our family. Let a woman that’s white go missing and you got everybody that go out to look for that person. But our girls?” Taylor said. “Think about the young lady who works for the post office; she’s been missing for three years now? And she was pregnant! So what does that tell the Black community, again? For people who built this country from the ground for free, we’re still seen as second-class citizens.”

“Anytime anything plagues our communities — for any person, for any issue, for any injustice — it’s all of our responsibility to step up and get our voices heard around that issue,” Williams said. “Something has to be done.”

drockett@chicagotribune.com