This is the first in a series titled, “Caravan of Faith”
In the dead of a cool autumn night, the wheels on the bus go round and round.
Earlier, a palpable sense of excitement over this impending journey surrounded a glowing South Side Catholic church, where a caravan of chartered buses and hundreds of men, women and children boarded, carrying overnight bags and blankets.
The buses departed about 8 p.m., from St. Sabina — a caravan of faith, led by Father Michael L. Pfleger and the audacity of hope. Hope for ending gun violence.
Hope in the face of naysayers, critics and pessimists lulled into a state of do-nothingness by the seemingly intractable gunfire and murder that reign over some Chicago neighborhoods like demonic forces.
Hope.
Hope that — in addition to the church’s consistent engagement in teaching, in community lifting, giving and loving — it can help cajole national lawmakers into adopting gun legislation that can be felt even in Chicago’s blood and shell case laden streets.
Hope.
The buses’ engines hum as they snake along the 12-hour trek to the nation’s capital. Simple means of travel. A not-so-simple mission.
Indeed Pfleger and his charges are traveling overnight to Washington, D.C., for their “National Rally to End Gun Violence” at the U.S. Capitol on Sept. 25.
In their sights: Getting Congress to ultimately pass tougher gun laws that ban assault weapons, demand universal background checks and require titling guns “like cars.”
Among the passengers tonight are mothers who have lost daughters and sons. Chicagoans who have crossed the endless river of loss and mourning that overflows in mostly black and brown and poor neighborhoods.
Asleep now as the buses roll, many have born witness to perennial summers of death. To the incessant body count and endless processionals to the funeral home and cemetery and back again.
Among these are witnesses to teddy bear memorials erected to slain children caught in the crossfire. To the numbness and seemingly disregard of a city, a nation, that seems to wink or nod, or close its eyes to gun violence.
Or maybe it just simply acquiesces in a warm blanket of impotence. Except no one is immune. This ought to be all of America’s fight.
I am among the buses’ passengers tonight. Pfleger and his charges drift into slumber as the night fog rolls over the cutting headlights.
So tonight we sojourn, carrying the light of hope — stories, tears and the soul cries of those prematurely extinguished by gun violence. Cradling a cry for help and a demand for laws to help curb this scourge.
Thirteen of my journalism students from Roosevelt University are here too on Bus No. 1. Here to chronicle this journey of those who have chosen to exchange their beds for the mostly upright, cramped quarters of a bus for 24 hours over two days in hopes of making headway in their fight to end gun violence.
It is for my students an opportunity to cover firsthand a developing national story — a challenge to “move beyond their comfort zone.”
A veteran journalist, I am well aware of how, in the process of capturing the pain, purpose and passion of others, one can end up powerfully and forever impacted by that experience, sometimes. Sometimes not.
“The bus feels like a spaceship cutting through the dark, rumbling and shaking,” Mark Patron, one of my students tweets (8:07 p.m.)...
“Some folks have fallen asleep and some soldier on, still awake. I have no idea how I’ll move once we have to start reporting. I am so very very tired. There are no stars in the sky only grey.” (2:57 a.m.)
And the caravan of faith rolls on, into the cool autumn night.
Email: Author@johnwfountain.com
Send letters to: letters@suntimes.com.
