humboldt park, chicago.

it is ten o'clock in the midst of sweltering july sun
and we are gathered in a loose circle on the streets
on the west side of the city.

a man stands in the middle, his shoulders broad, his arms
laced with dark tattoos, gang symbols partially covered
by the short sleeves of his football jersey.

he is here to talk about responsibility.

when I shot, he says –
when I shot, all I felt was my finger on the trigger, pressing
down until there was fire, until there was blood, and that
was what I wanted.

anger ran a red-hot path through his lungs until
the only impulse was to shoot.

but that was twenty years and one prison sentence ago, and
something in him has changed, he says. he points to the piles of
brochures and bumper stickers in our hands and says:

this is my life. this is my responsibility.

and he has dedicated his life to saving those of others, he says,
because shooting someone solves nothing.

“it's as if some part of you dies, and makes way for
something else to take root. and I want to tell all of the kids
out there that life is so valuable –
that the last thing our community needs
is to lose another precious life.”

I trace my finger over the black lettering.

YOUR LIFE IS MY LIFE.

“I need you all to lead the way,
because there is always another option,” he said –
and so we did.

we led the way.

we spent the morning leaving brochures under
boarded-up fences, sliding them under windshield wipers
and in between metal mailboxes, wondering if anything
we were doing could make any difference at all –

and suddenly I realized that leadership is, in its simplest form,
a promise. inside of all of us is an unspoken pledge
of responsibility – for our own actions, our own lives
for the lives of everyone in our community.

we all have made this promise of life, and when we start to realize
the magnitude of our promise, we are ­beginning to become
leaders.

(your life is my life, and my life is yours.)