Personal Reflection: “I Wanted to Intervene a lot more than Just to Record”
Photo taken by Jonathan Aguilar
On June 1, Gerardo Nava, a Cicero resident, decided to walk the streets of Berwyn and Cicero to document and livestream on Facebook any possible property damage from the night before. Around 4 p.m., Nava was at the intersection of Cicero Avenue and Cermak Road where racial tensions were escalating. At one point, his Facebook livestream went from 15 live viewers to 5,000 in a manner of minutes. Some Cicero residents, including Cicero Independiente reporters, went to the area because of what they saw on his livestream. At one point in his livestream, Latinx residents can be seen intimidating a Black resident that Nava had spoken to about the situation. Nava interrupts and tells them that the Black resident is “cool.” The Black resident says he should be going for his own safety.
By Gerardo Nava
On the first day of June, I took the time to walk around my communities of Cicero and Berwyn to review the situation. I wanted to see if any property damage occurred as the unrest and growing frustrations continued to loom over Black communities of Chicago due the continued injustice and police brutality practiced in many areas of the country. Many people marched west as Lori Lightfoot shut off access to downtown Chicago to prevent further protesting. There were also concerns of looting within our communities. Therefore, I took it upon myself to survey the area and help anyone that needed it.
As I continued my halfway point of my expected walk around Cicero, I was thinking about taking a break to rest and eat at home or continue my walk and then call it a day. Little did I know, my next decision was going to affect me and my friends for the foreseeable future and expose the racism in our community.
As I walked to Cicero Avenue, I noticed that a part of Cermak Road was closed off and I began to survey the surroundings. I realized that something was about to go down. I made a conscious decision to livestream and record every second of what was going on. My adrenaline was growing as time passed. I saw racial discrimination. I saw Brown/Latino members of the community being concerned about what was going on and trying to defend many of the family-owned businesses around the area.
At some point I saw a confrontation between a Black man and a Latino man where a Black man was lying on the ground from hits he received in that confrontation, I wanted to intervene a lot more than just to record, but part of me shut down because I didn’t have the physical or mental strength in me to continue.
I saw too many people that were staring at Black people that were driving past Cermak Road and Latinos in the community throwing rocks and saying racially insensitive comments to people that were trying to drive through. I tried to confront some people about how we should not instigate or even persecute every car with Black people. I tried to explain that it is important to protect our community and businesses, but we also can’t contribute more divide and hate that will continuously affect our communities with more fear and pain then we are already dealing with.
It’s worth noting there is a minor percentage of Black people that live in Cicero and in Berwyn but it’s not as comparable to the number of Latinos in the community. Near sunset around 7-8 p.m. I was completely drained from the day. I was encouraged to go home to rest and eat and once I got home I had to deal with what happened, what I did, what I said, what I didn’t do or say and even what more could I have done.
Gerardo Nava is a Cicero resident and member of the Rizoma Collective.
