Op-Ed: Beyond First Impressions

Tom Couri

In 0.25 seconds a Google News Search of “Woodlawn Chicago” generates the following hits near the top of the page: “Man Critically Hurt In Woodlawn Drive-By”; Cops: Gunman kills 1, fires on police, no officers hurt”; Teen shot in gang-related attack in Woodlawn neighborhood”. There are about 1,100 results but I don’t bother to sift through them. How often do we look beyond the first few hits in an online search? What we first see is usually what sticks with us, and for Woodlawn, what sticks isn’t anything positive. Violence, murders, drive-bys. But this summer I saw with my own eyes many of the assets and great things going on in Woodlawn that are all too often glossed over or ignored in the media.

I worked with a fellow medical student, an undergraduate, and three high school students from Woodlawn this summer in the Summer Service Partnership, a program dedicated to community engagement, volunteering, and community health in different South Side neighborhoods. We explored Woodlawn, focusing on the assets of the community, not the negatives and downsides we hear about incessantly.

I remember vividly the first day I spent with the high school students. I asked them what their impressions of Woodlawn were. They said things like violence, murders, drive-bys. I don’t recall any positive things said, any mention of neighborhood assets that made them proud to call Woodlawn home. Honestly, their descriptions matched what I had in mind. In the entire academic year I had just completed at the University of Chicago, I had visited Woodlawn once. Woodlawn borders my neighborhood, Hyde Park, and a fifteen-minute walk from my apartment takes me to Woodlawn. Yet the Google searches, rumors, and news stories scared me enough to barely set foot in Woodlawn.

This summer changed my mistaken notions. Exploring and volunteering in Woodlawn exposed us all to the vibrant community that is Woodlawn. We met with Joyce and Rudy Nimocks, two longtime Woodlawn residents who are passionately committed to the future of Woodlawn and are modeling Woodlawn after the Harlem Children’s Zone. We met and took a cooking class with Gabrielle Darvassy, the tireless owner of the restaurant B’Gabs Goodies. She offers free healthy cooking classes to children in the community and working to end Woodlawn’s status as a food desert. We volunteered at 1^st Presbyterian Church in the soup kitchen and food pantry. The church partners with a community garden across the street to give free, locally-grown produce to those visiting the food pantry. The list of great people and places we learned about is endless. One of the best moments of the summer was hearing the high school students say, “We didn’t know about all of these resources in Woodlawn.” I thought the same thing.

Woodlawn does have serious issues with violence. But we can’t let violence overshadow all of the wonderful people and places in this great community.