Oak Park honored gun violence victims at its village board meeting last week as it observed National Gun Violence Awareness Day.
The board heard from Oak Parker’s whose lives have been touched by gun violence and heard from members of a community organization led by Trustee Jenna Leving Jacobson about a local memorial project.
Leving Jacobson’s primary community experience prior to her seeking election to Oak Park’s board was through her work as leader of the Oak Park-Austin Chapter of Moms Demand Action, a nationwide organization dedicated to raising awareness about gun violence and pushing lawmakers to support solutions like Moms Demand Action is a subgroup within the larger Everytown For Gun Safety gun violence prevention organization, which boasts nearly 11 million members nationwide.
Leving Jacobson and other members of the community group wore orange shirts, the color of gun violence awareness. Two Oak Parkers spoke to their personal experiences with gun violence.
Sherita Galloway’s son Elijah Sims was shot to death days before his 17th birthday in 2016 while the boy was a student at Oak Park and River Forest High School. She said she is “still trying to survive after nine years.”
“He was not only my baby boy, he was a brother, grandson, nephew, cousin, friend, OPRF senior and a Pete’s Fresh Market employee and in my eyes, those carts have not been aligned correctly since he left,” Galloway said. “Gun violence took my son’s future away from him. As a survivor of gun violence, I believe gun violence prevention is extremely important in conjunction with keeping guns away from those that are a danger to themselves and as well as others. And as I wear this orange shirt with my son’s face on it, I hope to help raise awareness about gun violence.”
Alison Gerard, a 10-year-resident of Oak Park, recounted her harrowing experience in which she was “followed, attacked and shot at point-blank range” while out for a run in the village. She said her experience speaks to the deep-seated nature of gun violence in America and the responsibility of public leaders to face the challenge.
“The reality is, I did not do anything to get shot, I was a woman on a run in Oak Park at 4:15 in the afternoon on a Tuesday and that was enough,” she said. “No shooting occurs in a vacuum without context. Gun violence is intertwined with mental health, with police presence, with education, with public health, with hatred, with so many more things. So in this month of gun violence awareness and beyond, as you work to better our community, I ask all here to remember the intersectionality of gun violence. Because intersectionality for survivors is our power and it is what keeps us persevering.”
Over the weekend, members of Oak Park-Austin Area Moms Demand Action spent time together working in the Mercy Garden of Peace and Healing, a community garden space group members helped build at 4912 W. Quincy St. in Austin to give people a place to honor slain loved ones and provide healthy food and a safe place to play for neighborhood families.
Group members decorated the garden with rocks painted with the names of loved ones lost to gun violence.
Oak Park has seen several incidents of gun violence over the last 365 days, including the fatal shooting of Oak Park Detective Allan Reddins in downtown Oak Park last November and the fatal shooting of 54-year-old Gulf War veteran Corey Gates in April.
Both those cases are still progressing through the courts.
The Austin community has had more homicides than any other neighborhood in Chicago so far in 2025, with 21 killings in the neighborhood so far this year, according to crime stats analysis by The Chicago Tribune.
Those figures include the killings of 17-year-old Drevon Watson and 19-year-old Elzie Johnson last month.