Word: brothers
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...Brother Bill is standing with the gang members on their usual gathering spot outside a building in Cabrini-Green, the place where drug users looking for marijuana, crack cocaine or heroin can always find it. The air is frigid but charged with the warm sound of horseplay and laughter...
...group laughs uproariously at memories of their brother sprawled and bleeding on the sidewalk, puffing a Newport. The stories help break the monotony of the gang's three-hour security shifts, in which they look out for cops and frisk customers entering the building to score...
...Brother Bill listens to the stories with mixed amusement and empathy. He knows too well the whistling sound of a bullet that misses. As he listens, he can't help recalling his life-altering experience 15 years ago--one that hit him with all the force of all the bullets he has since survived...
...phone calls usually come at night. The voice is always low, distressed, the tone conspiratorial. A Gangster Disciple or Vice Lord assigned to murder informs Brother Bill that warfare is on the horizon, that just moments ago he was instructed to kill a rival gang member. "I don't wanna shoot nobody, and I don't wanna die, Brother Bill," the voice whispers. "Please come over here. Nothing's gonna happen if you're here. Help...
When fighting erupts, Brother Bill has his routine down pat. From his Evanston home, it's a 35-min. drive to Cabrini. En route, he pulls on his robe and begins prayer. Upon arriving, he walks briskly to the scene, where the shooting has usually already begun. His pale blue robe aflutter, he stands in the center of gang gunfire. He says he can hear the crack of guns from snipers in the buildings as well as see shooters running on the ground or ducking in and out of entryways. But thoughts of his safety never cross his mind...