CHICAGO: Demon­strators marched through the frigid streets of Chicago in memory of victims of gun violence, which rose dramatically in the third-largest US city in 2020.

Police in the Windy City recorded 762 homicides in 2020, up 55 percent from 2019, according to a Dec 27 count. Shootings rose 53 percent, to 3,227 from 2,120 in the city of 2.7 million.

Up to 100 protesters, holding portraits of loved ones who had been shot, marched the snowy sidewalks waving flags in the city’s colors, but marked with blood-stained bullet holes. Nicole McGee, 30, carried a sign with pictures of her cousin Mekhi James, a one-year-old shot and killed over the summer.

“You hear about it, but you never expect it to happen to a baby,” McGee said.

Mekhi was her second relative to be killed in Chicago’s gun violence, she added.

Published in Dawn, January 2nd, 2021