They were two boys, high school basketball stars hanging around a Chicago candy store, dreaming of NBA fame. And it might have happened if Benjy Wilson, 17, had not been shot there on the street for the crime of bumping into another youth.
Today, the shooter, who was 16 at the time, is serving a 40-year sentence and Wilson is dead. His cousin, however, is taking the meaning of that sudden, brutal loss all the way to the White House.
Brandi Wilson, 15, never met her famous relative, a youth so full of athletic promise that the Rev. Jesse Jackson spoke at his funeral. But now she is generating attention of her own. At a Youth Town Hall in Chicago last month, she spoke about three close friends – all black teenagers – who had been killed in the last year, a trio among the more than 500 young people shot in the nation’s third largest city since September 2008.
Wilson wrote about sobbing alone in her room at night and about refusing – despite the frequency of youth shootings – to accept this as normal.
“Why do I have to walk through the hallways of my school and hear the cries and anger of students in heartache and pain?” she cried out at the youth-led meeting. She told the crowd that she worried about her younger brother and sister, that she knew each step she and her friends took could be their last. “If you are for change, stand up!” she exhorted a gymnasium packed with 300 other equally outraged teens.
Youth shootings in Chicago are so prevalent that they barely rate news coverage anymore. But adults who have spent their careers in community organizing were still talking about Wilson’s speech days afterward, singling out her address (practiced three times at home, in front of a mirror) as the most powerful moment of the gathering held on Nov. 15.
“It wasn’t something that I had to really think about,” Wilson said later, recalling that it had taken all of 20 minutes to craft her remarks. She sat down to write and found words tumbling onto the page. “It was something that I just knew and had to get off my chest.”
Despite her age, people who know the South Side teen were not surprised by her performance. The high school sophomore has long impressed teachers and mentors with her ability to rally other youth – so much so that a former principal contacted Wilson’s parents last year and urged them to involve her in community organizing.
“She immediately stood out – even as a freshman – as an obvious and natural leader,” said Jackie Lemon, who was Wilson’s principal at violence-ridden Dyett High School. “I can’t exactly put my finger on it, but some kids just have it. Brandi was outgoing and very pleasant, but she would really speak up for her class and she was very concerned about her school in the community, so we noticed her right away.”
A few days after Lemon phoned Wilson’s parents about community organizing, the girl and her mother visited the Kenwood Oakland Community Organization, where Wilson was hired on the spot. Now, a year later, she routinely devotes her after-school hours to anti-violence efforts, job-creation programs and education campaigns. Sometimes she gives up weekends to work. Often, she uses lunch periods to do research or type speeches.
“It was never my intention that Brandi would be working while in school,” said her mother, Terra Wilson-London. “But Brandi’s different. Even upperclassmen look up to her.”
Lest other adults view her work with a jaundiced eye, writing off youth organizers as naïve kids play-acting at change, they might consider the ground already covered. This fall, Wilson – who plans to study criminal law in college – has twice met with members of President Obama’s staff in Washington, D.C., to talk about youth violence. In Chicago, she has helped to create substantive reform in school dropout prevention.
“At the moment, there’s a sense of desperation about some issues -- particularly violence -- because nothing has really worked, so there’s a willingness to listen to anybody, even youth,” said Brian Brady, executive director of Mikva Challenge, a civic engagement organization for young people. “It’s hard to measure, but I think there’s a perceptible change. City leaders of all types, from principals to the mayor’s office, are becoming more receptive to listening to youth and trying to incorporate their opinions into serious discussions.”
Coincidentally, Wilson’s town hall speech took place on the anniversary of her cousin’s death. More than 8,000 people had attended his funeral in 1984, and now here was Brandi 25 years later, speaking to hundreds about the same problem. The irony escaped no one.
“She never met him, of course,” said Wilson’s mother. “But for someone who had never been to a funeral beside her grandmother’s, then in the last 18 months to attend two funerals of young people she knew, it has really rattled her.”
Wilson, who put hours of work into a much-heralded effort to reform Chicago’s dismal 50 percent graduation rate, is beginning to look beyond the city’s borders. She has her eye on getting a budget measure passed in the state legislature that would permanently fund youth employment – a measure she believes will curb youth violence like nothing else.
“I feel like the work is very hard and very frustrating,” she acknowledged. “But once we get our job done, we’ll see the results. We’re trying to pass a state bill to get 20,000 more jobs for youth. Then we’ll really start seeing a change.”
And what if that bill, caught up in a grinding state budget crisis, doesn’t pass?
“I won’t say our hard work is going down the drain,” Wilson said. “All that means is that we need to keep working, not give up and show them this is something we’re fighting for and we’re going to get. My being a part of this and helping to change things makes me feel proud. I know that I’m fighting for better jobs and education for my younger brother and sister.”
That idealism may be its own reward, at least as far as Wilson’s mother is concerned.
“Organizing is wonderful,” Wilson-London said. “It teaches children to be aware of what’s going on in the world beyond their front door, beyond their block. And I think it’s going to take Brandi to some really great places.”
Her voice will be heard, Wilson’s mother promised, even as so many others’ are silenced.
To learn more about youth organizing in Chicago and get involved, contact the following organizations: