Chicago Hope

A SIMPLE 5K WON’T TURN A TOUGH NEIGHBOURHOOD AROUND ALL BY ITSELF – BUT IT’S A START.

- Peter Sagal

I EYED THE BORDER NERVOUSLY. I tugged on my singlet, adjusted my shorts, and crossed the street. The first guy I met narrowed his eyes. “Some kind of marathon going on?” he said.

“Sort of,” I said. “A 5K.” The man seemed surprised. So was I. I was three blocks from home, and this was new to both of us.

For the past 20 years, I have lived in Oak Park, Illinois, a suburb just west of Chicago. More than a hundred years ago, the adjoining neighbourhood immediately to the east, Austin, was a quaint village of leafy streets lined with Victorian houses. But in 1899, Austin was annexed by Chicago, and the fortunes of the two communities diverged, first a bit, and then, with discriminatory practices and white flight in the 1960s and ’70s, more dramatically. Today, Oak Park remains a diverse community with excellent schools, a vibrant business sector, and safe streets. Austin is poor, majority African- American, and plagued by violent crime.

Today, I was going to run there.