Motive

Here's another podcast we think you'll find interesting. Twenty-five years ago in Chicago, a little boy named Lenard Clark was beaten into a coma just for being Black. Almost overnight, the news stories turned to racial reconciliation and forgiveness. From writer Yohance Lacour, You Didn't See Nothin is an investigation into how that happened, and a memoir of coming-of-age in Chicago. Full series available now.

Anti-violence worker Cecilia Mannion confronts her desire for revenge after the car her kids are riding in is shot up 20 times. Meanwhile outreach workers in Garfield Park are trying to slow a string of shootings stemming from the theft of an $8,000 necklace. And Joey finally goes to the police station to make an identification, but there are problems.

A 14-year-old boy whose father was wounded in a gang shooting faces down threats of violence and the temptations of joining a gang. Meanwhile, a person who killed one woman and wounded another will avoid criminal charges.

The gang murder of 7-year-old Jaslyn Adams shook Chicago and affected many of the anti-violence workers on the West Side. As former gang members they sympathized with Jaslyn’s dad, Jontae, his desire to spend time with his daughter and how that put her at risk of violence. Jontae still struggles with the guilt. And when he decided to help police catch his daughter’s killers his gang friends turned on him.

**Content warning: This episode contains uses of the n-word.

Gunshot victim Joey struggles to get police to arrest the man he believes seriously wounded him and killed his neighbor. Meanwhile, low-pay and job insecurity make it harder for anti-violence workers to do their jobs and build a life for themselves.

Sirenzo Strong spends his work days trying to talk to gang members in Chicago’s East Garfield Park neighborhood. Part of his turf is the site of a former housing complex, Rockwell Gardens. When former residents return to the old neighborhood, so do the old gang allegiances and grudges.

Former gang members are out on Chicago’s streets trying to slow the relentless violence. A man shot 11 times hides with his kids at home.

On the West Side of Chicago, a father is seriously wounded by an apparent gang shooting. The worker who comes out to help him heal mentally and emotionally is a former gang member herself.

She is part of a growing army of anti-violence workers fighting to bring peace to the streets of Chicago.

In Motive Season 5, WBEZ criminal justice reporter Patrick Smith takes listeners out to the streets where workers are trying desperately to prevent shootings and help the victims of gun violence.

Episode 1 coming January 26th.

Subscribe now wherever you get your podcasts.

In this bonus episode of Motive, we bring you some excerpts from a special project we created.

After a years-long investigation into prisons, we wanted to make something that wasn’t just about people in prison, but also for them. In August of this year we collaborated with radio stations across Illinois to create a broadcast that was heard in prisons statewide.

We played sounds incarcerated people requested to hear from the other side of the prison wall, and dedications for sounds that family members thought would be important to their loved ones. People requested simple sounds from the outside world, like babies laughing, rain on a tin roof, the waves of Lake Michigan.

We also played people’s music requests and even an original song, “Bring It Back”, created by some students of the Rebirth of Sound program, inside Stateville Correctional Center in Joliet, Illinois.

From our friends at WAMU and PRX. When 8 year old Relisha Rudd disappeared from a homeless shelter in Washington, D.C. in 2014, nobody noticed. By the time authorities formally declared Relisha “missing,” 18 days had passed since she’d been spotted at school or the shelter where her family lived. Seven years later, Relisha has never been found. Through The Cracks investigates gaps in our society and the people who fall through them, and in this first season, host Jonquilyn Hill asks if Relisha’s disappearance was, as the city later claimed, unpreventable