How Long Will I Cry? by Miles Harvey Page A

for
not paying attention to people who were hurting. Especially when
gun violence is involved. Because I think for a long time I just
really did not think about the fact that so many young black men
were dying. And it almost seems as if these kids don’t understand
the magnitude of what’s going on. For them, it’s almost as if this
is normal .
    When you turn the light off at nighttime,
this tent is really dark. There’s that eerie feeling, that sense of
nothingness. And I know this is going to sound strange, but
sometimes when it’s dark like that, I think about people who don’t
have electricity, and I think about when I grew up, how my mom
couldn’t afford things. So that’s what I think about at night:
“Man, this is lonely; it is cold; it’s dark. How many people have
to live this way?”
    If you look north from here at night, you see
the lights of the Loop. And there’s been nights that I’ve been on
the roof and all the street lights on King Drive have been turned
off. And you think, here you have the bright lights downtown, with
all the resources and all the things that make it beautiful and
you’re in the same city and it’s almost, kinda like, in a different
world—the haves and the have-nots.
    I mean, everything in Chicago is divided. The
educational resources are divided; that’s the reason why you see
the schools in one area better than the schools in another area.
The police resources are divided; that’s why you see higher crime
in one area than you do in other areas. The economic resources are
divided; that’s the reason why you have an unemployment rate double
in one area what it is in another area.23 Obviously, there is still
systemic racism. I don’t think we can argue against it.
    But before I came up here, I used to be
really dogmatic about how government ought to do something. You
know? Government, government, government. I still think government
ought to do its part. But after getting away and thinking and
reading, I realize that government can change laws, but they can’t
change hearts. It’s always easier to change a law, but as we see
even when they change the laws, nothing really changes around here.
So changing hearts takes longer; it’s harder work; it’s a tougher
task; it’s more daunting. But when you change a heart, it lasts for
eternity. So my thing now is to help change people’s hearts.
    There have been times when I get depressed,
and I feel like it’s taking too long to raise the money. I don’t
know if I blame it on God or on people or on circumstances. This is
probably the first time I’ve ever said how I feel about it, but I
sometimes think that if I were on the North Side and if I weren’t
black, I would have been on this roof a night at the most before
somebody would have rushed to my aid.
    But if I didn’t have hope, I would not still
be on this roof, that’s for sure. Not after 87 days up here. If I
didn’t believe that things could get better, and if I didn’t
believe that I could help them to be better, I would definitely be
on a beach in Miami or Jamaica or somewhere, enjoying myself. I
hope and pray that I never get to a point to where I have a sense
of hopelessness—because I think when you reach a sense of
hopelessness, the next step is destruction, is doom.
    A lot of times, people say they’re gonna do
things to make our community better, and they never end up doing
it. And as a consequence, people lose a lot of hope. They get
frustrated and disappointed and have broken dreams. That’s why I
want this place to be the Taj Mahal of community centers. I dream
about it all the time. I dream about what I want it to look like. I
dream about the programs we’ll have there. I dream about the people
that are gonna be there.
    I see a facility that is cutting-edge, that
is state-of-the-art and that is the prettiest building on the South
Side of Chicago. I see a community and economic development center
with entrepreneurial spaces for businesses to