Chicago nonprofit Strides for Peace will host its seventh annual Race Against Gun Violence June 6 in Grant Park.
Those who participate in the 8k, 5k, 2-mile walk or Tots for Peace Sprint will do so in an effort to reduce gun violence in Chicago — an issue that has long affected the city’s West Side.
From 2010 to 2020, the Chicago Police Department’s 15th District in Austin has seen its per-capita murder rate increase 274%, Crain’s Chicago Business reported.
In 2023, 226 people in Austin were victims of shootings, the most of any Chicago neighborhood, according to the city’s violence reduction dashboard. North Lawndale saw 166 shootings last year, the next highest number of any Chicago neighborhood.
“The violence itself becomes so all-encompassing as the story that it’s easy to miss all of this other work that’s going on around the community,” said Joel Hamernick, executive director of Strides for Peace.
For this year’s Race Against Gun Violence, Strides for Peace is working with nearly 80 community partners and nonprofits that help build a safer Chicago. These include organizations located on Chicago’s West Side, like The BASE Chicago, Boxing Out Negativity, BUILD, Christ the King Jesuit College Preparatory School, Hustle Mommies, MothersOnAMission28, and Project Impact 180.
Participants can register for Race Against Gun Violence for $45 or sign up to run and raise funds for a specific organization. The registration fees and sponsors cover the cost of putting on the event so organizations take home all of their donations, which, in past years, have ranged from $500 to $30,000, Hamernick said.
“Expanding your network for the ability to raise dollars is something that’s both extremely difficult and an incredible opportunity when you have an event like this that you can participate in and that you can build year-over-year,” said Hamernick, who ran nonprofit organizations on Chicago’s south side for over 20 years.
The beginning and future of Race Against Gun Violence
Maggie Baczkowski founded Strides for Peace in 2014. Though Baczkowski worked in Chicago real estate, she was moved to start the nonprofit after the murder of Blair Holt in 2007. Holt, a 16-year-old, was fatally shot on a CTA bus by a man firing at a rival gang member, according to ABC7 Chicago.
“What she wanted to do was to create a way for the corporate community to be more engaged directly with grassroots gun violence prevention organizations,” Hamernick said. He added that Baczkowski spent the nonprofit’s initial years getting to know local organizations and people who started programs in the wake of trauma, loss and other community challenges.
In 2018, Strides for Peace’s first Race Against Gun Violence brought together civic, corporate and grassroots partners to raise awareness against gun violence.
Last year, 895 participants ran or walked in races, with around 70% of them registering in the last two weeks. Hamernick said 830 people have already registered for this year’s race, and the organization is also on track to break the record for the most money the race has raised, which was set last year at $107,500.
“We hope that those numbers are going to go up quite a bit this year,” Hamernick said of the donations that organizations receive. “We spent a lot of time doing technical assistance and professional development to help these organizations really build their networks.”
Strides for Peace offers capacity building support programming throughout the year to increase the organizations’ effectiveness and sustainability. This programming consists of one-on-one meetings with organization leaders to strengthen internal operations like record keeping and metric reporting.
“My goal is to get to the point where we have at least fifty organizations raising at least $15,000 each per year,” Hamernick said.
The Race Against Gun Violence will start June 6 at 6 p.m. in Grant Park. Sign up at https://www.stridesforpeace.org/.