'I can't go outside'
by Rosalind Rossi and Art Golab
Eleven-year-old Maria Rivera is afraid to play in front of her own home. She spends much of her free time indoors, alone with her mom. Fear of the guns and gangs that plague her Little Village neighborhood has left Maria virtually a prisoner in her own home. In a Chicago Sun-Times survey taken in May, almost a third of fifth- through eighth-graders indicated that their everyday movements have been severely limited by the specter of gunfire.
The Chicago Sun Times, 8/6/2008