By La Voz Staff
Adrian Rodriguez, an outreach worker with the Puerto Rican Cultural Center, is working to bring peace to the same streets that his gang-involved family once claimed as their territory. Now he’s using those same neighborhood connections to broker peace and build community. He and his team, among their other activities, keep vigil at the high school, making connections with kids to discourage them from joining gangs. We watch as Adrian breaks up an escalating fight, advocates with Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson at a street festival, and helps young men channel their aggression by giving them formal training at a boxing facility. But for all his efforts, a late-summer walk through Humboldt Park reveals to Adrian that his neighborhood’s challenges run deeper than he had ever imagined.
