大象传媒

鈥淓ventually, if you are not rooted in faith you get bought out, you get bitter, you get tired, and you give up.鈥�

On the South Side of Chicago, gang crime and gun deaths are a way of life. The streets around Auburn-Gresham are some of the poorest and most dangerous in the whole of America. Every week the local church priest Father Mike Pfleger uses social media to alert the world the numbers of predominantly young black men who are shot on the streets that surround his church.

Father Mike is as much an activist as he is priest. He believes the church has a moral obligation to rally against inequality and racism. Chicago鈥檚 black churches have long played a role in the civil rights movement, but today鈥檚 groups such as Black Lives Matter have adopted a more secular approach - organising through social media, rather than the pulpit. However Father Mike believes only movements ground in faith, in something greater than themselves, will succeed.

Image: Father Mike hangs the American flag upside down in protest to homicide rates in Chicago
Credit: Joshua Lott / Stringer