- Comfort, love, and keep them safe, O Lord.

For all children and youth are wounded and tearful.

We pray comfort, love, and keep them safe, O Lord.

My journey to St. Agatha actually came by way of being associate pastor, first in Arlington Heights, where I started out as a priest.

All right, good to go, just need to pull it off the printer.

Got to go all the way downstairs, but that's okay.

Then I got a phone call to ask if I would consider coming here to St. Agatha.

And I heard the voice of God, so I decided to answer the call to pastor, both to and with the people of St. Agatha.

You grilling for all the guys?

- Yeah, I'm grilling for the guys, making sure they eat today.

- Okay, good.

Obviously, it was kind of a culture shock to me in terms of entering into the black community, a white pastor.

All right, good?

Thanks.

(people chattering) How are you?

Good, good.

We're doing some work with North Lawndale, Little Village, so we're just trying to build on all that stuff we're doing.

I mean, that's the one thing we're trying to do in a number of different ways.

To engage all the youth in the community before something happens.

- [Crowd] Yes.

- That'll open a lot of doors and build bridges that been broken down over the years.

- I know, I know.

I know, I know.

Right after the George Floyd incident, besides the rioting in the community, we ended up with this also tension between the black and Hispanic community in North Lawndale and Little Village.

So we knew that tension had to be broken in some way.

We're all in this together.

So we organized a group of about 60, 70 mothers from North Lawndale to meet here, another 60, 70 mothers from Little Village to march from each of our communities and meet at the mural of Dr. King and Cesar Chavez.

It was a great way for us to come together.

I think it's kind of an initial spark of saying, "We need to find more ways to do this.

We need to find more ways to bring our two communities together."

(cars driving) Clearly these communities were set up, forced into separately black, Hispanic, separate from the white community in Chicago.

The segregation is deliberate.

When it's economically and racially driven to isolate and then politically to play communities off each other in terms of funding for resources.

The trauma in communities like North Lawndale, Little Village, from the gun violence, the gangs, to drugs, to addiction stuff, to domestic abuse.

Lots of different issues that affect people, and so it became clear that mental health is a huge issue in both communities.

So we'll be back in here guys.

Because of the city's withdrawal from involvement in mental health, they really left it to the individual communities and providers to do so.

- Sorry for our tardiness.

- [Larry] It's okay.

- There's a lot of construction going on.

- Good to see you, man.

We had a meeting between the Little Village youth council and St. Agatha.

So I'm gonna get started.

I'm gonna lead us in prayer.

- Heavenly father, we want to thank you Lord.

- We're looking at doing a joint gathering for a community expo to bring the black and Hispanic community together to focus on health and particularly mental health.

- Mental health in the black community.

We talked about the macho thing.

- The machismo.

- Yeah, we talked about all that.

Mental health is just a hard-- People just don't want to admit it.

They got that shame, that guilt thing.

You get help.

If you need help, it's no big.

- When people don't know where or how to start the conversation, it's where I start hiding the pain.

I start hiding it and hiding it and then boom, it blows up.

- Now you got a mass shooting or something.

- Yeah, a mass shooting, or just random stuff.

- And it brings out all other sorts of actions in people that are related to that and not who they really are.

- Right.

It's funny that you mentioned what you just said about we gotta found out who we are, 'cause I actually did go through some post-traumatic stress.

It took me two years to get back to who I was before that happened, because I went to a sunken place where I just looked angry all the time.

I was having dreams about that.

- Yeah.

Oh, wow.

Thanks for sharing that.

That's powerful.

- You know, since you guys were successful in opening that mental clinic, I think if we could show it off, that, Hey, the services are here.

- [Larry] Right.

- And everybody's welcome, nobody's gonna judge you, 'cause we want to mimic the same thing you just did.

- The Little Village is also very interested in doing what we did here in North Lawndale, which was to start a free mental health center.

In September of 2018, we opened The Encompassing Center on the West Side.

- I pass through it, I haven't gotten inside, but I do wanna go inside.

- Sure, absolutely.

- If I could go one day with you.

- [Larry] Yeah, yeah.

- Just to go visit.

- Good to see you, good to see you.

All right, you guys doing all right?

So Jennifer is the director here.

We'll talk a little bit about the mental health stuff going on in Little Village.

And so to be able to provide that resource would be a great gift to the Hispanic community.

And so we're gonna be working with them to help that, get that started.

- So, if we could hang out with you guys?

- [Larry] You wanna give us a tour?

- Yeah, okay.

- [Larry] That'd be great.

Tour time.

In a lot of ways, it'll create a continuum between the two communities as well if we both can provide these services.

- So, we do have a fun room for the kids.

- Okay.

All the craziness that has been imposed in both communities through enforcing racism, and decades of abuse through the real estate industry and the so-called war on drugs.

That's good, I love this acronym here.

False Evidence Appearing Real.

That's good.

That's good.

There's just so many people out there that want to divide us, that want to keep us apart, that want us to keep fighting for the same things, when, if we really came together, we could fight for what our communities need and would be even a greater power to push back and say, "This is what our families deserve, Other parts of the city have, and we want and we demand."

Thank you so much.

- Thank you guys, any time.

Any time, drop by.

- All right, all right.

- [Jennifer] 8:30 to 4:30.

- Can I hug?

- Ah, yes, I'm vaccinated.

- Cool, cool, cool, cool.

And the one gift that I think that I really have been given is just to meet so many great people along the way.

When somebody comes to me about some need that they have, it's like, go to them, or connect them, or here's a group I can reach out to.

I'm always looking for ways to bring people together.

(soft music) So, the Love Ride gives an opportunity to say, "This is what this community looks like."

And also a good way to bring representatives, some of the organizations to Little Village and North Lawndale, we had 250 plus riders.

We had people from outside the community who see the good things that are happening.

Some were just bike riders who just wanted to join us for the bike ride.

Father God, we thank you for gathering us together tonight.

We thank you for the spirit that draws us together, the spirit of community, spirit of family, to care and love each other, and that we want only the best for our community.

(people chattering) (soft music) (siren blaring) - There is great beauty in this community and riding through Little Village, North Lawndale, along the boulevards, and through the streets.

There's incredible architecture, beauty, in the community.

(bells ringing) (people cheering) The spirit of the riders, wherever we saw people, Little Village, North Lawndale, waving and yelling.

Just the people that were cheering us on from their porches or standing on the sidewalks.

(people cheering) (car horn honking) And in both communities, it was just really lovely and beautiful to see that and feel that and the spirit that I think really uplifted us all.

(people cheering) I found it particularly-- I'm sure I had a smile most of the time, except for the times that I was kind of wavering on the bike.

It's just one of a number of ways that I think this community, at its best, brings people together and raises that spirit that is there.

And we don't necessarily see it all the time.

(soft music) (people cheering)