Chicago Mothers' Anti-Violence Rally Punctuates Weekend Plagued By Shootings

For more than 50 Chicago women who have lost children to violence rallied against the city's high crime rate in honor of Mother's Day Sunday.

The demonstration was aptly timed: over the weekend, shootings and other violent crimes killed five and wounded nearly 20 people, according to the Chicago Tribune.

Three of those homicides, all of which took place outside, are believed to be gang-related, while police believe a fourth fatality was associated with a home invasion, according to the Tribune. Nearly 20 people were wounded by gunfire over the weekend, almost exclusively on the city's South and West Sides.

Among the shooting victims were two teenage males -- one 14 and the other 15 -- who were both shot, but survived, in separate incidents over the weekend.

No one is in custody for any of these crimes, but police are investigating.

The women assembled Sunday say reports like these need to stop. The Mother's Day march is an annual tradition led Rev. Michael Pfleger of St. Sabina Parish, both to protest the ongoing violence that threatens youth in the city and to provide support for mothers who have recently lost children.

“Some mothers, this is their first Mother’s Day without their child and they don’t know what to do,” Pfleger told the Chicago Sun-Times. “So I let them know that we think about them, care about them, and I don’t want the pain of this day to override them being a mother.”

Despite an initiative by the Chicago Police Department to up police resources in some of the city's most dangerous areas, homicides in the city increased by 60 percent during the first three months of the year.

See footage from a similar rally led by Rev. Pfleger in March: