Nearly 1,000 Chicago Teens Descend on Downtown for My Block, My Hood, My City's 'Downtown Day'

Roughly 1,000 kids packed into Harris Theater on Saturday morning, not for a show but for a pep talk before boarding buses to the Field Museum, Shedd Aquarium and Navy Pier. My Block, My Hood, My City founder Jahmal Cole had them repeat a line back to him: Downtown belongs to everybody.

The call-and-response opened the fourth annual Downtown Day, a field trip organized by Cole's nonprofit alongside the Chicago Loop Alliance that buses children and teenagers from the South and West sides into the city center for a day most of them rarely get on their own. Many of the kids have lived in Chicago their whole lives but had never set foot on the Riverwalk or inside the Field Museum until Saturday.

"I've done Downtown Day for two years now, and now I come Downtown way more because of it," said James Swanigan, 16, who joined the event's youth committee as a volunteer this year. "I hadn't been to the Riverwalk before and now it's one of my favorite spots."

Groups split off to hit different corners of downtown, including the museum campus and Navy Pier, where kids ate pizza between stops. Each teen participant received a $50 prepaid debit card to spend as they moved through the day. Chaperone Lakila Henigan said the value of the outing was in giving kids access to experiences they don't usually get close to home.

"I love to see them doing things they normally don't get to do in the inner city sometimes," Henigan said.

Organizers framed the event as a direct answer to a summer marked by so-called "teen takeovers," large unplanned gatherings of young people that have turned violent or chaotic in several parts of the city. Over Memorial Day weekend, five Chicago police officers were struck by a teen driver while breaking up a gathering on the Near West Side. A separate takeover in Hyde Park led to three shootings and 53 arrests. A July 4th gathering in Austin ended with seven people shot, prompting West Side residents to call for an "all hands on deck" response. Those incidents have reignited a debate over youth curfews that dominated City Council discussion last year before Mayor Brandon Johnson vetoed a curfew measure.

Del'Reona Cox, another youth committee volunteer, said the takeovers have made her wary of coming downtown at all this summer.

"I don't come down here much anymore, especially when there's a party," Cox said. "If it's a party or something, I'm not going. But Downtown Day can bring more people to come out their shell and be open to experiencing new things, instead of having to worry about if wherever you're at is going to get shot up."

Swanigan drew a distinction between the two kinds of gatherings.

"When kids do a takeover, it's not organized," he said. "I feel like Downtown Day is organized and structured, and people know what they're doing. It doesn't seem like a messy group of teens going Downtown and just doing stuff. This is opening a lot of our eyes to realizing that Downtown isn't just corporate and for businesspeople."

Cole told NBC Chicago the event was planned in large part by the teenagers themselves, not adults, and pointed to that as proof of what young people can do when given structure and support.

"If you show kids better they can do better they always rise to the occasion," Cole said. "I know we call them takeovers, but this is a perfect example, the teenagers planned this we didn't plan it, they planned it."

He called the event a form of "primary prevention work," aimed at widening what kids see as possible for themselves before problems start rather than reacting after they happen.

Youth participants described the day in simpler terms. Fredreuonna Warren said it felt good "to see everybody come together to have a good time." Kendrick Daughtery, on his first trip into the city center, said he just wanted to see "what it's like to be in the city." Jayce Nicks said he was out with friends having a great time and called the program one he loves.

Cole said the event cost $250,000 to put on this year and that he intends to keep running it as often as the organization can manage, though he said the nonprofit needs more funding and more programming like it to keep pace with demand.

"This event cost $250,000 but we're going to do it as much as we can, like, it's really not about the money, but showing kids better, so they can do better, and that takes investments," he said.

As the buses pulled away from Harris Theater Saturday, Cole left the crowd with a final message before they headed toward the lakefront.

"You guys are the future of our city, and this belongs to you," he said. "Chicago belongs to everybody."

My Block, My Hood, My City has run Downtown Day every summer since 2022. Cole did not say when next year's event would take place, but said the organization plans to keep pursuing funding to expand it beyond a single day.