Anti-violence group in Englewood persists despite killings

There are days when Charles McKenzie wants to give up.

After his 1-month-old niece was shot in the head . Or when his friend was shot to death in the South Side neighborhood where they both grew up. Hours after celebrating his birthday earlier this summer, when he got the call that gunfire had killed someone else he considered family.

But he persists in hopes that one day, change will stick.

“I gotta keep running, keep running, keep running,” McKenzie said. “Until I can’t run no more.”

McKenzie, 36, is the founder of Englewood First Responders, a nonprofit organization primarily composed of at-risk youth and young adults that for six years now has worked to prevent and clamp down on violence in Englewood and other areas across the city — even as it faces the heartbreak of that violen