More than 50 people attended a recent protest in the neighborhood where guardrails, or “barricades,” blocking two roads, were erected on the grounds of a Joliet Housing Authority complex.
For the second time, Rev. Clint Wilburn, pastor of Mt. Moriah Baptist Church, led a march from his church on the city’s far northeast side to Englewood and Rosalind Avenues, where one of the barricades is located. A second barricade sits a few blocks to the east, at Rosalind and Fairmount Avenues.
The marchers gathered to protest the Joliet Housing Authority’s decision to keep the barriers. Housing officials say the barriers were put up about a year ago to help with a speeding problem and assist Joliet police.
The barricades closing off Englewood and Fairmount are directly across the street from the 174-unit Fairview public housing complex, and essentially separate two blocks of single-family homes in Lockport Township from the complex.
During the march, about a dozen children stood by the barricade at Rosalind and Fairmount and chanted, “We want the rails down.” Many of the 25 adults who marched passed out leaflets supporting the removal of the barricades.
About 10 people spoke at the rally, with some saying the barricades send a bad message to the area children and others saying residents have been denied justice because they were not consulted before the housing authority installed the barricades.
“There is not a single block in Joliet that would tolerate this,” said Rev. Ray Lescher, pastor of Sacred Heart Roman Catholic Church in Joliet.
Wilburn said a public meeting about the barricades will be held at 10 a.m. Aug. 21 at Mt. Moriah Baptist Church. Officials of the Joliet Housing Authority and the Joliet Police Department have been invited to that meeting, he said.
He also called upon Joseph Morrow, chairman of the Joliet Housing Authority Board, to meet with neighborhood residents within the next two weeks.
“He needs to answer to this community,” Wilburn said of Morrow. Wilburn, an African-American, said the barricades are a form of slavery.
Residents living in the complex and members of JACOB, the Joliet Area Church-based Organized Body, have called the barriers an attempt to “fence in” those in public housing.
Police officers say drug-related crime has decreased in the area since the barriers went up.
