Highland Park’s 2022 4th of July parade kicked off on a beautiful morning. But it wasn’t long before a shooter opened fire on the festivities. The mass shooting resulted in seven deaths and left 48 other parade goers injured. A year later, the community is coming together to process. Mayor Nancy Rotering has become an outspoken advocate for gun control, including the assault weapons ban that has since passed in Illinois. 

Rotering said young people in Highland Park expected a mass shooting in their community. “The adults were like, ‘How could this ever happen in Highland Park?’ but the kids said ‘We expected this to happen, and we expected it to happen in school,’” she said. Now, she wants to return to a time when gun violence was not so normalized. 

In this episode, we reflect on the Highland Park shooting a year later with WBEZ statehouse reporter Alex Degman.