If You Close Black People Will Suffer Here Walgreens Is Shutting Down In the Hood In Chicago

Añadido: 2026-05-09

[00:00:01]What's going on? Welcome to Agent Coulson. So, I've one here by Antoine Daniels.

[00:00:07]And if you close, black people with selfie here, so Walgreens is shutting down in the hoods of Chicago. So, let's get right into this video. Elected officials and community leaders are calling for the pharmacy chain Walgreens to reverse its decision to close a location in the Chatham neighborhood on the city's South Side.

[00:00:27]>> Speakers say that this closure will greatly disrupt a convenient location for seniors to access their meds.

[00:00:33]Angelica Sanchez is live with their message. Angelica.

[00:00:38]Pat and Dina, elected leaders say that thousands of people in this neighborhood rely on this Walgreens location. They are calling for Walgreens to instead do a redesign of the store, not a shutdown.

[00:00:51]Now, speakers today say that the Walgreens at 8628 South Cottage Grove has long served this portion of the Chatham neighborhood for essential goods and has become a convenient stop for seniors to access their medications. In a statement to WGN, Walgreens says in part that they are shutting down this location because it's experienced higher levels of theft and violent incidents.

[00:01:10]They say safety challenges have made it difficult to maintain a secure environment. They say this was not an easy decision. Those gathered argue other locations with similar theft problems were offered a redesign, not a shutdown.

[00:01:24]When 12th and State Street had loss prevention, they redesigned.

[00:01:27]Again, this neighborhood is not broke.

[00:01:30]These people behind us have good jobs, retirees, and they want a quality medicine option in their neighborhood.

[00:01:40]Now, Walgreens says that the shutdown is scheduled for June 4th. Prescriptions will be transferred to nearby locations.

[00:01:46]Patients of this location, however, will be eligible for home delivery for at least 90 days while this all unfolds.

[00:01:55]Now, meantime, towards the end of this press conference, one of the aldermen here says that they do plan to reintroduce an ordinance where corporations that get TIF money for development and later leave the neighborhood will have to pay or be held accountable to say to pay some form of TIF receipt for those funds. So, wait a minute. Wait a minute. You telling me that the people in the neighborhood are stealing? I mean, stealing them blind.

[00:02:21]There's no accountability on the theft that's happening inside of the inside of the neighborhood. They're having safety concerns. Meaning that there's not only theft, but there's violence, violent crime. They can't protect their employees. Which then leaves the company liable if anything was to ever happen to any of their employees. This Walgreens is notoriously, now, I'm quoting somebody that actually lives over by this Walgreens. I communicated with me that actually sent me this story. This Walgreens notoriously is in a dangerous neighborhood. And so, instead of fixing the problem, instead of holding people accountable, instead of making sure that these people are prosecuted and arrested, instead of making sure that you create legislation and have harsher penalties on the people that create this environment that ultimately force Walgreens to close, instead, they think that Walgreens is supposed to spend more money on a redesign?

[00:03:17]Where they do that at?

[00:03:19]What What is going on in here?

[00:03:22]So, Walgreens, and the part that they not going to tell you is that it's not profitable. It's not profitable for them to be sitting over there in that neighborhood suffering and and spending a bunch of money. And so, they supposed to spend hundreds of thousands, if not millions of dollars reinvesting because they not concerned about their bottom line, they not concerned about their business, they not concerned about nothing. Only thing they care about is is it convenient for us to do what we want to do despite the fact that you have to suffer with the consequences of what we've created inside of our neighborhood and our culture.

[00:03:57]Yep, and I don't blame Walgreens. Where they're like, "Damn, we're fed up.

[00:04:05]We're We're being robbed. We're being beaten.

[00:04:10]I mean, uh if I gone to some of the Walgreens when I was back home in the states, yeah, half the stuff is locked up. I'm like, "What the hell is this crap?" You know, some of the Walgreens uh in the neighborhoods, and I'm just like, "Holy moly."

[00:04:27]Yeah.

[00:04:28]And you expect them to stay profitable?

[00:04:31]Well, they're not going to do it if they have to worry about safety issues.

[00:04:36]And yeah.

[00:04:38]And then keep investing this money? No, they just said, "Screw this. We're out of here." The level of entitlement is insane. The level of of ignorance is insane. And they actually are staging protests. Now, we all know that these protests don't mean anything because protests don't mean anything in general.

[00:04:57]They just don't. It's 2026, and so the same way that you can vote because, remember, there's different companies in the culture that black people have decided that they wanted to boycott long term. Jamal Bryant staged a boycott of Targets and other companies all across the United States of America when they no longer wanted to align with or or more importantly, that actually aligned with what the Trump administration was requiring as far as no longer discriminating using diversity, equity, and inclusion as an opportunity to do so. And so, you can stage and say, "Yo, we want to shut it down. We don't want to We don't want to contribute our money and none of that type of stuff." But, if a company decides that they want to shut down a location because it's no longer profitable, conducive, and it places them at a liability in order to keep that open.

[00:05:50]Then all of a sudden we have to protest to keep them open.

[00:05:54]Not fix it. Not say, "Hey, listen. We going to hold these people accountable.

[00:05:59]We need to do a neighborhood watch. We need We need to make sure that things is not not planned out." These liberal policies from these liberal cities that allow for people to run in here and steal all of this stuff out of these places is not good for the company's bottom line, either. And so now y'all starting to get a food desert, you get a pharmacy desert, you get a convenience desert, you get all of these things.

[00:06:19]You're going to get more boarded up buildings, and this is what I keep telling y'all with all of these liberal cities. You get more boarded up buildings and less opportunity, less jobs, less profitability, a a lower tax base. And then they going to tax everybody to death over there in Chicago. And you think that they just supposed to spend more money as a redesign.

[00:06:40]Nah. That's not how business works, and people need to wake up and smell the roses. Y'all Y'all literally are are shooting yourselves in the foot. Live in Chatham this morning, Angelica Sanchez, WGN News.

[00:06:52]On the South Side, people showed up to push back against a Walgreens closing.

[00:06:56]The doors are set to close next month.

[00:06:58]Walgreens says it's due to safety issues, but it will leave thousands without nearby access to life-saving medication. Tia Ewing has more.

[00:07:07]Everybody say, "Walgreens, do right by us." Walgreens, do right by us.

[00:07:11]Community members, leaders, and families rallied saying the loss of this Walgreens at 86th and Cottage Grove won't just close a store, it will take away a critical lifeline. We're not here to beg Walgreens to stay. We are saying that their decision is the wrong decision.

[00:07:27]And in my opinion, it should be considered a first-degree corporate crime. Yes. Because the amount of people that will be hurt by this, the amount of elders that will not have access to a health care is evil.

[00:07:39]>> [snorts] >> Walgreens Well, do something about the neighborhood.

[00:07:43]Don't just tell Walgreens, "Oh, you need to stay open while we get robbed, while we get stuff stolen, while we got to worry about safety of the employees, and you're going to just sit there."

[00:07:56]How about do something, or else all these companies are going to go. I don't blame these companies for like, "Nope, we want to get out of the hood."

[00:08:07]Cuz it ain't safe at all.

[00:08:09]>> Walgreens says the store is closing due to safety concerns, including theft and violence, but residents say that doesn't match what they see day-to-day.

[00:08:16]>> The lie that they're telling us is it's a a health or a loss prevention issue.

[00:08:22]When 12th and State Street had loss prevention, they redesigned. Again, this neighborhood is not broke.

[00:08:28]>> The nearest pharmacy will soon be more than a mile away, a distance residents say is especially hard for seniors. It has been a lifeline for many. It has been a place where seniors walk, sometimes slowly, sometimes with assistance, but with dignity, to pick up their medications that keep them alive.

[00:08:49]Not across town, not two bus rides away, right here in their community.

[00:08:56]>> For families managing serious health conditions, consistency is critical. 29 years my husband has dealt with kidney issues. Two time transplant, I'm one of the I donated the second one. Walgreens has been a staple in our lives, where we come for medication. Being a transplant recipient, that means he's on lifelong medication. Something we don't have time to search for, to find out where can we get what he needs.

[00:09:22]>> Over a year ago, Walgreens shuttered locations in Bronzeville, Little Village, South Chicago, and South Shore.

[00:09:28]Another specialty pharmacy is set to close on 71st Street in the coming weeks. Residents say this shows there's a pattern. They closed 63rd and King Drive.

[00:09:38]They closed 63rd and Halsted. They closed 47th and Ashland. They closed 63rd and Kedzie. to pick up prescriptions. It takes people 45 to Listen. Listen.

[00:09:48]I promise you. I promise you if it was profitable for them to keep the store open, that's exactly what they would do. They would not close the stores. They would not prevent it from being able to be profitable. Anything that that goes into the bottom line also benefits the community and it benefits the company.

[00:10:10]But people are not looking at that. They don't care about it from a business perspective. They only care about what serves them.

[00:10:16]Our prescriptions will be automatically transferred after the store closes June 4th to a location about 1.3 miles away on East 87th Street. And patients will be eligible for 90 days of free delivery. But not everyone has reliable transportation. My aunt lives four blocks away from this Walgreens. She just recently got out the hospital to have emergency surgery. She doesn't have it. She doesn't have transportation. She doesn't have a way to get to the Walgreens on Stony Island unless I take off of work because her So, wait a minute. So, whose fault is that? Is that Walgreens' fault or is that your fault?

[00:10:57]Is that her fault? Is that the family's fault? Is that the neighborhood's fault?

[00:11:00]The culture? The community? Whose fault is that?

[00:11:03]This is crazy. How? Her only child lives in Michigan.

[00:11:09]So, this place isn't just a a a store on this corner. For some, the impact is personal and immediate. I have a 76 and a half-year-old mother that had a lung transplant.

[00:11:23]And the medications that she take compromise her immune system.

[00:11:28]So, she can't be around people.

[00:11:30]I'm holding a bag with medicine that my mother takes every single day for the rest of her life.

[00:11:39]Every pill bottle in here has a Walgreens cap on it.

[00:11:42]>> LA lost residents say it goes beyond convenient and directly affects access to care.

[00:11:47]>> I saw a Walgreens pharmacy and my wife was like that's a small Walgreens. I said no, that's just a pharmacy. That's all we asking for. The closure is set to happen June 4th. Walgreens says employees won't lose their jobs. They have been offered positions at other locations. T Let me know what y'all think inside of the comments. Make sure y'all tap into the Patreon. Link is in the description. T Family, 40% off your first order, 20% off a life. I love y'all. I appreciate you. These people are crazy.

[00:12:15]Yep, and that's just the thing. Um, yeah, if the if the thing could stay profitable, if the stores could stay in business, yeah, it would work out best for the community, but no.

[00:12:27]There There's just so much craziness and theft and yeah, in the hoods. And yeah, it sucks for people can't get their medicine, but you know, for crying out loud, then do something. You guys got to think of the business aspect, but again, people don't think about that. They're like, oh, it's convenient. Oh, we need the service, but oh well.

[00:12:50]All right, so shout out to Antoine Daniels. If any of you enjoyed any of his content, please give me the HKO special help that came out. Hit the like, subscribe, and comment. And wherever you are, stay safe and I'll see you in my next video.