Two days after a pair of boys were shot outside a Chicago Public Library branch in West Garfield Park, local leaders and anti-violence activists gathered on the library’s front steps to call for more investment in underserved neighborhoods as a way to reduce the city’s entrenched gun violence.

The boys, ages 12 and 16, were shot about 5:30 p.m. Tuesday outside the Legler Regional Branch library, 115 S. Pulaski Road, according to Chicago police. The circumstances of the shooting are unclear, but police said two suspects were taken into custody shortly after shots were fired.

The boys were taken to area hospitals, with the younger boy in fair condition and the older boy in good condition.

Michelle Smiley, a victim advocate with the Institute For Nonviolence Chicago, said she’s been in contact with the family of the younger boy, who remained hospitalized as of Thursday.

“The family is upset but they’re just praying for their loved one to safely heal quickly,” Smiley said. “It was disturbing, but God is in control and I’m praying for our people and our community and our city.”

The CPD’s Harrison District, which covers most of the East and West Garfield Park neighborhoods, typically experiences the most gun violence of any of the department’s 22 districts. Shootings are often the byproduct of gang disputes over drug turf. The West Side also sees the highest concentration of opioid-related deaths, according to the Cook County medical examiner’s office.

“The event, the shooting, that we experienced here a couple days ago is nothing new to Chicago. It is a continued expression of the disease that we continue to be afflicted with within our communities,” said Theodore Joseph Crawford, executive director of the Garfield Park Rite To Wellness Collaborative.

“The ills of our community are well-documented: drug use, poverty, institutional racism,” Crawford continued. “They are the things that create the environments in which young people have guns in their hands — who naturally are emotional because they are immature emotionally — are gonna respond in ways that oftentimes cause harm to themselves and to others.”

Alees Edwards was elected earlier this year as one of three members on the Harrison District Council, a three-person body that serves as a liaison between the district’s residents and police officers. The district councils, which are in each of the 22 districts, were created by city ordinance in 2021.

The Harrison District Council’s first meeting is scheduled for Wednesday at the Legler Regional Branch, and Edwards said Tuesday’s shooting will be among the issues to discuss.

“This will not be our normal. We don’t want to get used to these sorts of scenarios,” Edwards said. “This is not just their problem. This is all of our problem.”

scharles@chicagotribune.com