Academics of Color Organizing around Violence in Chicago

Over the last couple of days most of us have been overwhelmed by the influx of brutal images and video of the Derrion Albert beating.

What I’m not going to do today is provide links to the video or even pontificate about what this plague of violence does to black communities.

Honestly, one of the scariest things about social media (blogs, twitter, facebook, etc…) is that it fools individuals into thinking that they are taking tangible political action.

Don’t get me wrong, obviously written media has a [relatively] important place in any social movement organizing. As I’ve noted before, letters to the editor, campaigns on facebook and even “twitter trending topics,” have all been known to make a notable impact on both politicians and corporations.

But it never can, nor should it replace the type of real world social organizing that happens when a group of people are willing to step away from their computers, and start doing the work within their communities.

So today, I want to encourage organizations in Chicago and academics of color to attend a meeting being organized to address the systemic and deadly violence in our communities.

We are calling a meeting for Thursday, October 8^th at 6:00 p.m. at UIC. Again, the purpose of the meeting is to bring together academics of color to discuss this issue and figure out how we might lend ourselves and the resources we control to efforts to end this violence. We will invite several community organizers to share their views from the ground and we will offer some concrete steps about how we as a group can raise our voices and mobilize our communities to fight back against the violence that is now and has been epidemic in communities of color.

We should be clear that this is not an effort to start a new organization or to push a broader political agenda. The one goal of this meeting is to hear about the multiple dimensions of the violence in our city and to strategize about how we can help support the ongoing work of organizations focused on protecting and empowering young people of color. As scholars we may be able to bring some important insights to the table that can serve as part of the solution.

If you or somebody you know, is interested in participating in this important work. Please leave me a message in my comments box (with your email address), and I will send you more detailed information.

peace.

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