Young Black Activists Emerge Amid Repeated Police Controversies in Chicago
Dawn Rhodes and Tony Briscoe
Chicago Tribune
An iconic image has emerged from street protests since Chicago released video of a white police officer gunning down black 17-year-old Laquan McDonald: a teenager standing nose to nose with a police officer, staring him down without flinching.
For the past four weeks, activists — overwhelmingly black and mostly in their teens and early 20s — have marched down the middle of busy streets during rush-hour traffic and lain down in intersections. They have rushed the Magnificent Mile on the year's busiest shopping day, locking arms and blocking store entrances. Thursday, on Christmas Eve, they vow to come back downtown to disrupt last-minute shopping.
But protests are just one facet of the young activists' work. They research and write reports on sociological issues, mapping out reforms to revitalize black communities. They organize voter registration drives and urge people in their neighborhoods to work within the system and help elect politicians who will further their causes.
Whatever praise and scorn they invite, some say the burgeoning unrest is a sign of a younger generation taking the baton from activists who fought racism and police violence throughout the 20th century.
They consider themselves to be more radical than the city's older community activists, many of whom became fixtures during the civil rights movement. While they don't have the prominence of the Rev. Jesse Jackson or the NAACP, they have made their voices heard.
"Not everything we do is exactly new, but we're bringing a fresh look to protesting," said Ja'Mal Green, 20, of Gresham. "We look at Martin Luther King's way of peaceful protesting, which is pretty much taken for granted, and Malcolm X's saying, 'By any means necessary,' and put those two together."
These activists are coming of age as police violence against black people ignites national outrage. In Chicago, a string of controversies — from an off-duty detective acquitted of manslaughter to a federal investigation into police practices — is bolstering their passionate efforts to battle racism, disenfranchisement, police brutality and political corruption.
The activists grew into their roles in different ways.
Camesha Jones said she was heavily involved in issues of intimate partner violence and violence against women as an undergrad. Now a graduate student studying social work at University of Chicago, she began organizing with Black Youth Project 100 in early 2014.
A University of Chicago political science professor launched Black Youth Project in 2004 as a research effort. BYP100 is the activist arm — its name referring to the number of activists who gathered in 2013 when George Zimmerman was acquitted of fatally shooting Trayvon Martin in Florida. That sparked organizing work focusing on racial and gender inequality, criminalization, voting rights and, more recently, policing in black communities.
"I don't know if I define myself as an activist," said Jones, 24. "I just really care about black people as a black person, and I'm willing to do whatever in my capacity to give back to my community and to advocate for my community."
Lamon Reccord, 16, of Chatham, said the shooting death of his friend and high school classmate Endia Martin in April 2014 motivated him to become more engaged. "It was an eye-opener … kids killing kids," he said.
Veronica Morris-Moore, 23, of South Shore, became interested in activism after studying the civil rights movement in high school. A friend turned her on to the group Fearless Leading by the Youth, or FLY.
Aislinn Sol, 35, of Edgewater, began mobilizing after the shooting death of Michael Brown, joining Black Lives Matter planning sessions and organizing a group from Chicago to demonstrate in Ferguson, Mo.
Plenty of other groups have emerged, including We Charge Genocide, Assata's Daughters, Project NIA, Lifted Voices, Chicago Alliance Against Racist and Political Oppression and the Chicago Light Brigade. Many recent public demonstrations and campaigns have involved a collaboration among the groups and also have drawn in other activists not aligned with a specific organization.
"Most of these organizations are fairly new, within the last year or two," Jones said. "Sometimes when it comes to certain events or things that are happening in the Chicago activist community, you run into a lot of the same people a lot of the time. That's how we've started building coalitions, by being in the same spaces, doing similar work, having friends who are in different groups."
Organizers said they spend hours doing policy research, discussions, leadership training and writing, in addition to public demonstrations. Some groups, like BYP100, require specific time commitments from members.
"To the public it might look like we just show up (at protests), but there's a lot that goes on behind the scenes," Jones said.
Once they do demonstrate, they are bold.
Reccord, a wiry teen with a shaggy, high-top afro, conceived his own brash act: the stare-down with Chicago police officers — the type usually witnessed at boxing weigh-ins.
"I thought of it right on the spot," Reccord said of the stare-downs. "The first faceoff was like 30 minutes long. Something just triggered in my head. Was I trying to provoke the officer? Not at all. It's not worth it. The (cornerstone) of the protest is to make sure they don't shoot another Laquan McDonald. ... That's the reason why I protest."
"This generation has a lot of heart, a lot of hope and we show no fear," said Green.
Younger protesters differ on how much their activism departs from that of previous generations, but Northwestern University professor Martha Biondi sees clear links between what is motivating today's organizers and the dynamics that touched off the civil rights movement of the 1960s.
"Since the Great Migration brought large numbers of African-Americans to cities in the North and West, immediately complaints and allegations of police brutality surfaced," said Biondi, who teaches African-American studies and history. "Beginning in the whole postwar period, issues of policing have been at the center of African-American advocacy."
Compounding all that today, Biondi said, is systemic deprivation of resources to black communities, increase of criminalization and lack of accountability within police departments. Indeed, a core demand of protesters is for the city to cut funding for policing and to reinvest in communities of color.
"I think young people are very sensitive to contradictions, they're very sensitive to the exposure of hypocrisy," Biondi said. "Maybe older people get jaded or they learn to expect it. I think young people have a really palpable sense of outrage, and they really have this energy and willingness to take to the streets."
More experienced activists say they see young people taking a page out of their books.
"It's something that is not new, it's natural," said Rose E. Joshua, president of the Chicago Southside Branch of the NAACP. "Just reading history, in the 60s, it was young people. The Freedom Riders were young people, and so it is a good thing that young people are out there and they are protesting."
Some seasoned activists say sharing common ideals is more crucial than any difference in tactics.
"We have the same goals," Jackson said. "If there's a difference in goals, then there's a problem. ... It's important that we encourage them, show them that we care and that we have a lot in common. It's not an age struggle. The struggle is what side of history you're on."
Still, younger activists see some significant differences between themselves and their predecessors. One is that rather than coalesce around a single group or leader, they favor decentralization and have worked through several organizations to stage demonstrations.
Another shift involves elevating the roles of women, as well as LGBT men and women.
During the civil rights movement, "(women) were doing work, but they weren't being uplifted, they weren't being centered, they weren't being publicly looked at as making a contribution," Jones said, noting that the most prominent civil rights leaders were men.
Other organizers agreed and said that presenting diverse voices helps everyone understand the various ways people experience discrimination.
"It's important for our movement to honestly reflect our entire humanity and where we are in our ability to identify ourselves," said Sol, chapter coordinator of Black Lives Matter: Chicago.
Regardless of how their approach differs from their elders', young organizers see their work making a difference.
FLY partnered with other organizations to form the Trauma Care Coalition and spent years demanding the University of Chicago build a Level 1 adult trauma center on the South Side. The effort was motivated by the shooting death of 18-year-old Damian Turner in 2010. Activists argued the lack of health facilities accessible to South Side residents contributed to his death.
The university capitulated and announced plans for the facility on the Hyde Park campus Thursday.
"It affirmed that I'm powerful, and our power does not have to be connected to any well-known institutions," Morris-Moore said. "My power is most valuable and threatening when it is connected with other young people who have the same experience that I have. Young, black people made it happen the same way that young, black people led this country to ending Jim Crow laws, to desegregating schools."
Demonstrators packed Chicago Police Board meetings for months, once standing on chairs and chanting until the board was forced to adjourn. Now activists are celebrating several Police Department shake-ups in short order after Chicago police Officer Jason Van Dyke was charged in the killing of McDonald: former Superintendent Garry McCarthy moving to fire Detective Dante Servin; McCarthy himself being fired by the mayor; and the chief of detectives and the head of the police oversight agency resigning their posts.
"They've really tried to reject the cynicism of recent periods, that they couldn't change anything," Biondi said. "They're insisting upon the power of their own voice. That's what a democracy needs. You need people to believe that — that their voice matters."
It's a role organizers take seriously.
"I never grew up hearing young black people fought for and won 'X,'" Morris-Moore said. "In my time, I never heard of 12 community people going on a hunger strike. I never heard young people organize around the firing of an officer. These young people, my peers, friends, comrades — we're not just fighting, but we're winning."
Chicago Tribune's Grace Wong contributed.
cdrhodes@tribpub.com
tbriscoe@tribpub.com
Twitter @rhodes_dawn
Twitter @_tonybriscoe
Chicago Tribune
An iconic image has emerged from street protests since Chicago released video of a white police officer gunning down black 17-year-old Laquan McDonald: a teenager standing nose to nose with a police officer, staring him down without flinching.
For the past four weeks, activists — overwhelmingly black and mostly in their teens and early 20s — have marched down the middle of busy streets during rush-hour traffic and lain down in intersections. They have rushed the Magnificent Mile on the year's busiest shopping day, locking arms and blocking store entrances. Thursday, on Christmas Eve, they vow to come back downtown to disrupt last-minute shopping.
But protests are just one facet of the young activists' work. They research and write reports on sociological issues, mapping out reforms to revitalize black communities. They organize voter registration drives and urge people in their neighborhoods to work within the system and help elect politicians who will further their causes.
Whatever praise and scorn they invite, some say the burgeoning unrest is a sign of a younger generation taking the baton from activists who fought racism and police violence throughout the 20th century.
They consider themselves to be more radical than the city's older community activists, many of whom became fixtures during the civil rights movement. While they don't have the prominence of the Rev. Jesse Jackson or the NAACP, they have made their voices heard.
"Not everything we do is exactly new, but we're bringing a fresh look to protesting," said Ja'Mal Green, 20, of Gresham. "We look at Martin Luther King's way of peaceful protesting, which is pretty much taken for granted, and Malcolm X's saying, 'By any means necessary,' and put those two together."
These activists are coming of age as police violence against black people ignites national outrage. In Chicago, a string of controversies — from an off-duty detective acquitted of manslaughter to a federal investigation into police practices — is bolstering their passionate efforts to battle racism, disenfranchisement, police brutality and political corruption.
The activists grew into their roles in different ways.
Camesha Jones said she was heavily involved in issues of intimate partner violence and violence against women as an undergrad. Now a graduate student studying social work at University of Chicago, she began organizing with Black Youth Project 100 in early 2014.
A University of Chicago political science professor launched Black Youth Project in 2004 as a research effort. BYP100 is the activist arm — its name referring to the number of activists who gathered in 2013 when George Zimmerman was acquitted of fatally shooting Trayvon Martin in Florida. That sparked organizing work focusing on racial and gender inequality, criminalization, voting rights and, more recently, policing in black communities.
"I don't know if I define myself as an activist," said Jones, 24. "I just really care about black people as a black person, and I'm willing to do whatever in my capacity to give back to my community and to advocate for my community."
Lamon Reccord, 16, of Chatham, said the shooting death of his friend and high school classmate Endia Martin in April 2014 motivated him to become more engaged. "It was an eye-opener … kids killing kids," he said.
Veronica Morris-Moore, 23, of South Shore, became interested in activism after studying the civil rights movement in high school. A friend turned her on to the group Fearless Leading by the Youth, or FLY.
Aislinn Sol, 35, of Edgewater, began mobilizing after the shooting death of Michael Brown, joining Black Lives Matter planning sessions and organizing a group from Chicago to demonstrate in Ferguson, Mo.
Plenty of other groups have emerged, including We Charge Genocide, Assata's Daughters, Project NIA, Lifted Voices, Chicago Alliance Against Racist and Political Oppression and the Chicago Light Brigade. Many recent public demonstrations and campaigns have involved a collaboration among the groups and also have drawn in other activists not aligned with a specific organization.
"Most of these organizations are fairly new, within the last year or two," Jones said. "Sometimes when it comes to certain events or things that are happening in the Chicago activist community, you run into a lot of the same people a lot of the time. That's how we've started building coalitions, by being in the same spaces, doing similar work, having friends who are in different groups."
Organizers said they spend hours doing policy research, discussions, leadership training and writing, in addition to public demonstrations. Some groups, like BYP100, require specific time commitments from members.
"To the public it might look like we just show up (at protests), but there's a lot that goes on behind the scenes," Jones said.
Once they do demonstrate, they are bold.
Reccord, a wiry teen with a shaggy, high-top afro, conceived his own brash act: the stare-down with Chicago police officers — the type usually witnessed at boxing weigh-ins.
"I thought of it right on the spot," Reccord said of the stare-downs. "The first faceoff was like 30 minutes long. Something just triggered in my head. Was I trying to provoke the officer? Not at all. It's not worth it. The (cornerstone) of the protest is to make sure they don't shoot another Laquan McDonald. ... That's the reason why I protest."
"This generation has a lot of heart, a lot of hope and we show no fear," said Green.
Younger protesters differ on how much their activism departs from that of previous generations, but Northwestern University professor Martha Biondi sees clear links between what is motivating today's organizers and the dynamics that touched off the civil rights movement of the 1960s.
"Since the Great Migration brought large numbers of African-Americans to cities in the North and West, immediately complaints and allegations of police brutality surfaced," said Biondi, who teaches African-American studies and history. "Beginning in the whole postwar period, issues of policing have been at the center of African-American advocacy."
Compounding all that today, Biondi said, is systemic deprivation of resources to black communities, increase of criminalization and lack of accountability within police departments. Indeed, a core demand of protesters is for the city to cut funding for policing and to reinvest in communities of color.
"I think young people are very sensitive to contradictions, they're very sensitive to the exposure of hypocrisy," Biondi said. "Maybe older people get jaded or they learn to expect it. I think young people have a really palpable sense of outrage, and they really have this energy and willingness to take to the streets."
More experienced activists say they see young people taking a page out of their books.
"It's something that is not new, it's natural," said Rose E. Joshua, president of the Chicago Southside Branch of the NAACP. "Just reading history, in the 60s, it was young people. The Freedom Riders were young people, and so it is a good thing that young people are out there and they are protesting."
Some seasoned activists say sharing common ideals is more crucial than any difference in tactics.
"We have the same goals," Jackson said. "If there's a difference in goals, then there's a problem. ... It's important that we encourage them, show them that we care and that we have a lot in common. It's not an age struggle. The struggle is what side of history you're on."
Still, younger activists see some significant differences between themselves and their predecessors. One is that rather than coalesce around a single group or leader, they favor decentralization and have worked through several organizations to stage demonstrations.
Another shift involves elevating the roles of women, as well as LGBT men and women.
During the civil rights movement, "(women) were doing work, but they weren't being uplifted, they weren't being centered, they weren't being publicly looked at as making a contribution," Jones said, noting that the most prominent civil rights leaders were men.
Other organizers agreed and said that presenting diverse voices helps everyone understand the various ways people experience discrimination.
"It's important for our movement to honestly reflect our entire humanity and where we are in our ability to identify ourselves," said Sol, chapter coordinator of Black Lives Matter: Chicago.
Regardless of how their approach differs from their elders', young organizers see their work making a difference.
FLY partnered with other organizations to form the Trauma Care Coalition and spent years demanding the University of Chicago build a Level 1 adult trauma center on the South Side. The effort was motivated by the shooting death of 18-year-old Damian Turner in 2010. Activists argued the lack of health facilities accessible to South Side residents contributed to his death.
The university capitulated and announced plans for the facility on the Hyde Park campus Thursday.
"It affirmed that I'm powerful, and our power does not have to be connected to any well-known institutions," Morris-Moore said. "My power is most valuable and threatening when it is connected with other young people who have the same experience that I have. Young, black people made it happen the same way that young, black people led this country to ending Jim Crow laws, to desegregating schools."
Demonstrators packed Chicago Police Board meetings for months, once standing on chairs and chanting until the board was forced to adjourn. Now activists are celebrating several Police Department shake-ups in short order after Chicago police Officer Jason Van Dyke was charged in the killing of McDonald: former Superintendent Garry McCarthy moving to fire Detective Dante Servin; McCarthy himself being fired by the mayor; and the chief of detectives and the head of the police oversight agency resigning their posts.
"They've really tried to reject the cynicism of recent periods, that they couldn't change anything," Biondi said. "They're insisting upon the power of their own voice. That's what a democracy needs. You need people to believe that — that their voice matters."
It's a role organizers take seriously.
"I never grew up hearing young black people fought for and won 'X,'" Morris-Moore said. "In my time, I never heard of 12 community people going on a hunger strike. I never heard young people organize around the firing of an officer. These young people, my peers, friends, comrades — we're not just fighting, but we're winning."
Chicago Tribune's Grace Wong contributed.
cdrhodes@tribpub.com
tbriscoe@tribpub.com
Twitter @rhodes_dawn
Twitter @_tonybriscoe
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