Lawmakers, community leaders convene for Racial Equity Summit
Journey for Justice Alliance aims to secure support for anti-racist legislation
August 21, 2024
The Journey for Justice Alliance gathered elected officials, community leaders and educators Sunday for the 2024 National Racial Equity Summit at Insight Hospital and Medical Center on the Near South Side.
The summit, held ahead of the Democratic National Convention, aims to build support for urban policy reform that is guided by the alliance’s Equity or Else quality-of-life campaign. The quality-of-life campaign is the organization’s platform that focuses on shaping legislation to address basic needs for people living in poverty and in marginalized communities.
For years, the Journey for Justice Alliance has advocated for anti-racist legislation in various urban locations with the support of their nationwide network of grassroots community organizations.
These efforts are seen on both the national and local level, including holding listening sessions, town halls and news conferences in Washington D.C. Jitu Brown, national director for the Journey for Justice Alliance who also lives on the West Side, said that the efforts have led to lawmakers supporting the group’s initiatives.
“As we built some significant grassroots support around this, people in Congress…said they would champion our resolution,” Brown said. “An idea is to pass a resolution at the federal level and then build a working group to turn that resolution into a new deal for racial justice.”
The 2024 Racial Equity Summit included two days of events, which began on Sunday with a luncheon for Black mayors and grassroots leaders. Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson cohosted the luncheon alongside U.S. Rep. Jamaal Bowman, D-N.Y.; U.S. Rep. Summer Lee, D-Pa.; National Education Association President Becky Pringle; American Federation of Teachers President Randi Weingarten; and Chicago Teachers Union President Stacy Davis Gates.
After the luncheon, the Journey for Justice Alliance hosted a visit to sustainable community schools through the Education Justice Study Tour. Among the invited guests for the summit was Pittsburgh Mayor Ed Gainey; Evansville, Indiana Mayor Stephanie Terry; Fort Wayne, Indiana Mayor Sharon Tucker; and Illinois Rep. Kam Buckner.
Through the Equity or Else quality-of-life campaign, the summit connected mayors with community organizers to learn about how to localize initiatives that address nine main areas listed in the platform. The alliance is focused on policy that improves education, creates affordable housing, community safety, economic mobility, environmental justice, food production, healthcare, immigrant rights, and youth issues.
Brown said the lack of resources and investment in marginalized communities is not due to a difference in work ethic between neighborhoods, but because legislators have strategically placed investment into white neighborhoods.
One of the education-related recommendations that the group is advocating for includes a demand for Vice President Harris and Governor Walz to make the Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief (ESSER) funds, a financial resource to support elementary and secondary schools during emergencies, a standard in the federal budget.
“We can’t go back to underfunding public education,” Brown said. “How can you claim that children are important when education is dramatically underfunded.”
An initiative that relates to challenges faced by people in Chicago’s West Side includes the privatization of public schools. Although the practice has been around for years, privatization schemes were usually restricted to students from low-income households and in low performing schools. Based on recent legislation, nearly all students, regardless of economic status, may benefit from public funds to attend private schools.
According to a report from EdChoice, a nonprofit that records school choice policies, and Georgetown University’s FutureEd, 14 states have seen legislation that advocates for “school choice” programs in 2023.
“School choice is an illusion,” Brown said. “First, school choice was born out of a response to Brown V. Board…and if I don’t have a choice of a great neighborhood school down the street from my house, then there is no choice…the fight in America has always been about equity.”
Equity in public schools doesn’t stop at the funding for marginalized students, Brown said. Many Black students, especially in Chicago’s West Side, do not have a teacher that looks like them and that is negatively impacting their opportunity for success, Brown said.
Research on the subject has shown a positive impact that Black teachers can have on Black students in the classroom for both behavior and academic performance. The lack of representation shows in data where fewer than 4% of CPS teachers are Black men, while the district has 36% total Black students.
With Chicago taking the nation’s attention for the DNC, one of the main objectives for the alliance is to secure more advocacy for the group’s efforts among a large audience. The best way to do that is through the residents in the communities most impacted by systemic racism, Brown said.
“People in our communities know what we need,” Brown said. “The issue is the political will to do it.”
This article was originally published by Austin Weekly News.