Chicago has always been a city of defense. The fight for civil rights can be seen through the work of luminaries such as Fred Hampton, the Black Panthers and Martin Luther King Jr.

Today, Southside native Zitu Brown is one of many who continue to call for fairness.

Brown is the National Director of the Journey for Justice Alliance, and his struggle for equity in the education system was instilled in the streets he grew up on.

Speaking to The Hill from his Chicago office decorated with posters chanting “Equality or Else” and “Water Is a Human Rights,” Brown talked about growing up in the Rosemoor neighborhood on Chicago’s Far South Side in the 1970s. did.

The son of a nurse and a steel worker, Brown benefited from the civil rights movement. He lived in a working-class black community, had educators like him and schools that encouraged cultural awareness.

“I remember growing up as a kid feeling so warm and protected, not afraid to walk, riding buses around town,” Brown said.

That doesn’t mean his community wasn’t without its problems. Brown’s neighborhood spanned two of the city’s most prominent rival gangs, the Gangster Disciples and Vice Lords.

Brown said he could have easily gotten involved in gangs, but had the support of family and friends.

“I learned compassion from my mother. I learned hard work from pop,” he said. “Watching him grind and finish, I could see how he felt every Friday when he would bring pizza or fresh shrimp.”

Brown had the worst time of his life. He ended up getting kicked out of his first college, leaving him “unsatisfied.” It forced him into the street life for a while, selling drugs from housing projects.

But music was also a big part of his life, and one day he and his hip-hop group, Hard Posse, were signed to a major Chicago record label. During my tenure with the record label, I attended a local school as a promotional tour.

“I was blown away,” Brown said. “I was talking to young people about why hip-hop needs to be positive and the energy it gives me…I was like, ‘This is what I have to do.’ was.

Brown left the record label to join the Kenwood Oakland Community Organization (KOCO), a South Side grassroots organization focused on providing resources to the community.

Brown said that leaving the music industry was “the best decision of my life.”

“Hip-hop captures my heart, but what captures my spirit and energizes my soul is actually contributing, working with people, and doing more than just saying who we are. It’s a thing,” he added.

Brown initiated KOCO’s youth development and youth leadership programs. As he worked with his students, the school began to take an interest. They wanted black men in particular to bring their experience and knowledge to the classroom.

And as he did, school inequality became very clear.

“You work with these young people and you realize that in this school there is only one computer for the whole class and no air conditioning,” he recalls. “After that, I also go to schools and other areas and cooperate with the student council. When you come in, the school is bright. The classrooms are small. They have acquired world languages. They have counselors. Every class has an assistant teacher.”

Brown began to realize that the discrepancies between schools were systemic. KOCO began organizing more and more, stopping the city from closing more than 20 of his schools, attended primarily by black and brown students, at city hall to increase job opportunities for young people. I sat down.

The goal is to create an equitable education system regardless of student race, and Journey for Justice Alliance was founded in 2012.

The Alliance is focused on establishing a ‘Sustainable Community School Village’.

A sustainable community school is rooted in the principle that everyone in the school community should be informed of what an engaging, relevant and rigorous curriculum looks like.

Brown said the Journey for Justice Alliance is focused on wraparound support.

“For casual listeners, wraparound support can be a speech therapist or a school nurse. It’s very true, but wraparound support simply removes learning barriers,” he explained. . “The debate team and the African American History Club are all-encompassing supports.

Activists in other cities began asking questions as well. Defenders from Detroit, Newark, New Jersey, New York City, Baltimore, Philadelphia, Boston, Washington, DC, and Oakland, California soon joined Brown’s mission.

Today, the Journey for Justice Alliance is active in more than 38 cities across the country. Its platform will support what they call racial justice and educational equity, including a moratorium on school privatization, building 25,000 sustainable community schools by 2025, and ending a zero-tolerance policy in public education. I want a solid policy.

“As we grew up, we said, ‘Don’t get caught up in what we disagree with,'” Brown said. I have to start.”

More than that, Brown believes the Alliance believes that “those closest to pain must be closest to power.”

“One thing we’ve noticed is that no one comes to us and says, ‘What can we do to make this world better?’ ” he said.

The Alliance decided to ask itself that very question. Over the course of several months, across the country he held more than 200 “listening projects” to discuss how racism affects our quality of life and what our vision for a better country is. I asked if

Part of these visions included a community college that provides training and career placements for young people in green technology. This allows students to follow a career path in trade after graduating from high school, graduating from college.

Other responses focused on the ability to allocate resources to doulas outside of the school environment and health care, in particular. Doulas are not health care professionals, but are coaches or companions for pregnant women. Doulas are often a popular form of support in communities of color.

The answers are recorded in a report that Brown and other members of the Alliance will file with the Capitol this month.

According to Brown, the Alliance’s plans include U.S. Representative Jamal Bowman (DN.Y.), Illinois Democratic Rep. Chui Garcia, Rep. Danny Davis, Rep. Bobby Rush, and Sen. Chris Van Hollen. (Democrat-Maryland) has already received support from politicians such as Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.)

Brown said he is confident that with their support, the Journey for Justice Alliance can bring about policy change in communities across the country.

“We have to raise the standards. I think there are some people in parliament and definitely some locals who want to raise the standards now,” he said. . “If raising that bar is supported and supported by movement, you can win.”