On Thursday, Jitu Brown, national director for Journey for Justice Alliance (J4J), queried people at the nation’s capital with questions like: “Raise your hand if you’ve ever experienced a slumlord. Raise your hand if you live in a neighborhood where you don’t have a decent hospital. Raise your hand if you’ve ever witnessed or experienced police brutality. Raise your hand if you live in a neighborhood where the grocery store functions as the liquor store.” Voices raised in affirmation with each question Brown posed.
The national network of dozens of intergenerational, grassroots community organizations traveled to Washington from Chicago last week on behalf of the campaign Equity or Else Quality of Life agenda, a platform centered on addressing basic needs for those in poverty and/or marginalized communities through policy initiatives.
J4J kick-started the coalition in 2012 (and launched the campaign in 2021) with a focus on equity in education. The organization then reached out to other leaders and organizers from different quality-of-life areas (housing, health care, environment/climate justice, youth investment and food insecurity) to share how inequity affects these areas and the grassroots solutions they have organized.
By sharing strategies and tactics among one another, the alliance is stronger in numbers and range and cooperation with more allies on the equity front to move the needle when it comes to real change in more communities.
“We understand that those closest to the pain must be closest to the power,” Brown said. “As long as people that are not impacted by an issue get to say what the remedy to that issue is, then there’s no clarity on what’s causing the issue in the first place. It’s just somebody’s opinion.”
After holding hundreds of in-person and virtual listening projects, town halls and conversations around the country the past 18 months with leaders who represent their communities to ask them, “How has racism impacted your quality of life? And what’s your vision for a world where this functions correctly?” the alliance found that there is a fundamental belief that America has been diligent in the rhetoric of racial justice, but negligent in making a commitment to racial justice.
The result of their effort is condensed in the 16-page report, where areas of public safety, youth, economics and food production and delivery are touched upon. Demands fall within all of the aforementioned areas of concern, including:
• End lead and other harmful chemicals in drinking water through federal infrastructure investment and penalties for municipalities that continue these practices;
• Provide federal and state support for the training of culturally responsive doulas from the communities they serve, and for their services to mothers;
• Enact federal rent-control laws as an anti-gentrification strategy, making state bans on rent control illegal;
• Restore the right to vote to those currently and formerly incarcerated, with access to voting/placing ballot boxes in all prisons/jails;
• End zero tolerance discipline practices in schools;
• Institute youth decision-making authority on school boards and other governance bodies;
• Provide federal support for the creation of more Black-owned banks;
• Institute labs and grants in schools to support sustainable food practices in communities (school-based gardens, etc.), among other items.
“The foundation of any nation are the institutions that lay the structure for people’s development,” Brown said. “If you want to sabotage the community, you kill its basic quality of life institutions. As we understand it, the only solution to that is self-determination. Because the common denominator that we have around the country is that we live in communities that we don’t control. We live in communities where the basic quality of life institutions are directed by someone else. We say that nobody can love us better than us. And that’s why the Quality of Life Agenda.”
The Journey for Justice Alliance was joined by members of nationwide nonprofits to speak on the Quality of Life Agenda items and deliver the report to Congress following a news conference Thursday. U.S. Reps. Jamaal Bowman, D-N.Y., and Jesús “Chuy” García, a Chicago Democrat, and American Federation of Teachers Secretary-Treasurer Fedrick Ingram endorsed the plan.
“We have so much harm to repair that are the seeds of the beginning of our nation,” Bowman said. “What I continue to see is we are way too comfortable with the suffering and death of some people, but not others. We, the United States Congress, the most powerful body in the world, are way too comfortable with the death of Black and brown people, with the suffering of Black and brown people, with the suffering and death of poor people.
“We debate, negotiate and write legislation and pass legislation every single day that leaves some people out of the American Dream. Every day we do this and we justify it to ourselves as if it is OK. There are places all over this country where people are suffering and dying every single day, preventable deaths, if only our nation and our country cared enough about who they are as people, who they are as human, and overall quality of life. We need a new America that centers life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness for everyone and not just some and centers our collective humanity.”
García agreed.
“Advancing equity in our society requires systemic solutions like those suggested by the coalition, not the piecemeal efforts we’ve seen fail time and time again,” he said. “We need long-term solutions and not Band-Aids and lip service. This includes ensuring that everyone in Chicagoland and across the country receives a high-quality education in safe, well-equipped buildings with essential wraparound support. To make that happen, we got to finally fund schools equitably. That doesn’t mean all schools get the same funding. Instead, schools with the greater need must get greater funding. That is equity.
“Quality of life for our community also means the right to clean air and clean water without any caveats. Quality of life means the right to live in safe communities, free from gun violence and discriminatory policing practices that target Black, Latino and Indigenous communities. I’m thankful to the Equity or Else campaign for engaging with impacted communities and bringing solutions from those communities to the forefront.”
Ald. Byron Sigcho-Lopez, 25th, attended the Journey for Justice’s Quality of Life Festival in Washington.
“You name it, the platform speaks to the issue that we’ve seen on the ground,” Sigcho-Lopez said. “We have heard from the people, the residents, the constituents that we talked to over the years, that the time to act is now and that’s what this is, an urgent call to do this — doing the detangle we see across the country and in our community.”
“We don’t want cookie-cutter policies for different communities,” said Shannon Bennett, executive director of the Kenwood-Oakland Community Organization (KOCO). “I think this report can serve as a template in our communities where these things have been an issue for a long, long time. We want to make sure that our federal representatives not only acknowledge the issue, but work with us on solutions that are at a very local level.”
Bennett traveled with KOCO members and Chicagoland nonprofit allies to attend the weekend festival.
“We’re putting people on notice that we can’t be taken for granted,” he said. “This mobilization is a mobilization of strength and not being pulled together around a particular party or particular elected official. We’re doing this around the needs of our people to be seen and heard whose issues are constantly put on the back burner. This is a warning shot ... a collective of willingness to say: Let’s come together with our power.”
“We want self-determination in our communities,” Brown said. “We want the resources that are owed to our communities. What happens when we bring these people together like we’re doing now is we are putting our people in front of each other so they can talk to people who have won, because those victories are not anomalies. They’re microcosms of what’s possible.”
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The Equity or Else coalition includes: The Alliance for Educational Justice, The Center for Popular Democracy, National Alliance Against Racist & Political Repression, Dignity in Schools Campaign, American Federation of Teachers, National Education Association, Appetite for Change, Clean Water Action, White Coats for Black Lives, National Nurses United and Black Lives Matter at School. For more information go to www.standing4equity.org . For more information go to www.j4jalliance.com .
