The News School Holds Youth Empowerment Forum

What Was a Youth Empowerment Forum

Last week, on Thursday Oct 27, The News School hold a sharp-witted village girl forum. This eventuality was located in a North Lawndale area during St. Agatha’s Catholic Church, 3151 W Douglas Blvd. It was giveaway and open to a public, so anyone was means to come and join in during a hours it was held, from 5:00PM to 7:00PM. The forum was also live streamed on many platforms including Facebook, YouTube, and Roku by YouTV1. Free food and drinks were supposing to all who attended. In addition, dual girl workers from The News School, Devonte Matthews and Kenneth Mazerat, were a moderators for a forum. All of a other girl workers from The News School were operative behind a scenes including camera work, moderating a live streams, nod and signing people in, interviewing, and portion food.

The goal of this forum was to start a discourse about tide issues within a west side village of Chicago. The categorical topics of a eventuality were mental health, housing, education, food deserts, entrepreneurship and economics. Workers designed and prepared questions for guest speakers to answer and even took questions from a assembly to ask. Each guest was supposing with their possibility to respond to any doubt and pronounce their voice.

Who Was during a Forum?

There were many critical guest vocalization during a forum. This enclosed Senator Patricia Van Pelt, 7th District Congressman Danny K. Davis, 9th District St. Rep. Lakesia Collins, 20th Ward Alderwoman Jeanette Taylor, 22nd Ward carefree Kristian Armendariz, 24th Ward carefree Ventress Boyce, 24th Ward carefree Denita Robinson, 24th Ward carefree Drewone Goldsmith, 24th Ward Alderman carefree Luther Woodruff, 24th Ward Alderwoman carefree Traci “Treasure” Johnson, and Leo Guzman, claimant for ECPS in a 10th District of Chicago.

Turnout

More than 200 people showed adult to a church to attend in a forum, along with many viewers on a live stream. There were people from all ages trimming from immature facile propagandize kids to comparison residents of a area. Many assembly members were actively listening and participating. The forms of questions sundry from subject to topic. The questions asked and pivotal takeaways were as follows:

“What is your devise for mercantile growth in North Lawndale?”

• “Part of my devise is home tenure and entrepreneurship, since entrance to equity during scale is what’s gonna be means to give us entrance to mercantile structure and collateral to make certain we have generational resources to be means to palm behind down to a children” – Denita Robinson.
• “What we wish to continue to do as your state deputy is make some-more pathways for immature folks to have those opportunities though also so that a returning adults can have entrance to housing, entrance to jobs, entrance to peculiarity of life since they merit to have those things that they now do not have right now” -Lakesia Collins.
• “The initial thing we gotta do is move immature folks into a space…bringing immature people to a list and training them and mentoring them…it’s also training people how a city works…there is some resources in home tenure though let’s not act like tenure does a same thing for for black folks that it does for white people and there’s a garland of training and lessons we gotta learn about a city”- Jeanette Taylor.
• “We wanna make certain that we are means to work with those inaugurated officials…with removing those resources and finances behind into a sentinel so that a people in a sentinel can know and know where a income comes from and how we can allot and use those dollars” – Traci “Treasure” Johnson.

“How can we work together to move some-more grocery stores to this community?”

• “What we need to do is stop ancillary large box, they don’t take caring of us and when they done a income or we bailed them out…they left and so we need to start to grow a possess grocers” – Jeanette Taylor.
• “Currently we have a black owned grocery store that has been disinvested in this village that needs a support. So we consider that being associating about what we already have and investing in that, to try and build and make it better…diabetes is one of a series one killers in a village since we are feeding ourselves rubbish and we’re permitting a city to give us garbage. It is a time now to contend what we merit and what we merit to intake not only for ourselves though for a future. And we need to reinvest again in black-owned grocery stores already existent in a village to make them better” – Denita Robinson.

“What is your devise to quarrel gentrification?”

• “We have a housing crisis, we got people vital on a street, during a train stop, in tents, and we aren’t unequivocally addressing that… and so now since we can’t means where we live, we’re being pushed out, and I’m all for development, though I’m not for banishment and that’s what’s happening. We’re not securing a communities when growth comes in, we need to have CBA’s, that’s village formed agreements…because we merit a same good things too as downtown…we merit to have good peculiarity village schools… if you’re not researching your candidate, since we can’t keep voting off popularity… we need bland lived gifted people representing us in a government” – Lakesia Collins.
• “Being peaceful to work together, no singular people means any of these things to happen, no singular individual  solves any of these problems, though people operative in unity” – Danny K. Davis.

Written by Alyssa Calderon

Top and Featured Image Courtesy of Adriana Castelan

Inset Image Courtesy of Adriana Castelan

  Chicago, Forum, West Side