Update: This event has been postponed because of the coronavirus outbreak. A new date is to be determined.
It takes the streets to know the streets, and any top-down attempt to quell violence will meet the same fate: failure. Not because they don’t care enough, but because they just don’t understand.
That’s the idea behind a free event — Taking our Community Back — organized by Hovey Street Church of Christ and Indiana Department of Corrections Watch (IDOC Watch), a group made up of prisoners and outside advocates.
Taking our Community Back will be noon to 4 p.m. March 21 at Hovey Street Church of Christ and will include a screening of the documentary “The First Rainbow Coalition.”
The two guests — Blair Anderson and Benny Lee — are heavyweights in the world of organizing, cutting their teeth in the 1960s and ‘70s.
Anderson was a member of the Black Panther Party in Illinois. He was 18 years old when he stayed the night at Fred Hampton’s Chicago apartment Dec. 3, 1969, when the Cook County State’s Attorney office organized a pre-dawn raid that killed Hampton and fellow Panther Mark Clark.
Lee was a leader the Conservative Vice Lords Nation from the late ‘60s, when he was just 13, through the early ‘80s. He spent a lot of that time trying to bring gang members, including those from rivals, together to see how their individual actions could affect the whole, for better or worse.
Anderson and Lee are “veterans” in the effort to get the streets organized, said Kwame Shakur, response coordinator for IDOC Watch.
“I’ve always felt like it’s the people that’s been in the streets, been part of the problem, that’s part of the solution,” he said, adding that Anderson and Lee are the ones who can provide the needed guidance.
It’s also important to have representatives from groups like the Black Panther Party and Vice Lords, Shakur said, because there are still misconceptions about what those groups were trying to do.
He’s upset that not many people seem to remember — or be educated about — the Panthers’ so-called Rainbow Coalition, a multiracial and multicultural movement that, among other things, brokered treaties to end gang violence.
Anderson, 68, said he’s going to share the history of the Black Panthers at the event and make the case for how learning a trade can create sustainable incomes for Blacks in large numbers.
“This is the new battlefield for us,” he said. “It is economic, very largely. We need enough money so we can prepare the youth for the responsibility of governing our world.”
Asked how Hampton’s assassination changed his life, Anderson said it “gives relevance” to the work he’s done in the decades since.
“They killed one of the most prolific young men that I had encountered,” he said. “They killed him right in front of my eyes.”
Lee said he’ll focus on Dr. Martin Luther King’s “beloved community” model, the pillars of which are economic and social justice.
Lee got much of his organizing experience in prison, doing three stints from ages 19 to 30. He was also in juvenile detention from 15 to 17.
He organized a labor strike in the Pontiac Correctional Facility, with cooperation from other gangs, because the administration wouldn’t expand the school program for younger inmates.
Lee was put into segregation for his actions and took the time to read Malcom X’s autobiography.
“When I came out of segregation, I was a whole different person,” he said.
Lee also spent three years on death row with 16 other gang leaders — they were known as the Pontiac 17 — because prosecutors blamed them for instigating a riot that killed three guards. The riot was found to be a result of overcrowded conditions, though, and they were acquitted.
Lee and other members of the Conservative Vice Lords Nation joined organizations outside of prison to improve their reputation in the community, and he eventually started a group called African American Survivors, which is known today as the National Alliance for the Empowerment of the Formerly Incarcerated.
One problem with the way some groups, including police, try to solve violence, Lee said, is they don’t understand what’s actually causing it.
“Sometimes they go chasing a gang problem,” he said, “when really it’s a conditions problem.”
Contact staff writer Tyler Fenwick at 317-762-7853. Follow him on Twitter @Ty_Fenwick.
Benny Lee (pictured), a former leader of the Conservative Vice Lords, and Blair Anderson, a former member of the Black Panther Party in Illinois, will be at Hovey Street Church of Christ on March 21 to talk about the importance of grassroots organizing. (Photo provided)
