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Second Annual Citywide Peace Walk Saturday, July 30th: Making Peace Starts With Me


CHICAGO  –(ENEWSPF)–July 26, 2016.   This Saturday, July 30th, the Chicago International Youth Peace Movement will hold their second annual Citywide Peace Walk. The walk begins at 11:00am at the Bronzeville Community Garden, located at 51st St. and Calumet Ave. in Chicago, and will end at 1:00pm on 52nd St. and Calumet Ave. after cleaning up trash in vacant lots to beautify the community.

This year’s Citywide Peace Walk is themed, “Making Peace Starts With Me” and calls for love, justice, peace and accountability. Organizers say the goals of the walk are to gather their community and grow solidarity while mobilizing and organizing against community violence and police brutality in Chicago’s neighborhoods.

The Citywide Peace Walk in Bronzeville will gather activists, organizers and community members who will hold a peace circle at the Bronzeville Community Garden at 51st St. and Calumet Ave. There they will lead a discussion on peace building in the community and social services that residents believe are needed in their neighborhoods. The peace walk will begin following prayer at 11:00am, and will walk to 52nd St. and Calumet Ave,. the site where 23-year-old Rachee Williams was gunned down on Saturday, July 16th, 2016.

Activists who will help lead the peace walk include Jessica Disu (FM Supreme), Ja’mal Green and William Calloway. As the walk progresses, participants will pray, singing freedom songs, and clean up trash and litter on vacant lots with missing buildings.

“Our time is now to peacefully reclaim our communities through prayer, organizing, political education, voter registration and civic engagement,” says Jessica Disu, one of the organizers of the Citywide Peace Walk. “Together as a community, we can come together to build potential solutions to community violence and work towards transformative justice. We hope to educate the community about systemic violence and demonstrate how social inequalities such as poverty and joblessness lead to senseless violence. It is out of desperation that misguided youth are shooting. Our time is now to come together and respond to the cries of our young people.”

On Tuesday, July 26th Jessica Disu will speak on a panel at The Girl Talk, a monthly show at The Hideout focused on Chicago women. According to DNAInfo Chicago, Jessica will discuss how comments she made on Fox News about abolishing the police led to hate mail that inspired her music.

In June and July of 2015, the Chicago International Youth Peace Movement held a peace walk and conference that brought together social change leaders for events focused on of mobilizing, activating and empowering young people, in grades 5-12, to get organized and use their voices for peace and social change.

For updates on the July 30th, 2016 Citywide Peace Walk, follow #ChicagoYouthPeace on Twitter.

Chicago Homicide Statistics: 2016 Year to Date
Shot & Killed: 340
Shot & Wounded: 1979
Total Shot: 2319
Total Homicides: 378

Source: chicagoyouthpeace.com

 

 


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