Hello, and welcome to my first action project for the first unit of my Humanities core class, "Equality". In this class, we learned about race, class, and gender relations in American society today and in the past. We studied several pieces of writings from black and brown writers that all lead back to injustice in America. Racism, classism, and sexism are the main ways people have been discriminated against. For our field experiences, we spoke to an attorney named Allegra Love who helps people that are about to be deported from the United States, and Gregory Banks, a survivor of ex-Chicago police officer Jon Burge’s torture rings. Through talking with fighters and survivors of social and racial injustice, we established a sense of where America stands today. For this action project, we were instructed to choose a historical event, research deeper into it, and interview someone who was around during the time of the event. Our end goal was making a zine to further discuss and explain the event's relation to injustice whether by race, class, or gender. I chose to attack class and racial injustice and use the black-led gang organization The Almighty Black P Stone Nation as an example of what happens when systems of power continuously neglect the people who built this country. I hope you enjoy the zine!
Overall, I enjoyed diving into the issue of Inequality for a class project. I was able to research and understand why black gangs in Chicago existed and how they even stood up to racial and class injustice. Inequality of resources to my area, which is predominantly black, is an issue I deal with almost every day of my life. I enjoyed getting to talk with my grandma and an elder member of the Almighty Black P Stone Nation to gain insight into what Chicago was like for black people in the 1960s. The most challenging part about this project was trying to decide what information would be most valuable to include in my zine. But as a solution, I did leave links and QR codes to free documentaries for further understanding behind the ABPSN and black-led gangs overall from Chicago. I am pleased with my work and wouldn’t really want this zine to be made any other way.
