ORGANIZING AND ISLAM
Organizing in neighborhoods has taken two paths that reflect historic dichotomy between integrationist and nationalist strategies. Many top conununity leaders collaborate on urban issues through city’s grasgroots network, forging multi-racial coalitions, while others take black nationalist approach, looking only within the African-American community for leadership and resources.
In first category are Ani Russell of community policing network, 312-461-0444; Jacky Grimshaw, former strategist for Harold Washington now working an community transportation issues; 773-278-4800, ext. 133; and Barack Obama, 773-684-4809, whose work to empower blacks has included his law practice, community organizing, philanthropy and most recently electoral politics: he is a candidate for state senate. A quiet leader with broad vision of empowerment and redevelopment in the Grand Boulevard neighborhood is Sokoni Karanja, 773-373-5700, whose nonprofit Centers for New Horizons provides social services, youth programs, education and child care.
Chicago is national center of black nationalist thought and organization. Head of the nation’s largest secular black-nationalist organization, the National Black United Front, Conrad Worrill, 773-268-5658, is a professor at Northeastern Illinois University’s Center for Inner City Studies and was prominent speaker at last year’s Million Man Man March. Another Northeastern professor, Robert Starks, 773-268-7500, heads local Task Force for Political Empowerment, along with Worrill was major organizer in Harold Washington campaigns. Radio commentator and former newspaper columnist and publisher, Lu Palmer, 773-624-0242, holds forth two nights a week on a WVON-1450AM political talk show. He founded the Black Independent Political Orgization and Chicago Black United Communities. Eddie Read, 773-663-0704, is president of both organizations mentioned above; CBUC members have shut down construction sites where blacks don’t get fair share of jobs. Salim Muwakkil, 773-643-3730, is senior editor of In These Times and contributing columnist for the Chicago Sun-Times. He has done extensive coverage of black activism and the black nationalist movement.
Chicago is home base for African-American Muslim organizations. Muslims have been visible forces for organizing and stability in many neighborhoods, only some of them aligned with controversial leader Louis Farrakhan and his Nation of Islam. Organizer Kublai Toure, 773-538-7217, is a member of Jim Brown’s Amer-I-Can youth organization, with projects ranging from helping arrange gang traces to trips to Chicago Cubs baseball Sitines for public housing youth. Mikail Bilal, 773-721-6588, is chek of the Muslim addiction-prevention group Millati Wami, with twice-weekly meetings on South Drexel St. for recovering substance abusers. Abdul Rashid Akbar is the Muslim chaplin at Cook County jail, 773-721-6588, where many incarcerated African-Americans convert to Islam. The Nation of Islam’s contact point for the media and editor-chief of The Final Call newspaper is James Muhammad, 773-602-1230. Ayesha Mustafaa reports on the larger Muslim community as editor of The Muslim Journal, 312-243-7600.
http://web.archive.org/web/20010723055650/www.newstips.org/blackchicago.html
In first category are Ani Russell of community policing network, 312-461-0444; Jacky Grimshaw, former strategist for Harold Washington now working an community transportation issues; 773-278-4800, ext. 133; and Barack Obama, 773-684-4809, whose work to empower blacks has included his law practice, community organizing, philanthropy and most recently electoral politics: he is a candidate for state senate<<<<
Interesting find, thanks for sharing it.