JT

When I did an LSC training through Chicago Public Schools, I didn’t learn anything. So a friend of mine suggested I look up the Kenwood-Oakland Community Organization (KOCO). I heard that they were troublemakers, but I thought, “I don’t care what they are — as long as they can help me with this training.” So I started training with a brother named Jitu Brown.

At the same time, the [possibility of Chicago winning the 2016] Olympics came up [in the late 2000s]. People were coming to our community, and they were talking about displacement. People had been buying property in our community. KOCO was one of the community organizations saying, “We need a community benefits agreement. The community needs to benefit from the Olympics.”

I realized that they were one of the only organizations to march on the International Olympic Committee [when its members came to Chicago on its official visit to assess the city], and ultimately they’re the reason why we didn’t get the Olympics. After that, I wanted to join.

At the same time, we were hit with the announcement about Mollison Elementary closing. We were like, “What? Why is it closing?” We weren’t the highest performing schools — we were right in the middle. But the district never talked about the fact that we never got the resources we deserved.

Mollison is in Bronzeville. It’s a gentrifying community. I was told by one of the people who bought a home there that they didn’t want their kids to go to school with my kids. This was a black person who had a little bit more money than me that moved into my community and felt like I wasn’t supposed to be there.

I was like, “Oh, I’ll show you.”

So me and a couple of parents — three hundred parents — we went to CPS and made sure that they did not close the school.