We at MAVReC have completed multiple things over the past summer. One of the things we did was a series of group discussions on various topics such as police abolition, Michael Pfleger’s comments on Chief Keef, what it means to be a person of color in Chicago, Kendrick Lamar`s song “Alright”, and whether reverse racism exists. We have also interviewed youth of color, including We Charge Genocide activist Fernando Romulo, and students in Austin, on police brutality and “stop and frisk”. While in Austin, we also attended a training on stop and frisk by We Charge Genocide member Page May, and learned about the consequences of stop and frisk, as well as how we could deal with the problem.
Aside from interviews, discussions, and trainings, we also put up flyers on business windows spreading awareness about a coming organisation, “RCAPS”. RCAPS was created to create strong communities and to provide an alternative to the CAPS meetings, which only represent the interests of rich white gentrifiers and police officers. RCAPS hopes to give a voice to the voiceless and to create a strong community that would make neighborhoods better and safer. Furthermore, we took pictures of the Uptown community and conducted interviews amongst ourselves on issues that affect us strongly.
In addition, on social media, we managed to update all of our social media accounts, creating blog posts, Facebook statuses, Tweets, and creating an Instagram account.
We also took film, pictures, and updated our YouTube with footage of our discussions. We also collaborated with an organization called Voice of the People to do an oral history project on gentrification in Uptown. We interviewed residents of Uptowns to try and get their story and their experiences with gentrification. Once an interview was completed we edited it down to a five minute clip with the major themes still present. We edited the interviews down to five minutes to appeal to all audiences and not lose them with long boring videos. We plan to continue the project into the future and create a people’s archive of stories in Uptown. We will begin to present our work and continue building on it, and to build community in the process.
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