So I came up with another idea and have enlisted some help from my terrific friends and we are on our way… If you live in Chicago, please participate and please spread the word. It is simple and not time consuming. Raise and add your voice!

As residents of Chicago, many of us feel overwhelmed by the constant drumbeat of news and personal experiences of interpersonal and structural violence.

In 2012, we learned from Census data that the poverty rate in Chicago has continued to increase. For example, the child poverty rate in the city rose from 33.1 percent in 2010 to 35.8 percent in 2011. The extreme poverty rate rose from 10 percent to 11.2 percent (source).  The poverty is concentrated in black & brown communities in Chicago which means that it is all too often ignored. Poverty is violence.

In 2012, there was a police shooting of a civilian about once a week. These were 50 shooting incidents involving 57 individuals (8 of whom were killed).  The vast majority of those people shot by the police were black (about 88%). 3 of those shot were identified as Latino (source). This too is violence.

More than half of Chicago public school closings announced since 2001 occurred in the 21 majority black or Latino communities on the South, Southwest, and West sides with the highest numbers of youth homicides (source). This too is violence.

Between July 2011 and June 2012, over 700 victims of sexual violence were served by rape crisis centers in Chicago hospitals (ICASA).

In 2012, 506 people were killed in Chicago; this represented an 11% increase over 2011 (source).

Some of us feel powerless in the onslaught of violence. But we can use our voices to speak out about how we feel about what’s happening in our city.  We invite Chicagoans of all ages, all races, orientations, genders, and communities to share how you feel about what’s happening in our city with respect to violence IN ONE SENTENCE.

We invite you to participate in our audio collage project.  Call (872) 216-1735

Listen to instructions of what to do:
1.      Say your first name
2.      Say your age (if you’d like)
3.      Say the community that you live in here in Chicago.
4.      Share IN ONE SENTENCE how you feel about the violence taking place in Chicago.

The voicemail will be open from February 11 to 17, 2013.

We will then collect all of the responses and create an audio collage which we will share with the Mayor and others across Chicago.  Everyone will be able to listen to this audio collage at the following site: http://uproarchicago.wordpress.com/

Our goal is to provide a forum for those who want to share their voices with others.

We are thinking of this project as a collective uproar, a “primal” scream, and potentially an emotional catharsis for those of us who live in Chicago in this moment in history. We hope that you will add your voice and spread the word to others.

Also, please contribute your twitter and/or facebook status to our Thunderclap as well.  We need to collect 100 people by Thursday February 13th to make it happen! Help us meet our goal.