anthony clark

The Weekly sits down with the educator and community organizer running for Congress in the 7th District

BY YIWEN LU

Anthony Clark is running to represent Illinois’s 7th Congressional district, which includes much of the West Side; parts of the South Side, including Englewood, Chicago Lawn, Back of the Yards, and Chinatown; and extends far into the west suburbs. He is up against U.S. Representative Danny K. Davis, who has held the seat since 1997. Clark first ran against Davis in 2018 and lost by nearly fifty points. As the first college graduate in a working-class family, he earned a bachelor’s degree in communications and a master’s in criminal justice while serving in the military. Following his honorable discharge in 2009, Clark became an education advocate and a special education teacher at Oak Park and River Forest High School in the west suburbs. He is also the founder of the nonprofit Suburban Unity Alliance. This interview has been edited for clarity and length; find the full version at southsideweekly.com.

What problems remain unaddressed in the 7th District?

This district is the microcosm of issues facing the nation, such as vast wealth disparities that are interconnected to historical oppression...You have localized poverty for the most part, where communities that are made up of wonderful individuals who love their communities and families, like [in] Austin [or in] West Garfield Park and Englewood, are just trying to survive. This is because the investment has been taken out of the community. Since the property taxes are extremely low, you have poverty— with poverty comes violence and with violence comes death. So simply put, it's all interconnected.

Within our communities, individuals are struggling; property values are extremely low. We see that in our school systems. That's why the public schools within predominantly Black and brown communities continue to close. They're under-invested. Our infrastructure is dying. You have high levels of toxicity and high levels of pollution that disproportionately impact Black and brown. All this ties into [the fact that] Black people primarily lack social and economic generational wealth. We don't have property to pass down through the generations. We don't have income to pass down through the generations, oftentimes, when it's time for our youth to attend college and to go to the next level. My parents did not attend college, so when it was time for me to go, they didn't have their social generational capital to pass down to me. So you see this across the board, you know, within communities like Austin, West Garfield Park, and Englewood. Even when you go on to communities like Oak Park, you still have people that are struggling.

What do you think is the most important part of your Reparations Agenda in terms of achieving economic empowerment in the community?

I cannot pinpoint [one] agenda independent of another, because all issues are interconnected. So if you look at health care, because we have extremely low affordable health care, it impacts employment. Employment impacts livable wages, which impacts the individual's ability to maintain a home, then we have homelessness, and it's all tied into the environment at last. So essentially my Reparations Agenda is a live document that will continue to be updated and will continue to evolve. What my agenda tries to tell people is recognize and understand within the class struggle, because Black and brown and poor people— but specifically Black people—have been disproportionately impacted by the class struggle.

My Reparations Agenda is essentially stating that every policy needs to have a reparations lens. So no matter what policy we're pushing, whether it be an environmental policy, whether it be an employment policy, whether it be an infrastructure policy, or a criminal justice policy, we need to look

8 SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY ¬ FEBRUARY 19, 2020 at it from a reparations lens and identify how much money needs to be allotted to the Black community, which has been disproportionately impacted.

Could you talk about your pledge to #EndPoliceViolence? How is policing an issue that remains unaddressed in the 7th District?

We know that the relationship between communities and police, predominantly in communities of color, Black communities, is fractured. The relationship is not positive, it's [an] us-versus-them mentality. Daily, we wake up, and we recognize [that] the police violence that exists needs to be tied directly to gun violence. Our police departments are currently militarized. But across the nation, we don't have a civilian oversight committee to better hold police departments accountable.

We need to push for revolution, which includes policing. Now, there are policies listed that [give] police departments warning grants. The police are awarded military-grade weapons and military grade level vehicles. That's why you see areas like Ferguson, where police are riding around and tanks and armored vehicles, seem like they're prepared to go to war against people who they are supposed to protect and serve. It's a huge issue that exists. We need to close those loopholes that allow police departments to get their hands on military-style weapons and military-style vehicles. There needs to be implementation nationally with regards to training, to address and hopefully eliminate [and uncover] any biases.

What issues do you agree or disagree with Danny Davis on?

There's a difference between surviving and fighting for revolution. I thank Danny Davis for his service, but it's impossible to say that he cares about the people in your district or that he is a fighter. When you look at the district, when you look at the vast disparities that exist, we can't blame that on the Republican party. This district is extremely blue. This is a D+38 district, a Democratic stronghold. So we have to look ourselves in the mirror...Essentially, what happens is he sits back and places party first, and is invested in maintaining [the] status quo. What does the status quo look like? There is divestment in communities in which young individuals are not voting. He particularly depends upon the older vote and the church vote.

But what are we doing? We're out there fighting, we're pushing for revolution. We're saying that low voter turnout is no longer acceptable. We're saying that the divestment in our communities is no longer acceptable. We're saying that we're not going to wait for someone else to fight for Medicare for all, or climate change or housing as a human right, so on and so forth. We're going to fight for two. We're going to work [on] building coalitions with these wonderful organizations across the district, hand in hand with other fighters, and pushing forward. In 2020, we have to have the courage and the boldness to take the community and the party to where they need to be. And that's the difference. Danny is meeting the community where it is to survive. We have the boldness and courage to take the main community where it needs to be because we believe in revolution. ¬

Yiwen Lu is a politics reporter for the Weekly. This is her first submission to the Weekly.