Bronzeville ain’t the only place black people live in this city. Bronzeville is hella privileged compared to other black communities. I was born and raised out west and lived out south for a min. The first time cops were called on me was in bronzeville by elders for looking like

I was up to no good. Bronzeville has community centers, restaurants, churches, and many grassroots orgs. Bronzeville is privileged and folks need to show up for the other parts of the city.

I also want to be clear that Bronzeville is not a perfect place for Black folk either. School closures happened there. Genetrification is happening.

What I am saying however is that Bronzeville has a lot of communal structure for folks to respond to and support each other. The Westside doesn’t have that. Nor are we included into the coversation about our lives and how we fit into the the people’s agenda.

Folks just include us as an ad lib to the Southside. In actuality a lot of organizers are scared of the Westside. They are scared of the lack of communal structure to build a support coalition.

We are experiencing gentrification too. We are probably the most policed region in the city/state. Our poverty level is unfathomable. But time and time again we are left out of community organizing, policy work, and institutional resources.

If folks study the Westside, you’ll find that even when white people where here they couldn’t organize themselves for the city to respond to them. Even with the organizations they had they still failed to get there agenda for restoring a depleted community.

I say this to say Black Westsiders for decades inherited depleting communities from white people (due to white flight). So when black folk joke about “the Westside not having grass”, you are being complacent in generations of disinvestment of our communities. (Also it’s not true)

We don’t have Jesse Jackson like Bronzeville did/does/idk. We didn’t have a leader popular enough to bring something of ours to the table. It’s even hard for me to research my community; our historical public documents are virtually unknown.

I love Bronzeville. I lived on 47th and King. Ik Bronzeville ain’t Austin or North Lawndale. And we should be fighting and showing up to all black communities. Not just the ones of black respectable politics. Not just the less challenging ones.

Also this is not a critic of Bronzeville but rather the organizers who use it to paint the backdrop of our movement.