Educate or Die

Thirty–nine Chicago students have been murdered this school year. Fifty-three have been murdered in Los Angeles County.  Eighteen have been murder in Baltimore.  And the list goes on.  Thirteen Chicago soldiers have been killed since the beginning of the Iraq/Afghanistan Wars in 2001, but more than 260 Chicago children 18 years of age and under were murdered since that time.  According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta, in 2005, 5,686 young people ages 10 to 24 years old were murdered in Chicago.  The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention defines this kind of out of control threat to life as a “pandemic”.  Only a comprehensive approach can stop the violence and despair in Black communities across America.   Phillip Jackson, founder and executive director of The Black Star Project said, “Ending the war in American cities that is destroying the lives of tens of thousands of American children is as important as ending the war in Iraq.  Presidential attention and federal resources are needed to end this war.  Are the lives of Black children not worth a fraction of what we have given to AIG, Bank of America, General Motors, Chrysler and the war in Iraq?  Isn’t this epidemic of violence and death more devastating than the H1N1 virus?  Our children deserve the best protection our country has to offer.”

Click here for facts about youth violence from the Center for Disease Control.

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"A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual doom."

- Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.