Journey For Justice

Developing Black and Brown Organizers and Organizations

Rooted in racial justice and education equity, a voice for the underserved black and brown people in the u.s and abroad, a national space to elevate community-driven solutions for public schools, how can you help, become a member, support a local organization.

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ADVOCACY DAY

SEPT 22ND 2022

On Thursday, September 22, 2022, we will begin our Advocacy Day in Washington DC by hosting a national press conference with grassroots organizers announcing our demands for Equity and a National Grassroots Equity Commission. Congressional, national organizations, and foundation leaders will join us to publicly endorse and commit their support of our demands.

QUALITY OF LIFE FESTIVAL

SEPT 24TH 2022

Join us for the first annual QUALITY OF LIFE FESTIVAL! Journey for Justice Alliance in partnership with Grass Roots Organizations from all over the united States is proud to present this event! For far too long underserved communities have had to fight for equity in the most common areas of experiencing a good "Quality Of Life". Organizers fight for food, jobs, health care , safety, education, etc... This festival brings together all of the different organizations to not only celebrate there victories but to empower them for more! QOL Festival will be Historical! Join us on the right side of history!

jitu brown journey for justice

J4J EDUCATION PLATFORM

A moratorium on school privatization  .

The evidence is clear and aligns with the lived experience of parents, students and community residents in America’s cities:

25,000 COMMUNITY SCHOOLS by 2025

We know what works. America ranks 19th in the world in education, but 2nd when poverty is not a factor. Schools that are successful in this country are grounded in 5 pillars

ON THE GROUND PODCAST

As Black people in the United States, every right that we have is a direct result of community organizing. The ON THE GROUND podcast centers effective grassroots community organizers to share their wisdom on the artistic science of organizing.

Please  download  our newest report: Failing Brown v. Board: A Continuous Struggle Against Inequity in Public Education.  Share it!

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Leadership Profile: Jitu Brown, Journey for Justice Alliance

Home / Leadership Profile: Jitu Brown, Journey for Justice Alliance

Journey for Justice Alliance national director Jitu Brown talks about family engagement at IEL's Cross-Boundary Leaders for Education and Equity Symposium

Increasingly community and parent organizations have organized to advocate for education reform, including Journey for Justice Alliance led by Jitu Brown.  Born on Chicago’s south side and a product of its public schools,  Brown has organized the Kenwood Oakland neighborhood for 17+ years, bringing community voices to the table on school issues.

Says Brown, “ We are organizing in our neighborhoods, in our cities, and nationally, for an equitable and just education system, based on a belief in the potential of all children and the rights of parents, youth, and communities to participate in all aspects of planning and decision-making.” READ MORE…

‘Education Must Be Available to Every Child’: An Interview with Jitu Brown

by Norman Stockwell

December 1, 2017

Capture.PNG

Jitu Brown, Journey for Justice Alliance.

Jitu Brown is a community organizer who serves as national director of the Journey for Justice Alliance , a grassroots education advocacy group. Brown has been an education activist for the past twenty-six years. Beginning as a volunteer with youth programs on Chicago’s South Side, he became a board member of the Kenwood Oakland Community Organization in 1993. We spoke by phone in early November.

Q: How did you become an activist?

Jitu Brown: I’m from the South Side of Chicago, educated in the Chicago public schools. I sort of flamed out playing college football and was in the music industry. I had the choice of either signing with MCA Records as a solo artist or doing what was pulling at my spirit, which was community work. And I made the best decision of my life. I left the music industry and I started volunteering with the Kenwood Oakland Community Organization, doing youth program work.

Doing that work, I got a real view of the inequity, so I began convening parents in the neighborhood around the conditions in our schools. The things I was seeing were far worse than when I was in school on the South Side. So I asked the question: Why is schooling for these children worse than it was for me? That began the process.

Q: How did that process play out?

Brown: In 2012, I helped form this new group called the Journey for Justice Alliance , which is thriving today in twenty-five cities across the country as well as five provinces in South Africa. We are fighting for education equity and against the school privatization movement.

Journey for Justice started after I received a phone call from an organizer in New York named Zakiyah Ansari, who at that time was with the Brooklyn Education Collaborative. She was just explaining to me, “I feel all alone out here.” I said so do I. So we began to reach out to folks that we knew around the country and people felt the same way.

We decided to do a “freedom ride” to Washington, D.C., to confront [then Secretary of Education] Arne Duncan around the impact of “race to the top” in our communities. We had thirteen cities ready to go. We came up with the name, “Journey for Justice,” and it wasn’t even an organization at first. We mobilized about 2,500 people to travel to Washington, D.C., to the U.S. Department of Education, then we did a march of about 5,000 people from the U.S. Department of Labor to the U.S. Department of Education, and after that we decided to become a network. Our first national action forced the U.S. Department of Education to hold a community hearing. So we have won some national victories.

Q: What impact did the election of Donald Trump have on your work?

Brown: After the election of Donald Trump, we realized that the privatization initiatives, which were horrible under President Obama, were going to accelerate under Betsy DeVos. That’s what moved us to launch the #WeChoose campaign. We reached out to other national networks, such as Network for Public Education , Save Our Schools , Moral Mondays, the NAACP , and groups like this around the country and said, “Can we unite around a common education platform?”

And the response was yes. And so we are in the throes of that campaign right now. We are encouraging people to build local, multiracial coalitions around their local education platform that makes elected officials terrified to sell us out. We are working together around a shared education platform that lifts everybody’s issues to the forefront. So that’s a different type of coalition.

Our motto in the #WeChoose campaign is that Donald Trump does not run our neighborhoods.

Our motto in the #WeChoose campaign is that Donald Trump does not run our neighborhoods. We have to win locally. We have to win school board races. We have to win school by school. Winning victories to build that muscle, so we can wage the national fight.

Q: Journey for Justice has looked at school closing issues and how they disproportionately affect African American and Latinx students. Explain more about that.

Brown: In Chicago, when we were hit with the notion of school closings in 2003-2004, we knew this was not about public education. Because while they were branding our schools as failing and trying to close our schools, affordable housing was also disappearing. Grocery stores for our constituents were disappearing. So what we were really looking at was manufactured state- sanctioned elimination of black families from neighborhoods.

School closings are really a gentrification issue. It is an issue of disinvesting in our basic quality-of-life institutions. School choice is an illusion in black and brown communities. We don’t have the choice of a great neighborhood school in safe walking distance of our homes. And in different cities, we campaign to stop schools from closing.

Q: How do you do that?

Brown: One of the tactics is to file Title VI civil rights complaints. We have filed complaints in more than a dozen cities. In one city, we had a finding in our favor , and in two cities there is still an active investigation. In the other cities, the Office for Civil Rights of the Department of Education declined to investigate, although to us that does not indicate whether or not these were valid complaints, it is about the ineffectiveness of that particular department during the Obama Administration.

We have a problem in America toward race and racism, and unless we’re able to face it, we’ll never transform public education. We’ll always put a Band-Aid on a bullet wound, as opposed to actually acknowledging, transforming, and healing communities that are so long neglected. This is really a human rights issue because in the United Nations [Universal Declaration of Human Rights] it says that education must be available for every child; it must be at an acceptable level, it must be adaptable, and it must be accessible.

Q: Tell us about the hunger strike you took to keep open Dyett High School in Chicago.

Brown: This was in Bronzeville, a historic African American community in the city of Chicago. It is the neighborhood that gave the world Sam Cooke, Gwendolyn Brooks, Richard Wright, Mahalia Jackson, Louis Armstrong, and Lou Rawls. This is a historic black community, but we’re ten minutes from downtown Chicago, right off the lakefront, so this is prime real estate. When schools began closing, this is one of the first communities that they attacked.

With sixty-six thousand people in the district, our last open enrollment neighborhood high school was Walter Dyett High School. We began to engage people in 2009, around a vision for what a pre-K-12 system of education in our neighborhood could be. But in 2012, the Chicago Public Schools system still voted to close the high school. We fought that tooth and nail.

We realized that, in order for us to win this, we had to make Rahm Emanuel the target and we had to go after what he cares about. He doesn’t care about his local reputation. He cares about his national image. So we began to target him over a period of a three-year campaign. As 2015 came along, we began to do things like sit-in outside his office in City Hall and bird-dog him at press conferences. We would come out with huge signs that said “Save Dyett.”

We chained ourselves to a statue directly outside of [Emanuel's] office. We began planning for our hunger strike six months before we started, and we were mentored by the mothers who did a nineteen-day hunger strike in 2001.

We chained ourselves to a statue directly outside of his office. We began planning for our hunger strike six months before we started, and we were mentored by the mothers who did a nineteen-day hunger strike in 2001 which resulted in the building of Little Village High School from the ground up. They told us what to expect, what to drink, security, all those things. So when Chicago Public Schools reneged on holding a community forum, we made the decision on August 17, 2015, to launch the hunger strike. It ended up lasting thirty-four days, and we won the reopening of Dyett as an open enrollment neighborhood school. It’s an art school now with sixteen million dollars in new investments.

Q: As you move forward, what do you want people to do?

Brown: If people want to participate in the #WeChoose campaign, they can go right to our website and register . We have coalition partners in more than thirty cities. I encourage people to come to our national conference, which is May 18 to 20, 2018, at Dyett High School. The theme of the conference is “We Choose: Education Equity, Not the Illusion of ‘School Choice.’ ”

And become a Journey for Justice member so you can receive our newsletters. When we do our national town halls, they will be televised, so people can call in their questions. We want people to get connected to this movement that’s starting to emerge.

Norman Stockwell is publisher of The Progressive .

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Jitu Brown: “We can fight the school-to-prison pipeline with better public education for students of color”

January 19, 2022

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jitu brown journey for justice

The Journey for Justice Alliance (J4J), a longtime Schott grantee partner, has been at the forefront of the fight for racial equity and justice in our public schools and communities. J4J’s National Director, Jitu Brown, writes in the Chicago Tribune to connect the outrageous abuse of Black and brown kids at the hands of the criminal justice system with the systemic injustices found in the schools they attend:

As 2022 begins, many may view with relief recent verdicts and actions in the U.S. justice system that may at long last signal a shift toward equal justice.

The sentencing of the three men convicted of the murder of Ahmaud Arbery, including two sentences of life without the possibility of parole, adds to the news of the recent conviction of former police Officer Kim Potter in Minnesota on manslaughter charges in the death of Daunte Wright.

But injustice still exists in courtrooms and classrooms across the country and across history with roots in the juvenile justice system.

A recent expose of a Tennessee judge, Donna Scott Davenport, reveals she has been taking Black youths out of school and sentencing them to jail for more than 20 years. She still sits in her courtroom.

“I’ve locked up one 7-year-old in 13 years, and that was a heartbreak,” Davenport said in 2012. “But 8- and 9-year-olds, and older, are very common now.”

Davenport has been in her elected judicial position for more than two decades, despite her record and the public outcry at her treatment of Black children. The recent investigation only adds to the evidence that the juvenile justice system nationwide has a shockingly consistent history of arresting children — primarily Black — for noncriminal offenses.

As a leader in an Equity or Else movement, with community groups from numerous states including Illinois, which recognize the critical need to address the racism embedded in virtually every U.S. institution, I see this recent expose as emblematic of the epidemic of racism.

That epidemic has left in its wake a nationwide education and juvenile justice system that has created and feeds a school-to-prison pipeline , disproportionately ensnaring Black, brown and Indigenous children in a trap that can last a lifetime.

Adolescents who attend schools with high suspension rates are substantially more likely to be arrested and jailed as adults, according to the fall 2021 issue of the journal Education Next. Researchers found that Black male students are more than three times as likely to be suspended from school as white male students.

“There is, in fact, a school-to-prison pipeline,” the researchers concluded. “We find that the negative impacts from strict disciplinary environments are largest for minorities and males, suggesting that suspension policies expand preexisting gaps in educational attainment and incarceration.”

These environments are punctuated by so-called school resource officers — police stationed in school buildings. More than 1.5 million Black, brown and Indigenous K-12 students are attending schools that have a resource officer but no counselor, guaranteeing that many of these students will be left behind. The violence inflicted upon Black and brown children by school resource officers nationwide must stop. They don’t make our schools safer, and their presence means schools lose precious resources that could be used for counseling and social services.

Read the full op-ed here, and click here to donate to support the Journey for Justice Alliance’s important work.

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jitu brown journey for justice

Jitu Brown, National Director of the Journey for Justice Alliance (J4J) is a long-time community organizer born on Chicago’s south side. He is a product of Chicago’s public school system and is a proud parent and husband. Jitu started volunteering for the Kenwood Oakland Community Organization (KOCO), the oldest black-led organizing community-based organization in Chicago in 1991 and organized in the Kenwood Oakland neighborhood for over 20 years bringing parents, students, teachers and community members together to collectively participate in the education system by developing various educational initiatives and battle back against efforts to systematically disinvest in, close and privatize schools in Chicago.

In his role as National Director for J4J, he leads an alliance of grassroots community, youth, and parent- led organizations in over 30 cities across the country demanding community-driven alternatives to the privatization of and dismantling of public schools systems.

Rising Above the Gathering Storm: Education Justice and Mathematics

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Things To Do | Journey for Justice Alliance wants to localize…

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Things To Do

Things to do | journey for justice alliance wants to localize its equity work and make it policy, starting with a chicago convention saturday.

Jitu Brown addresses protesters on Aug. 28, 2013, during the Education is a Human Right boycott of Chicago Public Schools outside CPS headquarters.

What started in 2021 as a push for equity in education is now a campaign that seeks to secure “sweeping anti-racist legislation” in at least 20 cities before year’s end, according to Jitu Brown, national director for Journey for Justice Alliance.

The dozens of intergenerational, grassroots community organizations that make up the national network are following up on their Equity or Else Quality of Life Agenda — a platform centered on addressing basic needs for those in poverty and/or marginalized communities through policy initiatives — with an Equity or Else week of town halls where the group is pushing the agenda toward becoming policy in 39 cities, including Chicago.

“We have to understand that the way we begin to heal our communities is through self-determination, beginning to say, ‘We want community schools instead of school closings. We want decent housing. We want economic infrastructure in our neighborhoods.’ This is what our ancestors fought for,” Brown said.

Journey for Justice kick-started its coalition in 2012, and in 2021 it reached out to leaders and organizers from different quality-of-life areas — housing, health care, environment and climate justice, youth investment and food insecurity — to share how inequity affects these areas and offer grassroots solutions. The alliance produced a 16-page report last year that asked local and federal administrations to make a commitment to racial justice in those areas.

Chicago’s Journey for Justice Alliance meeting will take place at the Kenwood-Oakland Community Organization’s annual convention. Brown said this and the other town hall meetings aim to localize the quality-of-life agenda; push to get resolutions passed in cities by elected officials; and establish equity commissions to make the resolutions law. Brown said the goal is to have resolutions passed in at least 20 cities by year’s end and within the next two years, begin to see legislation passed at the state level. Then it’s about pushing all the local work on to the federal level.

Ald. Angela Clay, newly elected in the 46th Ward, said the initiative has her support. She said it’s a tangible goal to get the resolution passed before the end of the year.

“We can always talk about things when they don’t go right or what just happened this past weekend downtown and say look, this is why we need this quality-of-life plan,” Clay said. “We need to put something in motion where people feel seen. … This is a plan by the people and the people should feel respected in their decisions and have people in City Council actually make this happen for them.”

“The locking of arms across states is us bringing together our wildest dreams of having a more amplified voice collectively,” said Shannon Bennett, executive director of the Kenwood-Oakland Community Organization. “This agenda for Equity or Else has expanded to all aspects of our lives.”

Kenwood-Oakland Community Organization’s free convention will be held at Dr. Martin Luther King Junior College Preparatory High School from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. Saturday. It will feature workshops on youth investments, senior rights, affordable housing, economic development and education. The Journey for Justice Alliance town hall meeting will follow the workshops.

For more information go to standing4equity.org or j4jalliance.com .

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Jitu Brown: A Civil Rights Leader at the Forefront of the Fight for Equity in Education

Jitu Brown has built a national civil rights organization called Journey for Justice, with chapters in 38 cities. He is a large and powerful man who speaks from personal experience and brings a message of determination and hope.

Jitu Brown is leading a national equity campaign based on a Quality of Life agenda that will be released with congressional members, union leaders, and others in Washington D.C. on September 22, 2022. This will be part of an Advocacy Day with hundreds of leaders from across the country supporting this platform.

Brown, a member of the board of the Network for Public Education, was recently profiled by The Hill, an influential publication in D.C. He spoke at the annual NPE conference in Philadelphia and challenged the audience to commit themselves to equity in education.

On Saturday, September 24, 2024 there will be a Quality of Life Festival held in D.C. with speakers and music, attended by thousands of people from across the country.

Most recently, Jitu and his team brought clean water to the people of Jackson, Mississippi, where the municipal water is unsafe.

The Hill wrote about him:

Speaking to The Hill from a Chicago office adorned with posters screaming “Equality or Else” and “Water Is a Human Right,” Brown talked about growing up in the Rosemoor neighborhood of Chicago’s Far South Side during the 1970s.

The son of a nurse and a steelworker, Brown was the beneficiary of the civil rights movement: He lived in a working-class, Black community and had educators who looked like him and a school that encouraged cultural awareness.

“I remember growing up as a child, feeling very warm, feeling protected, not being afraid to walk, catching the bus all over the city,” Brown said.

That didn’t mean there weren’t issues in his community. Brown’s neighborhood was straddled by two of the city’s most prominent rival gangs: the Gangster Disciples and the Vice Lords.

Brown said he could have easily become wrapped up in the gangs, but he had the support of his family and friends.

Jitu had his own personal struggles, but then joined a hip-hop musical group that was signed by a major label.

He left the music industry to become a community organizer with the Kenwood Oakland Community Organization in Chicago.

Brown started KOCO’s youth development and youth leadership programs. As he worked with the students, schools began to take an interest. They wanted, in particular, Black men to bring their experience and knowledge into the classrooms. So Brown did.

And as he did, the inequity in the schools became quite clear.

“You’re working with these young people, but you’re noticing that at this school, there’s one computer in the entire class and there’s no air conditioning,” he recalled. “Then I’m also going to schools and other communities and I’m working with student councils. You walk in and the school is bright. The classrooms are small. They got world language. They have counselors. They have teacher aides in every class.”

Brown began to realize the discrepancies between the schools were systemic. KOCO started organizing more and more, working to stop the city from closing more than 20 schools serving predominantly Black and Brown students and conducting sit-ins at City Hall for more youth job opportunities.

The goal was — and remains — to create an equitable schooling system regardless of the students’ races, leading to the founding of the Journey for Justice Alliance in 2012.

The Alliance focuses on enacting a “sustainable community school village.”

Sustainable community schools are rooted in the principles that everybody in the school community should have input on what an engaging and relevant and rigorous curriculum looks like, schools should offer high-quality and culturally competent teaching, and wraparound supports should be available to each child.

Wraparound supports are a big focus for the Journey for Justice Alliance, Brown said.

Keep your eyes on Jitu Brown and Journey for Justice. They are on the ground and teaching people how to speak, get active, and advocate for equity.

Nothing less will do.

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Kudos to Mr Brown and the effort to assure all schools have equal facilities. That is one piece of the puzzle.

A greater piece of the puzzle is facing our failed system of education. A system that was never designed to serve all children. A system, especially with the advent of charters, is designed to divide and conquer.

A system where if we leave one system of harm to join another system of harm, at best we can be at the top of the bottom gaining nothing in the process.

Unless we abandon the current test driven system, all the money in the world won’t save our children. It’s the current system, designed by racists for racists that is destroying our children.

Anyone supporting or enabling the current system is at most a racist and at the very least an enabler of racism. If our goal is to struggle to fit kids to fit into a destructive system, we are then the problem.

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“The Alliance focuses on enacting a “sustainable community school village.” We need to return to a time when public schools were the center of community life. This will take investment. Urban districts require smaller class sizes and support personnel in order to implement this model Organizations like Journey for Justice need to reach out to black and brown parents about the benefits of authentic public schools. Privatizers want to monetize their children and place them in separate, segregated and unequal schools. Well-resourced community public schools are the social justice schools of tomorrow, but only if parents demand them.

This comment does not apply to the above post. However, it does relate to the social justice of Medicare recipients. Medicare is sending out its Info books for 2023. If you look at pages 111-112, you will see a new program called ACO Reach. It is privatization from the inside out, and it is not Medicare Advantage. The only way to be excluded from this disaster is to call Medicare and tell them you do not want your private information shared with a third party. Otherwise, your Medicare may placed in an ACO without your knowledge or consent. ACO Reach allows a third party to administer your Medicare. It could be a doctor, hospital or hedge fund. They will make money by denying care to senior citizens. Anyone that does not want a corporate interloper in charge of their care should call 1-800-633-4227. It will take persistence and perseverance to get through. Please share this message with family and friends. The program allows corporations to reach into your Medicare and extract value. It is the brainchild of the Trump administration, but Biden is allowing it to stand. Please read the following post about this privatization scheme. https://jacobin.com/2022/05/biden-trump-medicare-privatization-aco-reach-insurance

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Organizing Strategy and Practice

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Jitu Brown's Picture

Jitu Brown , married and father of one child, is the national director for the Journey for Justice Alliance, a network of thirty grassroots community based organizations in 25 cities organizing for community driven school improvement. He was formerly the education organizer for the Kenwood Oakland Community Organization (KOCO).  Born and raised in the Rosemoor neighborhood on the far south side of Chicago, Jitu attended Wendell Smith Elementary School and Kenwood Academy High School. Jitu studied at Eastern Arizona College and Northeastern Illinois University, majoring in communications with a minor in Spanish. 

Latest Articles By Jitu Brown

Jitu brown, anika whitfield, maria harmon, cristiane (cristi) rosales-fajardo, kandice webber, sharon wright jackson, secky fascione, cherraye oats, kayla oats-eden, education justice organizing.

22 episodes

In 2019, a Black person can walk in Walgreens and they cannot refuse you service because of the color of your skin. We can run schools, organizations and corporations. Delta Airlines cannot say, "we don't serve Black people." We can attend any college or university that we like and they cannot openly deny us access because of our race. Why? The answer is simple. As Black people in the United States, every right that we have is a direct result of community organizing. Community organizing is the people directly impacted by a problem, strategizing and building power to win policy change, or resources to improve their quality of life. For our entire history in this country there is a long and committed record of people speaking power to power in order to change their living conditions. Today, we see a resurgence of black led grassroots community organizing. Community organizing is not activism. Join the On the Ground family to learn the difference. This podcast hosted by Jitu Brown, National Director of the Journey for Justice Alliance, is dedicated to "spreading the gospel" of community organizing to the public. We are not in an ivory tower, intellectualizing about what Black people need to do. We are in these streets, waging our struggle for liberation. We are ON THE GROUND.

On The Ground Journey For Justice Alliance

  • 5.0 • 17 Ratings
  • NOV 24, 2019

On The Ground: It Ain't Necessarily So

Join our host as we talk with 2 leaders from Oakland and New Orleans about school privatization and the gentrification of America's urban spaces.

  • NOV 9, 2019

On The Ground: Count it Up!

Jitu Brown chops it up with New Jersey community organizers Rosie Grant, Johnnie Lattner and Faheem Lee. The right to elect school boards was snatched away from Black NJ Cities. Determined coalition building & organizing won it back. Don’t slip! Listen in!

  • OCT 27, 2019

On The Ground: I Know I Can

Jitu Brown chats with Zakiya Sankara-Jabar, national field organizer at the Dignity in Schools Campaign & Jonathan Stith, national director at the Alliance for Education Justice, about work to dismantle the school to prison pipeline!

  • OCT 20, 2019

On The Ground: You Must Learn

A silent epidemic happening across the US is the purge of black teachers from public school classrooms. Jitu Brown talks with 2 leaders who are fighting back: Tara Stamps from the Chicago Teachers Union and Awo Okaikor Aryee-Price from PULSE in Newark NJ.

  • OCT 13, 2019

On The Ground: Mind Blowing Decisions

Brother Jitu Brown talks to Shawni Robinson and Anna Simonton about the"Atlanta Cheating Scandal" and incarcerated black teachers! As Public Enemy said years ago; Don't believe the hype!

  • OCT 6, 2019

On The Ground: Mind Power

Jitu Brown spends time with Warriors from Grassroots Arkansas, who are waging a campaign to not only win back their right to vote but to finally force Arkansas to realize equity in public education. Racism knows no Shame.

  • © All Rights Reserved

Customer Reviews

Chicagosouthside.

This is an Amazing podcast and how it deals with the details of the neighborhood and the working people.

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Journey for Justice Alliance

$15,000 / Fall 2017 Jitu Brown, National Director National https://www.j4jalliance.com

The intergenerational Journey For Justice Alliance (J4J) is a diverse network of 35 community based organizations in 22 cities formed in 2013 to win sustainable, equitable school improvement. Its membership reflects those most affected by the corporate market reforms of education in the United States: Black and Latinx families who rely on public education. These leaders recognize the disturbing inequities between Black and White students in curriculum, wrap-around supports, access to postsecondary institutions for, school discipline, teacher diversity and after-school programs. In response, J4J has been organizing to build Black and Brown led, multi-racial coalitions that will win local and national victories that move the country urgently towards equity in public education. Through local and national coordinated community organizing, it advocates for policies and resources to achieve evidence-based, community-driven school improvement. Calling attention to the failures of market driven reforms, it works to strengthen local communities and help them manage – and, in the case of several majority Black cities, first win back – control of their own schools. Hazen’s renewal grant will support J4J’s work to recruit organizations from additional cities to strengthen the education justice movement while cultivating the capacity of local organizations to win local campaigns. J4J will also continue to implement strategies that win community schools in cities throughout the country.

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Chicago Parent and Activist Jitu Brown at “Journey for Justice” Hearing in DC

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Part 2 of TRN’s coverage of the “Journey for Justice” DOE Hearing on School Closings

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by TRNN, The Real News Network January 31, 2013

This <a target="_blank" href="https://therealnews.com/educationpt20131">article</a> first appeared on <a target="_blank" href="https://therealnews.com">The Real News Network</a> and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.<img src="https://i0.wp.com/therealnews.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/11/cropped-TRNN-2021-logomark-square.png?fit=150%2C150&amp;ssl=1" style="width:1em;height:1em;margin-left:10px;"><img id="republication-tracker-tool-source" src="https://therealnews.com/?republication-pixel=true&post=145963&amp;ga4=G-7LYS8R7V51" style="width:1px;height:1px;">

jitu brown journey for justice

IMAGES

  1. Jitu Brown

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  2. Jitu Brown Speaks of the Journey for Justice Alliance and Actions

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  3. Jitu Brown

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  4. Jitu Brown and The Journey For Justice Alliance The Actual Three Civil

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  5. Leadership Profile: Jitu Brown, Journey for Justice Alliance

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  6. Jitu Brown National Director Journey 4 Justice Save Mercy …

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VIDEO

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COMMENTS

  1. Team

    Jitu Brown, National Director of the Journey for Justice Alliance (J4J) is a long-time community organizer born on Chicago's south side. He is a product of Chicago's public school system and is a proud parent and husband. Jitu started volunteering for the Kenwood Oakland Community Organization (KOCO), the oldest black-led organizing ...

  2. Leadership Profile: Jitu Brown, Journey for Justice Alliance

    Jitu Brown, married and father of one child, is the national director for the Journey for Justice Alliance (J4J). Jitu Brown was born on Chicago's south side and is a product of Chicago's public school system. Jitu started volunteering with the Kenwood Oakland Community Organization (KOCO) in 1991, became a board member in 1993 and served ...

  3. About

    The Journey for Justice Alliance was launched in 2012, in response to the growing problem of school privatization (starving of neighborhood schools, school closings, charter and contract school expansion, turnarounds) impacting cities across the United States. ... Jitu Brown, National Director of the Journey for Justice Alliance (J4J) is a long ...

  4. Journey For Justice

    Journey for Justice Alliance in partnership with Grass Roots Organizations from all over the united States is proud to present this event! For far too long underserved communities have had to fight for equity in the most common areas of experiencing a good "Quality Of Life". Organizers fight for food, jobs, health care , safety, education, etc...

  5. Jitu Brown

    Journey for Justice Alliance. 2013 - Present 11 years. Honored to bring together community based parent and youth organizations that serve predominantly African American,Latino and other students ...

  6. Leadership Profile: Jitu Brown, Journey for Justice Alliance

    Increasingly community and parent organizations have organized to advocate for education reform, including Journey for Justice Alliance led by Jitu Brown. Born on Chicago's south side and a product of its public schools, Brown has organized the Kenwood Oakland neighborhood for 17+ years, bringing community voices to the table on school issues. Says Brown, "We are organizing in ...

  7. Journey for Justice Alliance tells Congress it's 'Equity or Else' when

    On Thursday, Jitu Brown, national director for Journey for Justice Alliance (J4J), queried people at the nation's capital with questions like: "Raise your hand if you've ever experienced a ...

  8. 'Education Must Be Available to Every Child': An Interview with Jitu Brown

    Jitu Brown is a community organizer who serves as national director of the Journey for Justice Alliance, a grassroots education advocacy group. Brown has been an education activist for the past twenty-six years. ... Journey for Justice has looked at school closing issues and how they disproportionately affect African American and Latinx ...

  9. Jitu Brown: "We can fight the school-to-prison pipeline with better

    The Journey for Justice Alliance (J4J), a longtime Schott grantee partner, has been at the forefront of the fight for racial equity and justice in our public schools and communities. J4J's National Director, Jitu Brown, writes in the Chicago Tribune to connect the outrageous abuse of Black and brown kids at the hands of the criminal justice system with the systemic injustices found in the ...

  10. NEA honors community activist Jitu Brown with human and civil rights

    Minneapolis - A highly respected community activist nationwide, Jitu Brown exemplifies what it is to be a social justice hero. The director of Journey for Justice demands accountability from public officials, seeks community-based alternatives to privatization and disinvestment from public education, and has put his body on the line for a better quality of life within communities of color ...

  11. Jitu Brown

    Jitu Brown, National Director of the Journey for Justice Alliance (J4J) is a long-time community organizer born on Chicago's south side. He is a product of C...

  12. Jitu Brown

    Jitu Brown, National Director of the Journey for Justice Alliance (J4J) is a long-time community organizer born on Chicago's south side. He is a product of Chicago's public school system and is a proud parent and husband. Jitu started volunteering for the Kenwood Oakland Community Organization (KOCO), the oldest black-led organizing ...

  13. Education advocate Jitu Brown learned the fight for equity in Chicago

    Today, South Side native Jitu Brown is one of many continuing the call for equity. Brown is the national director of the Journey for Justice Alliance, and his fight for equity in the education ...

  14. Education Justice Organizing

    Jitu Brown, married and father of one child, is the national director for the Journey for Justice Alliance, a network of thirty grassroots community based organizations in 25 cities organizing for community driven school improvement.He was formerly the education organizer for the Kenwood Oakland Community Organization (KOCO). Born and raised in the Rosemoor neighborhood on the far south side ...

  15. Journey for Justice Alliance wants to localize its equity work and make

    This is what our ancestors fought for," Brown said. Journey for Justice kick-started its coalition in 2012, and in 2021 it reached out to leaders and organizers from different quality-of-life ...

  16. Jitu Brown: A Civil Rights Leader at the Forefront of the Fight for

    Jitu Brown has built a national civil rights organization called Journey for Justice, with chapters in 38 cities. He is a large and powerful man who speaks from personal experience and brings a message of determination and hope. Jitu Brown is leading a national equity campaign based on a Quality of Life agenda that will…

  17. Jitu Brown

    Jitu Brown, executive director of the Journey for Justice Alliance, highlights how school closures, privatization and standardized tests have been tools of r...

  18. Jitu Brown

    Jitu Brown is the national director of the Journey for Justice Alliance, a network of grassroots organisations in over 30 U.S. cities organising for community-driven school improvement, and was formerly the education organiser for the Kenwood Oakland Community Organization (KOCO).

  19. Jitu Brown

    Jitu Brown, married and father of one child, is the national director for the Journey for Justice Alliance, a network of thirty grassroots community based organizations in 25 cities organizing for community driven school improvement. He was formerly the education organizer for the Kenwood Oakland Community Organization (KOCO). Born and raised in the Rosemoor neighborhood on

  20. Jitu Brown "If We Must Die" by Claude Mckay

    Jitu Brown, National Director of the Journey for Justice Alliance (J4J) is a long-time community organizer born on Chicago's south side. He is a product of C...

  21. On The Ground Journey For Justice Alliance

    This podcast hosted by Jitu Brown, National Director of the Journey for Justice Alliance, is dedicated to "spreading the gospel" of community organizing to the public. We are not in an ivory tower, intellectualizing about what Black people need to do. We are in these streets, waging our struggle for liberation. We are ON THE GROUND.

  22. Journey for Justice Alliance

    Journey for Justice Alliance. $15,000 / Fall 2017 Jitu Brown, National Director National https://www.j4jalliance.com. The intergenerational Journey For Justice Alliance (J4J) is a diverse network of 35 community based organizations in 22 cities formed in 2013 to win sustainable, equitable school improvement. Its membership reflects those most affected by the corporate market reforms of ...

  23. Chicago Parent and Activist Jitu Brown at "Journey for Justice" Hearing

    Part 2 of TRN's coverage of the "Journey for Justice" DOE Hearing on School Closings