Working Groups
Workforce and Economic Development
The Institute’s researchers and experts in collaboration with community leaders in its Working Group on Workforce and Economic Development will examine monthly jobs reports and analyze the racial and structural barriers to economic recovery for the Black community in order to inform policymakers of the needs of the Black community which persistently go unmet due to discrimination and inequitable policy choices. The Working Group will issue a quarterly economic index that analyzes the impact of the performance of the Illinois economy on Chicago-area Black communities. The Black economic index will distill a wide range of public and private institutional information on economic and fiscal matters into a concise measure. The Institute will develop a regional equity index with multiple indicators against documentation of existing conditions for the purpose of disclosing the intersection between Black political power and regional inequity. In clustering the indicators, the equity index will capture the degrees of need of specific areas, provide a synopsis of the conditions in the region, and prioritize its livability potential. The Institute’s regional equity index will make a strong policy case for equalizing conditions across the region of northeastern Illinois. Recently, the Institute has provided seminal research on the Red Line Extension for the Red Line Extension Coalition and research on community benefits agreement on behalf of Chicago activist and community organizers. AALPI will also promote the interrogation of transformational social policy like equity-based industrial policies, Universal Basic Income, and advocacy for a democratic economy via community and worker-owned enterprises and democratic ESOPs. This represents a more egalitarian business environment for our region.
Education
While the unprecedented closure of 54 public schools by the Chicago Board of Education, in 2013, is a pressing matter, the closings emerged from a host of school-related issues that mostly impact African American youth and their families: inequitable economic resources; disproportionate suspensions and expulsion rates of students of color; teachers with insufficient preparation for working in urban schools; a disturbing lack of African American curriculum to support student identity development; student achievement gaps; downsized or eliminated vital programs for students, such as extracurricular activities (e.g., sports and education) and food and health (e.g., dental) services; and the lack of effective pathways to higher education. AALPI is committed to a hyper response to our collective need to learn as much as we can about remote and virtual learning promising practices. The Institute is also deeply interested in promoting effective pedagogical methods for helping Black children recapture the gains made in math and reading because of the protracted loss of in-school learning. This academic crisis is exacerbated by the fact that Black students in 2019-20 also suffered through the longest teacher strike in Chicago’s history.
The Institute’s Education Working Group will develop new media strategies for communicating information to the community, conduct workshops to inform youth and parents on a wide range of educational issues, discuss curriculum development, present research on best measures currently taken against Black children, protect and expand early childhood education, improve teacher competencies in partnerships with universities, and develop a clearinghouse of higher education opportunities and funding.
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Complex reinforcing linkages between race, space, inequality and violence present major challenges to criminal justice researchers and policymakers. The Institute’s Working Group of Criminal Justice will play a principal role in finding solutions to these problems, as its researchers pursue new research into the causes of all forms of urban violence. The Working Group will elicit and study the strategies that Black families and organizations employ to manage the risks of urban violence and the risks associated with coming into contact with the Chicago Police Department. The Institute’s Working Group will play a pivotal role in finding solutions to these problems.
Health & Wellness
The health of Black Chicagoans is determined by the structural inequities in power, resources and historic discrimination and racism. The role of individuals and their health behaviors are important and can be a critical tool to improving health, however the underlying structural determinants of health inequities must be addressed for the health of African Americans to improve. The Institute’s Health & Wellness Working Group is collecting, analyzing, discussing and disseminating data on racial disparities in healthcare in Chicago. It will facilitate public forums on the status of healthcare access and the activities in which individuals and families can engage to make themselves healthy through nutrition, rest, stress reduction, exercise, and spiritual and mental health.
Moreover, AALPI is committed to curating promising research and mitigation strategies designed to effectively assist African American communities respond to the COVID 19 pandemic. To help the Black community attain sustainable health and wellness the Working Group will apprise people of how their individual actions are constrained and determined by structural factors that determine the distribution of good health. The Institute’s Working Group will also address the crisis in the education and training of Black healthcare professionals.
Family Strengthening
AALPI’S Family Strengthening Working Group embraces a framework that acknowledges and leverages the value, unique contributions, skills and talents of all family members. There is a recognition that many family serving institutions fail to effectively advance family strengthening approaches because they supplant family decision-making by their top-down rule-based practices that marginalize family independence and self-efficacy. So, the Family Strengthening Working Group advocates for the transformation of institutional practices and policies that uplift family voices, while reinforcing family resilience and capacity. Lastly, family strengthening advocates for public policies that places family well-being, child outcomes and parental engagement (including the involvement of noncustodial fathers) at the center of public policy efforts that seek to support a family strengthening objective.
Reparations
In 2021, the AALPI conducted two community-wide forums in Illinois on reparations designed to ascertain key information related to the Black community’s priorities with respect to shared views and values around the meaning and benefits of reparations as social policy.
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The AALPI Reparations Working Group, also known as the Callie House Reparations Working Group has been deeply involved in the reparations movement locally, nationally, and internationally. The Callie House Reparations Working Group played a significant role in drafting and recommending community members for the Illinois African Descent Citizens Reparations Commission, has given presentations at reparations conferences and symposiums nationally, and has participated in organizing US representation at the United Nations Permanent Forum for People of African Descent.
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The Callie House Reparations Working Group is dedicated to actualizing reparations for historical Black communities in the US and abroad, focusing specifically on the needs and concerns of native Black populations in their localities.
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Significance
The AALPI has a unique opportunity to bring its expertise to the global stage and inform a policy framework that is developing spanning local, county, state, federal, and international governance. Serving as a co-convener of Black American’s that are participating in the Permanent Forum over the next International Decade of People of African Descent will ensure that Black Americans can 1) create the international coalitions necessary for Federal action on the issue of reparations for Black American Descendants of Slavery 2) Share lessons learned from 400 years of resistance and freedom fighting from one of the most persistently racist systems in world history 3) contribute to the international agenda to progress People of African Descent in their respective localities. The AALPI’s reparations working group has already begun both organizing and contributing to these frameworks, but can further leverage the AALPI’s extensive knowledge/wisdom of the board to inform additional policy recommendations.