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.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
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.
“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