Last month, Chicago CRED—Creating Real Economic Diversity—and more than 50 community organizations, including READI Chicago, launched the inVEST (Violence Ends Starting Today) campaign, calling on Chicago to provide $150 million annually to identify the 10,000 individuals at highest risk of violence involvement and set them on a new path. Together, these organizations call on issue experts, community organizations, and grassroots activists to help decrease homicides in the city by 80 percent over the next five years. Like READI Chicago, the inVEST campaign aims to disrupt violence through prevention, intervention, and community involvement.
Chicago CRED launched the campaign at a public forum, titled Cities Striving for Peace, bringing together five mayors with demonstrated success reducing gun violence in their cities. The event opened with a video featuring a READI Chicago participant speaking about his own experiences with violence, as well as Senior Director Eddie Bocanegra on the role READI Chicago plays in violence reduction and prevention.
“It is going to take an entire community and an entire village to address the issue, but I think it’s a very realistic goal, and I think that if we didn’t shoot for this we would be selling ourselves short,” Eddie said. “There is no one solution and no one person who can solve this, but through real talk, real hope, real love, and taking a bold, collective approach, we can make a difference.”
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l5ucEUhX5M8]
