MARK ALLEN TALKS -- United Front among various poltical, religious, activists, and grassroots leaders and organizations and our collective efforts at fighting the rise in violence in the Black and poor communities !!

This Saturday at from 9:00 AM until 11:00 AM the main auditorium of Rainbow/PUSH Coalition, Congressman Bobby Rush and Rev. Jesse L. Jackson Sr along with other religious leaders, community organizers and activists are hosting a special State Of Emergency calling for a "united front" of leaders and organizations fighting to stop the rise in violence and the fight to create more legitimate jobs for so many of Black and poor people caught in the tensions and family and street battles and violence rooted in part by the desperate economic conditions!

Leaders from across various constituencies met in an emergency session and press conference at Rainbow/PUSH headquarters yesterday that brought together religious leaders like Rev. Walter Turner, Rev. Paul Jakes, Rev. Janette Wilson, Rev. Helen Sinclair, and Rev. Slim Coleman, new CAPS Director Ronald Holt, Phillip Jackson of The Black Star Project, members of the Deborah Movement, Black Wall Street-Chicago, Peace In The Hood, CeaseFire, United in Peace, activists Wallace "Gator" Bradley, Ranoule Tatum, Jonathan Jackson, Louanner Peters, former Deputy Governor of Illinois, and a number of other community residents who work with various crime intervention and prevention groups across the city who responded to the emergency call to meet by Congressman Rush.

Congressman Rush encouraged us all and I agree that we must all come together and publicly show our communitiy and constituencies that we are standing together in this State of Emergency and strengthing our efforts to work in "operational unity,": for we are all facing the challenges of far too many of our youth anf families in the desperation of trying to provide for themselves and their families have their backs up against the wall for survival and find themselves being drawn into the drug and other illegal street economies as their way out, but those battles have resulted in an alarming rate of violence, shootings, and death. But with each day this State of Emergency gets even worse when thousands more are laid off with no new legal job in site, and now we have thousands more who have just been denied extensions in their unemployment benefits and these tensions battling to survive in the streets and even more life threatening environments to survive as we face this upcoming 4th of July weekend.

We make this public appeal for us to come together from our various levels of leadership and have a united front in our immediate challenge to our internal and external sources to resppond much more aggressively than we have to this veryday rise in the desperate economic conditions, and the Mayor, County, State, and Federal Government as well as private sector resources to put more economic resources into these Black and poor communities as we also work at reclaiming the conscioussness of our people that during these historic desperate economic times that we must not let these desperate environments and the pain and hurt we are experiencing having us turn "on" each other rather than "to" each other.

As we face this 4th of July weekend and summer, there are thousands of our young people and adults ready and willing to work and do not want to be tempted by the lack of enough legal sources to be drawn into these negative and deadly envirinments of survival. And contrary to what the media like to claim as "gang related" sources, those of us in the streets can see clearly that these desperate acts of our people is much deeper and wider than established street organization. These desperate economic conditions have impacted our people across all lines of class, but poor people have been hit the hardest, but we all have to realize the reality that saying "Stop The Violence" is not enough and these desperate acts to survive economically at the risk of death is far greater than just mere words, but we need to UNITE and find real solutions and we must come together, so again, I join Comngressman Rush, Rev. Jackson and all our collective leaders to STAND UNITED this Saturday, July 3rd for this live radio and TV broadcast to show our people that we are serious about this united front in addressing this State of Emergency facing trhe Black and poor communities. We will take a specific agenda to our broader community to rally around together.

As I stated some time ago, as former Field Director for Rainbow/PUSH and over 37 years in this movement, I have seen historically how our collective family has come together in "operation unity" to see our community through crisis amd today this current State of Emergency that we face is absolutely one of those times. And I will again be cak at PUSH this week to help in the mobilization and strategies, and I appeal to all those respective leaders and organization to publicly join and call and have their group recognized by calling the Field Department at Rainbow/PUSH at 773-373-3366