It’s no secret Chicago violence is taking a toll on the city. While some address the issue through marches and speeches, one local artist has taken a different approach–spoken word.
“Chi City Youth,” a video poem, is getting a lot of attention on Facebook, gaining more than 4,000 shares in 48 hours. It currently has more than 8,000 shares–three days after it was posted.
In the seven and half minute piece, student and spoken word artist Jazmine McKinney outlines the heartbreaking challenges urban youth often face–most notably violence. McKinney calls them “our babies,” “the generation that could have been but never was.” She wrote the poem for them, she says.
“I took this pen and tried to give them a voice. I took this paper and tried to give them a choice, but these are just words. This is just a poem…they are still out there fighting that fight. They are living that nightmare they simply call life.”
The work was funded in part by a City of Urbana Arts grant and produced by University of Illinois PhD student Raymond Morales. It’s part of a larger project consisting of 12 audio works and several videos by six Illinois artists. Copies of the complete work, called “Ill Poets Society Vol.1,” is available in libraries and public organizations throughout the Urbana area. The audio is also available for free download on Morales’ site.
