- Credibility:
BRONZEVILLE — The sixth annual We Walk For Her march returns this week to call attention to the city’s missing Black women and girls.
The event, organized by the Kenwood-Oakland Community Organization’s Girls Who Lead initiative, starts at 5 p.m. Wednesday. Marchers will leave from 35th Street and King Drive. Ald. Jeanette Taylor (20th) is expected to attend, along with youth leaders from across the city.
The march was created by 13-year-old Aziyah Roberts in 2017, the teen looking to channel her anger into action after learning about the city’s “silent epidemic.”
“I wanted to bring awareness, and I did that. But we still have to hold the police accountable. They have to do their jobs,” the activist told Block Club in a June 2021 interview.
In addition to shedding light on the missing, youth organizers are calling for widespread policy changes at the local, state and federal levels.
The Kenwood-Oakland Community Organization estimates that more than 35 percent of the missing persons reported by Chicago Police in the past two decades were Black women and girls.
The missing are often classified as runaways and struggle to receive help from authorities or media attention, experts have said. One in six of the 25,000 children reported missing and believed to have run away in 2022 were likely sex trafficking victims, according to the National Center on Missing and Exploited Children.
Subscribe to Block Club Chicago, an independent, 501(c)(3), journalist-run newsroom. Every dime we make funds reporting from Chicago’s neighborhoods.
