‘THERE ARE OTHER WAYS TO PROTEST’

Even at 36, Jahmal Cole recites the pledge from his preschool graduation: “We the class of 1988, determined to be our best at whatever we say or do, will share a smile and lend a hand to our neighbor …”

“It really became the mission statement of my life,” says Cole, the founder of a Chicago organization called My Block, My Hood, My City.

He has started a relief fund for small business in low-income neighborhoods damaged in protests. Youth in his organization’s mentoring program are helping with the cleanup, sweeping up glass and erasing graffiti.

He’ll march. He’ll shout and express his anger.

But he draws the line at destruction.

“We got residents who gotta go 20 minutes away to get some milk right now,” he tells a crowd assembled for a peace rally and food give-away in Chicago’s largely African American Chatham neighborhood. Its commercial district was hard hit by looting.

Members of the multiracial crowd nod and clap. Many of them know this man. They’ve heard his constant push for neighbors to work together to make change.

Cole wants his neighbors to organize.. “Ain’t no structure in the gangs, and that’s why there’s all this shooting. Ain’t no structure to the protests, and that’s why there’s all this looting,” he wrote in a column published recently in the Chicago Tribune.

And he wants to build on the momentum. “I want to make sure we’re protesting by calling our local officials … by going to the school board,” he tells the crowd. “There are other ways to protest.”

(Courtesy Photo/Colin Boyle) Jahmal Cole, founder of My Block, My Hood, My City, participates during a June 7 peace march and food giveaway organized by his nonprofit group in Chicago. “I feel there’s ways we can resist constructively,” he says.