Teacher behind Kelly protest wants men to speak out too
The problem of men preying on women extends far beyond race and celebrity.
Anthony Clark says he has lost some friends over his campaign against R. Kelly, and he can tick off their criticisms by heart:
You don’t know what you’re talking about. Why don’t you mind your own business? The girls wanted it. You’re just doing this for publicity.
He shrugs it all off. He says he knows what he needs to do, regardless of what it costs, and what he needs to do is speak out and help others, particularly men, do the same.
“You see the women doing the work in this R. Kelly movement,” he said Friday, the day before a protest he was helping to organize outside Kelly’s Chicago studio. “But the core of the problem lies within men. And men of color. We can’t expect as men for women to do all the heavy lifting. If we’re going to be true allies, we have to step up. We have to call attention to it ourselves, because we’re complicit as men.”
Until recently, a lot of people — black, white, men, women, other — have managed to ignore or dismiss the allegations against Kelly, the R&B superstar.
In the past week, however, the claims that he has sexually abused women, had sex with underage girls and held women hostage in a sex cult have been nearly impossible to miss.
The accusations, which Kelly denies, aren’t new — Chicago writer Jim DeRogatis has been investigating them for years — but they’ve come to a crescendo since the airing of the Lifetime docuseries “Surviving R. Kelly.”
In the past few days, Chance the Rapper and Lady Gaga have apologized for working with Kelly. Kim Foxx, the Cook County state’s attorney, held a news conference urging accusers to get in touch with her office. A Chicago radio station stopped playing Kelly’s music. His estranged daughter called him a “monster.”
On Wednesday night, backers of the nationwide #MuteRKelly movement, which is led primarily by black women, held a protest outside Kelly’s Near West Side studio, a protest Clark supported. And he wants to keep the pressure on.
“We’re standing with our women of color,” he said. “And trying to educate as well.”
Clark, who’s 36, was between classes when I met him Friday at Oak Park and River Forest High School, where he’s a special education teacher. His activism is well-known in Oak Park. He appears in Steve James’ recent documentary, “America to Me,” and in 2017 he was named “Villager of the Year” by the local Wednesday Journal newspaper.
He was also once a student at OPRF, and his time there contributes to the intensity of his desire to hold Kelly to account. He recalls seeing Kelly in the hallways and at basketball games in the company of a girl who would later show up in a sex tape. Clark knew her.
At the time, he says, students were starstruck, but they were also confused: Was it OK for men so old to be involved with girls so young?
One of his current goals is to help students understand that the answer is no.
“Our youth are looking at us to communicate what’s acceptable and what’s not acceptable,” he said.
When we met Friday, he was joined by Naomi Leach, a current senior, and Michelle Sanders, who graduated from the school in 2017. They were helping to prepare for Saturday’s protest, encouraged by Clark to speak out. But they don’t know many young men who have engaged with the topic.
“We need men to hear these conversations,” Sanders said.
By talking, listening and helping to organize Saturday’s protest, Clark hopes to lead by example, though he understands the complexities of being outspoken. He knows there are people convinced that the charges against Kelly are just another way of tearing down a black man.
“The justice system has marginalized black people as a whole, and it’s led to an ‘us vs. them’ feeling with the justice system,” he said. “But we can call out the justice system and call out our own people as well.”
He also goes out of his way to say that men, including him, need to look in the mirror.
“I cannot sit here and tell you that I am the perfect example of a male or the perfect example of what a relationship should or should not be,” he said.
The outcry over R. Kelly is about many things. It’s about a superstar who, in Clark’s words, has been “emboldened and protected while preying on the most vulnerable.” Kelly’s actions carry a special weight among African-Americans. But the problem of men preying on women extends far beyond race and celebrity.
“R. Kelly is a superstar, R. Kelly has millions of dollars,” Clark said. “But this happens in the homes of everyday people, in the relationships of everyday people. Look at the Catholic Church. Look at Congress.”
Saturday’s protest, he hoped, would be more than protest. It would be a lesson in how to speak and how to help.
As Clark says, “This is bigger than R. Kelly.”