Building Infrastructure for Community Power
The Defy Racism Collective trains, documents, and amplifies Chicago’s revolutionary voices through political education, media creation, and community organizing.
COMMUNITY NARRATIVE
We document, amplify, and preserve the stories, analyses, and wisdom of communities facing systemic racism. Through The People’s Record and The People’s Mic, we create platforms where truth can be spoken, heard, and transformed into action. Our media creation builds power by connecting individual experiences to patterns of injustice while highlighting community resistance and visionary alternatives.
COMMUNITY SELF DETERMINATION
We build the capacity of directly-impacted community members to analyze systems, develop organizing strategies, and create transformative alternatives. The Fred Hampton Fellowship equips participants with revolutionary analytical tools, organizing skills, and media creation abilities to build power across communities. Our work centers health justice and cross-racial solidarity as essential to liberation.
Our Mission
Our mission is to build infrastructure for community power through political education, narrative change, and organizing. Grounded in Fred Hampton’s revolutionary analysis, we develop the capacity of directly-impacted communities to understand systems of oppression, document our stories, and create transformative alternatives.
Through our three interconnected programs – The Fred Hampton Fellowship, The People’s Record, and The People’s Mic – we train organizers, document community wisdom, and amplify collective voices to advance racial justice and community health.
Our Values
Revolutionary Analysis
We apply Fred Hampton’s framework to examine systems of power, identify mechanisms of control, and develop strategies for change that address root causes rather than symptoms.
Community Leadership
Our work is led by those most impacted by systemic racism, valuing lived experience, cultural knowledge, and community wisdom as essential forms of expertise.
Cross-Racial Solidarity
Following Hampton’s Rainbow Coalition model, we build connections across communities experiencing different forms of racial and economic oppression to create unified power.
Health Justice
We center community health and wellbeing as essential to liberation, examining how systems impact physical, mental, and community health while building alternatives rooted in care.
Transformative Vision
We move beyond reformist approaches to envision and build alternatives that center community power, collective care, and sustainable liberation.
“We’re going to fight racism with solidarity. We’re not going to fight capitalism with Black capitalism. We’re going to fight capitalism with socialism.” – Fred Hampton
The Fred Hampton Fellowship
A 12-week revolutionary political education lab training the next generation of organizers, analysts, and advocates.
The People’s Record
A community-powered media initiative documenting systemic affects, resistance, and visionary alternatives.
The People’s Mic
Live, local, and liberated forums, blending performance, political education, healing, and organizing.
