New America Media continues with their series on Delegates from the Other America, who will be attending the Equal Voice for America's Families National Family Convention this Saturday in Los Angeles, Chicago and Birmingham.
Today's profile focuses on Charles Jenkins, who will serve as a delegate representing the Chicago Coalition for the Homeless (CCH) at the Chicago convention gathering:
Earlier this year, Jenkins served as a CCH delegate to an Equal Voice special session. “I worked on the policy packet, a four-day policy forum where we hammered out policies.”
Jenkins says he was honored to have been selected by his peers at CCH for the task, designed to distill concerns from town halls across the country to produce a comprehensive policy platform. “It was spiritually enriching, informative, enlightening, and an opportunity that few people are blessed to have."...
As an African-American, he says he makes no apologies for championing the concerns of his people and is a forceful spokesman for self-reliance. African-American communities have a host of issues to confront, “but, if we don’t build commerce so that the money earned in the communities stays there long enough to do some good in the ‘hood,” the profit from goods and services in those neighborhoods will continue to flow to other ethnic groups. “I don’t have any animosity toward them,” Jenkins says, “I’m just looking to resolve our own problems.”
Sometimes those problems are personal. Jenkins’ own life veered off course when he indulged in drugs with the enthusiasm he has now channels into community organizing. “I didn’t even have a drug of choice,” he recalls with a self-deprecating chuckle. The use of “alcohol, whatever was available,” resulted in “drug addiction, the whole ball of wax.” Eventually, after bouncing among the homes of relatives, he found himself homeless, “moving from one shelter to another.”
In 1991, after two and a half years adrift, Jenkins came into a "warming center" -- a place of refuge to ward off frostbite, hypothermia, and hunger. The facility hosted several organizations, including CCH. Through a CCH counselor, Jenkins became at first captivated by, then immersed in the organization’s advocacy on affordable housing and homelessness. Being of service “was an incentive for me to kick my habit,” Jenkins says.
Read the complete profile of Charles Jenkins
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