Last Thursday, a small group of people gathered in a sun-drenched storefront on Kedzie Avenue in Irving Park. Brought together by the grassroots group Healing to Action, they came to discuss their mounting discontent about Chicago Public Schools’ sexual health education curriculum. Though the event welcomed anyone with kids, grandkids, or other relatives at CPS, and even just interested community members, no men showed up.
“The biggest problem we have in our neighborhoods is violence, gender violence specifically,” Margarita Miranda, one of Healing to Action’s leaders said in Spanish, as an English-language interpreter streamed her words into the headsets of attendees. “We’re joining together and want to demand that our voices are heard, so sex ed gets taught in every single school in Chicago.” She said neighborhood schools need more counselors and parents need help, both from CPS and community organizations, “so they’re prepared to talk to their kids. Explain to them what violence is, what sexual abuse is.”
Healing to Action is now gathering data to figure out exactly which schools are lacking sex ed instruction. “Our hunch is that this is probably falling along the lines of income and race,” Sheerine Alemzadeh, Healing to Action’s cofounder, said after the event. The next steps in community engagement will focus on collecting feedback from students and bringing more men into the conversation. “A lot of our leaders talked about how their kids were either being targeted for or engaging in bullying. They’re seeing this kind of masculine behavior as part of the problem that they’re trying to use this campaign to address,” Alemzadeh said. “If you start talking about gender identity and roles and healthy masculinity and consent and healthy relationships, then hopefully you can prevent the bullying and prevent some of the stuff that’s not just sexual harassment or sexual violence, but some of those toxic attitudes that translate over time into abusive behavior.”
