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Rep. La Shawn Ford (D-Chicago) and New Birth Christian Center’s Senior Pastor Robbie Wilkerson kick off National Teen Violence Prevention Week with a poster contest aiming to eliminate murder from Austin.
The contest is for Austin residents who best depict in their artwork a “murder-free Austin zone.” The winning poster will be used for the campaign to fight gun violence in the neighborhood. Ford and Wilkerson plan to place the winning poster in every window of every house and business in the community.
“We need to take action now to prevent more murders in our state, and we must declare the Austin community in a state of emergency if we are serious about putting an end to the senseless deaths that plague our neighborhoods,” Ford said in a press release.
Gov. Pat Quinn created National Teen Violence Prevention Week in response to the rising number of teens and youth killed in the last three years due to gun violence, most recently 6-month-old Jonylah Watkins.
Ford recently advanced HB2879 to the full House, which creates a Violence Prevention Task Force. The task force comes in response to Ford’s February meeting with Austin health leaders.
The poster contest for a murder-free Austin Zone comes just days after Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s “strategic vision” for seven neighborhoods in Chicago, which leaves Austin out of the picture.
“Austin has been neglected for far too long, and we can not continue to be overlooked if we want the city to grow,” Ford said in the release.
“In 2007, Austin lost the only traditional high school in the community, recently Austin lost its YMCA, and now we are about to have up to seven elementary schools’ doors closed. Austin is filled with hard workers and is a community with a median household income of over $32,000 annually, and we deserves better. We should be and we must be a part of the mayor’s grand plans.”