Community Organizer Christian Perry Finds His Place In Palos Hts.

PALOS HEIGHTS, IL – Christian Perry has never really considered himself an activist and even in the weeks immediately following the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis, the 29-year-old still wasn’t entirely sure if he placed himself in that category.

But the voices that the Palos Heights resident hears resonating inside his head, along with the tension that lives inside him as a Black man, a member of the U.S. Naval Reserve and as someone who feels comfortable navigating the busy intersection of race, religion and politics has started to convince him otherwise.

At his core, Perry is a community organizer. After Floyd’s death, Perry’s Black Millennial Renaissance organized the Right To Breathe March and Rally in Palos Heights, which departed from Perry’s alma mater, Trinity Christian College. Before the June 12 event, Perry and other organizers hoped 100 people would show. The march, lauded by Palos Heights Police in a social media post afterward as an event the community could be proud because of its respectful and peaceful nature, drew more than 500.

The turnout and response confirmed to Perry that someone who had grown up going to four high schools in four years between Chicago’s South Side and the south suburbs is indeed operating in the right space.

“I think God’s been intentionally saying, ‘I need you to understand your South Side community deeply” Perry told Patch in a telephone interview this week, “but I also need you to understand the suburbs as well.”

Those who know Perry well are convinced he is uniquely gifted to move seamlessly between both spaces. Yet, even as the notion of being considered an activist continues to take shape in Perry’s mind, he grapples with what his response to ongoing racial inequality should be in the days and months to come.

Perry’s 8-year-old son was born in the same year when Trayvon Martin was killed in Florida. The event led Perry to begin to explore his frustrations which, overtime, have brewed into a sense of righteous anger. Before that happened, however, Perry continually told himself that, “America will get this right” after Martin’s death and that there was no way that George Zimmerman would go free. When that didn't happen, anger began to build, Perry said.

In the years since, the deaths of Mike Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, Tamir Rice in Cleveland, Eric Garner in New York City, Laquan McDonald in Chicago and others have forced Perry to continue to consider his involvement in social justice issues. But ultimately, it was Floyd’s death and a subsequent conversation with Perry’s son, who asked, “Why do they keep killing us” and “Why can’t they just make racism illegal?” that has truly sparked him to take action.

“I think my son was the exclamation point of a sentence that began when I was very young,” Perry said.

At the same time, the voice of Perry’s late grandfather also entered the equation. As a young boy, Perry heard the words of his grandfather, who worked as an educator, and who told his grandson that as Blacks, they don’t have the opportunity to be silent because, “If we don’t educate, who will?,” Perry’s grandfather, Johnny Davis, Sr., would say.

“If we don’t share our stories, who will?”

Perry now lives those words out in his community.

The call to action has stuck with Perry, who believes he has been called to build allies and partnerships in places that others may not otherwise expect to find them. While he spent time growing up in neighborhoods like Roseland and West Pullman, his family’s move to the suburbs and him settling in Palos Heights six years ago has helped to shape Perry into a leader that can build bonds in areas that are predominantly white.

While at Trinity, he earned the trust of the school’s president, Kurt Dykstra, who has worked with Perry, who the president of the school’s alumni association, in recent years. Together, they have made strides with different part of the university community and have managed to provide Perry and other organizers a springboard from which to work within Palos Heights and surrounding areas.

The internal tensions that Perry continues to work through still persist. After successfully organizing the June march in Palos Heights, Perry and other organizers, like Beyond The Borders Chicago founders Jennifer and Janet Martin, plan to shift their attention to Joliet where a former police sergeant, was stripped of his police powers after being identified in the in-custody death of Eric Lurry earlier this year.

To Dykstra, Trinity's president, Perry's ability to understand and interact with people has laid the foundation for the mission he is now carrying out in his community.

"Christian is a person who simply loves people – not just the idea of loving people, and there is a difference," Dykstra said. "He cares about and wants to know actual human beings, including those who come from places or perspectives that might not always align exactly with his experience and understanding.

"That, I’d like to think, is the DNA of real life, but it is not easy and is often times messy. Thinking about people as abstractions is safe and simple. Christian, to his great credit, is not interested in following that path; instead, he wants to know real people who, working together, can forge real progress."

While there are matters to attend to in order to create community awareness, however, Perry, who considers himself an unapologetic Christian Democrat, continues to work on himself as well as he takes on a more prominent role in the community.

“We’re out there marching and we say, ‘Black Lives Matter’ and when somebody says, ‘Let’s Go Trump’, it really forces me as a political scientist and an organizer to go back to the drawing board and say, ‘How do I respond to that?’” Perry, the son of a police officer said.

“I’m dealing with a lot of tension. My Commander in Chief (as a Naval Reservist) is still Donald Trump and in my black body, I hold a lot of tension as far as believing that government in this country can live out its creed, but also being a political scientist, knowing very factually that we haven’t.”

Perry continues to be fueled by a righteous anger that permeates his being after the deaths of Floyd and Ahmaud Arbery, the Black jogger who was killed outside of Atlanta while out jogging. He also continues to be posed with challenging questions from his son about social issues while he is continually working with area officials and police leaders to find some common ground.

In the talks with his son, Perry realizes that society and the political climate have shifted greatly since the time he was his son’s age 21 years ago, which forces his perspective to do the same. And although his community work and activism have provided him with small glimpses that progress is starting to be made in establishing better lines of communication between whites and people of color, Perry is realistic to realize that there is still a great deal of work to be completed.

“What I feel is an awakening I’ve never seen before with our allies, but there are still some things my eye need to see and my ears need to hear before I can definitively say yes, some of these barriers are coming down,” Perry said.

“I think we’re on the horizon of seeing some of these walls come down – and I’m not a pessimist. I’m an eternal optimist. I’ve just got to see it.”