Diane Latiker, Community Activist, Founder of Kids off the Block

Diane Latiker is a community activist in Chicago. Latiker is the founder of the nonprofit, Kids off the Block (KOB), which provides recreational activities and educational opportunities for young people in Chicago, focusing on the neighborhood of Roseland.

Could you give us a short history of Kids Off the Block (KOB)? Why did you start it?

I started KOB because my mom suggested that the kids liked and respected me and she thought I should do something with them. My youngest daughter had 9 friends 13-15 years old, boys and girls and I would take them all fishing, skating, to the movies and more. I did that to keep up with Aisha (my daughter) to make sure she graduated from high school and went on to college.

In a promotional video on the KOB website, you state, in regards to the challenges of racial and economic equity: “It’s more about economics and poverty that it is about gangs.” Can you go deeper with that thought? 

I said that because the gangs exist primarily to get money, it's all about the "money." If our communities had the resources and tools it needed to thrive like some I've seen, I believe violence would decrease significantly. Economics and poverty play a role and lead to levels of despair, hopelessness and trauma, all of it is racial in its makeup and neither is invested into because of who we are. The communities affected by racial injustice seek out ways to survive in the midst of it all and crime is one of those ways. 

 

You were quoted in a recent New York Times article (“Are Racial Attitudes Really Changing? SomeBlack Activists Are Skeptical” August 11, 2020) as saying “We want to be a community that’s paid attention to.” What would it look like for your community to be paid attention to?

To me, the answers are obvious, priorities and empathy. We have neither until all these and more take place to bring unavoidable attention.

Further along in the same NYTimes article the reporter mentions a memorial you created next to an outdoor basketball court, which is “a memorial for young people killed by gun violence, where community members carve the name of every victim and their date of death into a stone plate. Ms. Latiker created the memorial in 2007, after Blair Holt, an honor roll student, was killed by gunfire in a case that garnered national attention. The memorial now has more than 700 names, many of them less known outside Roseland; some of the victims went through Ms. Latiker’s after-school program.” 700 children killed! Since 2007? Were all the kids living in Roseland?

No, the Memorial To Youth Killed By Violence is for young people up to 24 years old and it's citywide. 

Continuing with the NY Times article, you talk about the most recent nationwide demonstrations following the killing of George Floyd: “We’re dealing with a pandemic, we’re dealing with violence, we’re dealing with young people who were already behind in school…Why did minds have to be changed? Why did it take a Black man to be killed? Why does it take protests? Why does it take riots?” How would you answer your own questions?

I am expecting nothing, yet everything. This election is the most important decision we will make as a nation, it's also the most personal to each and every one of us. Do we still believe in the principles this country was founded on or have we given up that it ever mattered?

 

Where do you find hope? You’ve been a resident of Roseland for over 30 years. What keeps you rooted to that Chicago neighborhood?

I find hope in my faith, my family and the children (young people) I serve. I stay here because I hate to leave the children who are now coming up and believe that I can help them like I did their brother, sister or friend.

For more information on Kids Off the Block, click here.

Photo Credits: Top,  alchteron.com