By Ben Joravsky
If anyone can bridge the gap, it’s Hudson, who at age 30 seems at home in both worlds. Raised on the south side, he graduated from Lake View High School and earned an undergraduate degree at Georgetown University. As a teenager, Hudson was arrested while protesting apartheid outside the South African consulate. After working for various politicians and organizations throughout the city, he joined Amnesty last fall, determined to bring it closer to working-class and poor black communities.
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At first, most of his phone calls went unreturned. Many black activists are apparently still upset at Amnesty over a discrimination lawsuit filed a few years ago by Toni Moore, an African-American former employee in Chicago. (Moore eventually settled her suit.) “I know Toni Moore–she ran a ‘youth in law’ program for at-risk minority students at my high school,” says Hudson. “Despite the problems that she had with Amnesty, I know that she would be proud of what I’m doing. I’m doing exactly what she did for the next generation of kids like me.”
“I think they share my belief that it’s critical for oppressed people in Chicago to form links with people who are oppressed in Africa,” says Hudson. “In Africa as in Englewood, people live in isolated communities filled with hatred. When you recognize you’re oppressed, you stop taking it out on your brothers and sisters and you start organizing with those who are also oppressed to change the dynamics of your community. What’s happening at Robert Taylor isn’t much different than what’s going on in Africa. It’s people pitted against one another. They’re tearing down housing, selling Taylor to developers, while gangbangers are fighting each other out of a sense of inferiority.”
“Is Rwanda on 39th Street?” one kid cracked.
“You are too,” called out another student. “You got a bone in your head.”
“Hey, man,” one student said as he squinted to get used to the light. “Why’d you have to turn on the lights?”
