When Kendra Snow’s 16-year-old son survived a Chicago shooting in 2015, the women in their lives joined them to nurse him back to health.
Snow also began volunteering with Mothers/Men Against Senseless Killings, a violence prevention group encouraging neighbors to look out for each other by providing meals, youth events, and community support.
Violence prevention and victim recovery may look like interrupting fights and preventing retaliation. But it also includes childcare, education, nursing gunshot survivors, food drives, and facilitating emotional and spiritual support.
Many Black women do all this while caring for their own families – and themselves.
Economist Nina Banks describes this phenomenon in three layers: working paid jobs, household work, and community work.
Though critical to holding up our communities, the latter two are often underpaid and underappreciated.
To Snow, getting paid would certainly help. But the love she has for her community outweighs it all.
“ The work still gotta get done,” she explained.She’s right. The commitment to this work is necessary to create a liberated future for all of us.
But that doesn’t mean financial and emotional support isn’t long overdue. After all, where would our communities be without love? And what resources might you have to share the love back?