ProjectNEXT not all things to all people

Though the Chicago Urban League's shift in focus from a social service agenda to an economic development agenda was applauded nationally, Chicago residents continue to debate whether community benefits of the program will come at the expense of small-businesses or low-income residents.

Cheryle Jackson, President and CEO of the Chicago Urban League, said the organization studied and consulted with corporate partners while developing the projectNEXT plan.

Jackson refutes critics of the organization's decision to focus on businesses earning between $100,000 and $1 million. With so many organizations focused on social services Jackson said, the Urban League made a decision to continue the Civil Rights agenda through economic empowerment. The program is created to help assist successful black-owned Chicago businesses expand and grow, Jackson said.

Urban League Public Relations and Marketing Communications Consultant Derrick Baker said projectNEXT is specifically tailored to Chicago.

"We've got more black-owned business in Cook County than in any other county in the country," Baker said. "It makes sense that the development of business empowerment be a key component into who you are and what you do. That ties in specifically to this county because of the number of black-owned businesses: over 64,000."

Harold Lucas, president of Bronzevilleonline.com and a community activist, is skeptical of the Urban League's agenda. The black middle-class was built on serving the indigenous low-income population on the South Side, Lucas said. That public housing has been demolished and those residents displaced, Lucas feels, is the reason for the Urban League's shift in policy.

"I'm speaking for low-income people in public housing and the indigenous people in the community who have basically been exploited, dispossessed and dislocated from the community," Lucas said. "That's already been done."

As the city of Chicago competes for the 2016 Olympic Summer Games and development of towers around the south lakeshore, Lucas sees two critical issues: a lack of community organizations developing infastructure as more residents move in and a lack of building capacity for local business owners to grow and serve both residents and tourists.

Bronzeville Chamber of Commerce founder Johnnie Blair said his organization will work with Jackson and the Urban League's new agenda.

"It's key that she took a bold leap into that zone, because that's what the chamber is all about," Blair said. "Particularly in an area like Bronzeville, it's going to be the main seed planted into earth with the type of people we have moving into it.

"We've got a broad cross section of people moving here, but many of them are far more advantaged than those in the past."