© Jon Lowenstein / NOOR
Support Jon Lowenstein's crowdfunding campaign for his upcoming feature-length documentary film, THE ADVOCATE, examining the journey of Jedidiah Brown and several other African-American community activists searching for ways to create a sustainable life while relentlessly fighting for justice in their community on Chicago's South Side.
The Advocate follows activist Jedidiah Brown’s struggle over a 4 year period to construct a healthy identity and personal meaning from the ashes of an utterly dispossessed, segregated and neglected post-industrial community on Chicago’s South Side. The film will help people understand the extraordinary levels of hard work, sacrifice and trauma experienced by individual young advocates in the United States in order to make our country a better place to live for everyone. This is an unmistakably Chicago story, but it echoes a timeless narrative in world literature, native cultures, even religious scriptures: this story is about fighting for one’s home.
At its core, The Advocate is about community, loss, resilience, and the highly personal struggle to construct viable identities and lives in a place offering few functional models for young people. Jedidiah’s story provides a personal account of what it means to fight for something larger than yourself, almost lose everything, survive, and rebuild. Through it all we see these young people challenging and changing the rigid and highly segregated social landscape that is the Second City.