Welcome to the Evolving Man Project’s ‘Evolved Man of the Week’ profiles. Each week we will highlight an individual that embodies what it means to be an evolved man, famous and non-famous men alike. The world needs to know their stories and deeds. This week’s honor goes to the fellow Chicago native, teacher, Air Force Veteran, and Progressive Candidate running for Illinois 7th District, Anthony Clark.
Anthony Clark was born on the south side of Chicago to two working-class parents. His father is a retired proofreader and military veteran, and his mother is a retired accounts coordinator, both born and raised in the Morgan Park area of Chicago.
Growing up in Oak Park, Anthony experienced firsthand how wealth disparities and demographics determined an individual’s possibilities. When traveling to visit family and friends, he saw how a block, an area code, and a zip code, could be the difference in access to opportunity. Like many, Anthony was impacted by death, incarceration, poverty, and illness.
Anthony realized his parent’s dreams by becoming the first individual in his immediate family to obtain a college degree, earning a BA in Communication and an MA in Criminal Justice while serving active duty in the United States military. In 2009, Anthony was honorably discharged from the Air Force due to a service-connected disability.
Anthony Clark is running for Congress in Illinois’ 7th Congressional District. He was born and raised in Oak Park, a suburb of Chicago and part of his district. He’s an active member of the community as the founder of the Suburban Unity Alliance (SUA), a group working to improve the Chicago suburbs through community engagement, and is a special education teacher at his local high school.
Illinois as a whole has long been infamous for its corruption and general dysfunctionality, but Chicago and its inner-ring suburbs have been hurting acutely for decades. Schools are woefully underfunded, unemployment rates are high, and violent crime is abundant.
Here is Anthony Clark in his own words about the state of education in our home state of Illinois:
“I’ve been a teacher for 9 years now. My first teaching job, I made $16,000 as a full-time teacher. No students had books, I taught freshman through senior year all in the same classroom, three computers. They had me teaching Spanish, history, and English. I am not bilingual. That’s the lack of investment that happens in so many of our schools and that money stays at the top and doesn’t go to our students. We’ve spent too many years taking opportunities from people.”
Anthony Clark has made quite an impact on his community and in the lives of countless people. It seems service is in his blood, and he pays it forward for being a man of the people and a real progressive. For those in Chicago, please go vote and cast your ballot for the man who follows in the tradition of Chicago legend and Black Panther, Fred Hampton. We wish him luck in his congressional bid, and this is our official endorsement of Anthony Clark for Congress! Today, we honor Anthony Clark as this week’s Evolved Man of the Week.
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