‘It’s in their hands now’: NIU takes reigns of annual Unity Walk one year after Belonging launch

“Because there’s a lot that we share in common,” Edghill-Walden said. “We may be different and have commonality, but one of the best ways to engage in conversation, perhaps with people you don’t know, is to walk.”

DeKALB – The Rev. Joe Mitchell, head pastor at New Hope Missionary Baptist Church in DeKalb, said the seventh year of the Unity Walk, held Tuesday, will now be in the hands of Northern Illinois University.

Mitchell said the inaugural event started about seven years ago as more of a “grassroots effort,” with now-retired NIU Police Chief Tom Phillips and now-retired DeKalb Police Chief Gene Lowery. What initially spurred the event into existence was the 2014 death of 18-year-old Michael Brown, who was shot and killed by then-police officer Darren Wilson in Ferguson, Missouri, a northern suburb of St. Louis.

“And it has continued to grow over the years,” Mitchell said.

This year, the event was interwoven with the approaching first anniversary of the continuing Belonging initiative in partnership between Northern Illinois University and the cities of DeKalb and Rockford, NIU officials wrote in a Sept. 13 statement.

Dozens of attendees joined the Tuesday gathering and unity walk, which was supposed to begin at the Martin Luther King Jr. Commons outside of NIU’s Holmes Student Center and go through Normal Drive, Lucinda Avenue and Greenbriar Road. However, the gathering was moved inside the Holmes Student Center at the Huskie Den due to rainy weather.

The annual walk came after Dr. john a. powell – an internationally recognized expert in civil rights, civil liberties, structural racism, housing, poverty and democracy – spoke during a virtual lecture in October 2020 about concepts including belonging and othering. Organizers said powell preferred to have his name not capitalized.

The walk also falls on the International Day of Peace, with this year’s theme including “collectively creating harmony,” NIU officials wrote. The event has been a community tradition since Mitchell and other community members started it in 2014, according to the statement.

Vernese Edghill-Walden, chief diversity officer for Northern Illinois University, said the Belonging council that was created following powell’s virtual lecture a year ago continues to meet amid “a lot of interest and support of the community” about how to foster more of a collective sense of belonging in DeKalb. She believes “it takes time” to create a community where everyone is “seen, valued and respected” and it will continue to be “an ongoing process.”

“What I’ve found is incidents of the world may have magnified the reason for us to do that,” Edghill-Walden said. “But we have never changed the purpose of the unity walk.”

Mitchell said the church helped lead in planning the unity walk in past years. This year, Northern Illinois University is taking over more of the planning for the event, he said.

“And it’s in their hands now,” Mitchell said. “Now it’s their time to take it and run with it.”

Mitchell said the intention of the event has “never changed” since New Hope started it.

“The idea is to go outside of our comfort zones and interact with some people we don’t know intentionally,” Mitchell said.

Edghill-Walden also pointed out the unity walk didn’t happen a year ago as it normally would due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

“I think that john powell lecture was in the same spirit of how we can come together and create a community in which we all belong,” Edghill-Walden said.

Mitchell said the event is meant to “build relationships” and “build community” among Northern Illinois University and its surrounding areas.

“I think that’s how we make the community better for everyone who lives here,” Mitchell said.

Edghill-Walden said other efforts the Belonging council continues to spearhead include the Faces of Belonging project, which is meant to show the diversity of the DeKalb community, and Voices of Belonging, in which community members share what it means for them to belong in DeKalb.

Edghill-Walden agreed the main overall idea of the event has always been and continues to be for participants to “walk with your neighbor.” She said she hopes event attendees take the time to talk with people they don’t know, adding that “you’d be surprised about how much more we have in common than we have in differences.”

“Because there’s a lot that we share in common,” Edghill-Walden said. “We may be different and have commonality, but one of the best ways to engage in conversation, perhaps with people you don’t know, is to walk.”

Have a Question about this Daily Chronicle article?