AUBURN GRESHAM — Life is imitating art on the South Side.
Auburn Gresham resident April Lawson launched an online petition last week calling on Chicago women to withhold sex from the men in their lives.
“This really isn’t about sex at all, but sex is the topic and tactic to get their attention,” Lawson said. “Apparently... just marching, that doesn’t get your attention."
If her idea sounds really familiar, that’s because the concept came from the plotline of Spike Lee’s upcoming film "Chi-Raq."
And Lee borrowed the same concept from the ancient Greek play "Lysistrata" by Aristophanes. In that play, a Greek woman named Lysistrata convinces Greek women to hold out on their men to help end the Peloponnesian War.
Watch the "Chi-Raq" trailer here.
Lawson has 30 signatures and needs 70 more to reach her goal.
Lawson said she understands the petition won’t solve the city’s violence, but she believes that a movement like this can be “potent.”
“This by no means is not going to be the one single thing that solves all the issues. That’s not my point,” Lawson said. “My point is to make this a catalyst for a springboard, to have a shared dialogue where we sit down together.”
The community activist has been fed up with the daily shootings for a while, but the execution style death of Tyshawn Lee and the fatal shooting of 20-year-old model Kaylyn Pryor led her to come up with something drastic.
“All men in this city need to come out of the shadows of impotence and start protecting their women and babies,” is what she posted on the online petition.
“I’m not trying to attack men or black men," Lawson said. "It’s a silent protest. Let me provoke some thought in you so we can really have a space to come up with some creative solutions.”
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