Tuesday, September 12, 2017: Chicago – The new fall season for Facets Teach-Ins address the relationships between men and women, the dangers of nuclear war, the understanding of Islam, definitions of a political revolution and the role of women in film and media. The Teach-Ins, which Facets began in February 2017, are a twice-monthly program […]
Introducing… the Chicago Radical Coloring Book
In June 2013, Chicago Childcare Collective (ChiChiCo) volunteers were asked to participate in a Housing Justice Bus Tour of Chicago, being organized by Communities United Against Foreclosure and Eviction (our partner org!), the Chicago Anti-Eviction Campaign and Centro Autónomo. We were asked to provide activities for kids at each stop of the bus ride, and […]
Children as Part of Our Social Movements
I approach this article as a parent, comparing the drastic differences among organizing spaces and their reaction to my child’s presence, ranging from disapproval to tolerance to welcoming. Participation that once was accessible to me suddenly became elusive once my daughter was born. Parents, grandparents and caregivers may find themselves in a similar situation with […]
Fearless Leading by the Youth: An Interview
This interview transcript was edited down to about one-third the of original length. This transcript comes from an interview that Rozalinda Borcila and Jacob Klippenstein recorded with Torii Crider, an organizer with Fearless Leading by the Youth (FLY) at the Southside Together Organizing for Power (STOP) office (at 61st and St. Lawrence) on July 31, […]
Interview with Organizers from the Chicago Student Union
The Chicago Student Union (CSU), the first high school student–organized union in the history of the Chicago Public Schools (CPS) system, formed over the months following the controversial closing of 49 elementary, middle, and high schools by the city of Chicago Board of Education in spring 2013. Initiated, led, and represented by students from high […]
Where We Are Living Now. Inheriting the Grid #13
Could we imagine a broader, more diverse, more ambitious set of visions for the future? What we have here is a start. But it’s up to you—up to all of us—to keep enriching it with new ideas and new possibilities to make something different of the places where we live.
Notes from a Conversation: Intersections, a Brunch Table
On March 3, AREA Chicago organized Intersections: A Brunch Table, hosted at Access Living. Panelists represented a range of very different cultural, artistic and organizing projects, with distinct languages, organizational forms and goals. However, we felt there were commonalities that cut across these differences. All of these projects in some way emerged from situated or […]
Occupying Gay Rights: Against Equality and the Neoliberal Project of “Equality”
Against Equality, a radical queer editorial collective, engages with a rich, dense queer history where queers and many allies fought for justice and against war, the confines of gender norms and marriage, and the prison industrial complex.
Creative Resistance: Art as Activism
The Neighborhood Writing Alliance (NWA) provokes dialogue, builds community, and promotes change by creating opportunities for adults in Chicago’s underserved neighborhoods to write, publish, and perform works about their lives. Neighborhood adults come together each week in our free, ongoing workshops to dialogue and write about their personal histories, everyday experiences, and reflections on their […]
A dialogue with Calles y Sueños’ artistic director: Christina Obregón
From Pilsen, Chicago to Juchitán, Mexico, we talk about how Calles y Sueños (CYS) serves as a crossroads for cultural hopscotch, but also as an intersection for geography, language, art, space and economics.
Contested Space
This essay was originally published in the summer 2007 issue of Critical Planning, the UCLA Journal of Urban Planning. (Vol. 14: Spatial Justice) Introduction Education theorists such as Michael Apple and Henry Giroux analyze education’s role in the perpetuation of the economic status quo in urban America (Giroux 1988; Apple 1991; 2001). Often called “reproduction […]
On a Field Trip to the US Social Forum: An Interview with Anne Rapp
This summer, Anne Rapp of DePaul University took a class of four undergraduate students to the first ever United States Social Forum (USSF) in Atlanta, Georgia. AREA Chicago interviewed Rapp via email about the link between the classroom and the social movements that make up and support the USSF. You have said that the way […]
Ellen Gates Starr
How did an activist, labor organiser, teacher, and artist, especially one with a name like Ellen Gates Starr (1859-1940), manage to escape everlasting renown in Chicago history? She made headlines in her own day; she ran for political office, was arrested on the picket line, was a bookbinder, and co-founded some of Chicago’s most important […]