CCBF is a revolving fund that will pay bond for people charged with crimes in Cook County Jail (CCJ). In addition, we will engage in education about the role of bond in the criminal legal system and ultimately advocate for the abolition of money bond. CCBF supports individuals whose lives and communities have been impacted by structural violence and whose bonds are completely out of proportion to their ability to pay.
Notes Based on a Story Corps Interview
After participating in a Story Corps interview, Lisa Angonese recounted from memory some of the questions and answers. Q: Describe your neighborhood and community. A: We live in a low-income neighborhood that is quickly being gentrified, with condos and family-owned business closing in. We feel ousted out of our own homes. The rents in Pilsen […]
ChiChiCo
Our Story Roots The Chicago Childcare Collective, or ChiChiCo for short (pronounced CheeCheeCoe), was formed in 2007 by a group of radical activists and friends, including Lewis Wallace, Amita Lonial, Simon Strikeback, B Loewe, ChaNell Marshall, and Sam Worley. These organizers became aware of a need of many racial and economic justice–focused organizations in Chicago: […]
Notes from a Conversation: Inheriting the Grid #14
In the language of aspiring adults, “child” can be a dis or a prop. When you are childish you are petty and irrational. When you are childlike, you are innocent and fresh. To be grown is to see the child as the other, as what you no longer are: your lost inner child, or weakness […]
Introducing: 49th Street Underground
“49th” because we meet in the Blackstone Public Library on the corner of 49th St. and Lake Park. “Underground” because we meet in the library’s basement. But also because we want to offer a mysterious hint at a world to come, which we hope to help build, now, underground, while moving ever nearer to the […]
Fight or Walk
The purpose of this article is to help us discuss the strengths and weaknesses of our fare strike campaign in Chicago, as well as to help groups in other cities who want to organize around transit issues. When we first decided to do this campaign, there wasn’t much to read on how other people had […]
Introducing: Mutual Aid Phonebook
“MAP is an ambitious project, to create a directory–starting in Chicago and branching out across the country–where anarchos/ anti-authoritarians can post an ad (for free) advertising any skills you may have to offer your comrades. Bike repair, barbers, computers, recording studios … anything at all.” , –from www.maphonebook.org On July 18, area conducted an e-mail […]
Respect Is Due
RESPECT IS DUE – Youth Take a Stand against Street Harassment The Rogers Park Young Women’s Action Team (YWAT) has been working since 2003 to raise awareness about street harassment. The YWAT is a youth-led, adult-supported social change project that empowers young women under 21 years old to take action on issues that affect their […]
Martha Boyd
You have an extensive background in urban agriculture spend a great deal of time and energy going around town introducing communities to growing. Additionally, it seems your practice has led you to do extensive networking with a really wide range of groups/projects that touch on urban eco-logical work in one way or another. Can you […]
Thoughts on Solidarity
Depending on who you’re talking to, forms and expressions of solidarity include the general strike, the hunger strike, the die-in, and the march; the human billboard, the mask, the wheat-pasted poster and the stencil; the refusal to testify before a grand jury; flowers at the site of disasters, the giving of blood, the writing of […]
Solidarity and Its Fracturing in ACT-Up
Lately Ive been thinking about the internal conflicts that exploded in the street aids activist movement, act up, and trying to make sense of the role they played in the demise of the movement in the early 1990s. The story is comple explore this topic in great detail in a book Im writing about aids […]
Six Fragments from “The Thrill is Gone”
Originally published as a full text in The Passionate Camera, edited by Deborah Bright, Routledge 1998 one It is now a truism, cited by men and women alike, that had it been lesbians instead of gay men who were struck down in such numbers by this plague, the same degree of solidarity from “our brothers” […]
W.A.S.T.E.
The Northwest Incinerator at 700 N. Kildare between Chicago Ave. and Lake St. was constructed with great fanfare in 1971 as a state-of-the-art, waste-to-energy garbage burner. It promised to reduce the city’s volume of trash headed for landfills by 90%, to be safe and pollution-free, and to produce energy at the same time. It burned […]
Introducing: Student Tenant Organizing Project
“Let us in to see the plans they’re rolling out for our community!” says Marie Goodwin, an elderly poet and Woodlawn tenant, standing at the entrance to the Hilton Hotel downtown on a hot July day. “U of C is Exclusionary” reads a sign held by a University of Chicago student next to her in […]
Sending Clear Signals: Radios Populares
Radios Populares is a Chicago-based collective that formed in the spring of 2002, when they sent radio equipment to The National Center for Rural Workers (cntc) in Honduras. Since then, the group has traveled to Nicaragua, Ecuador, Mexico, and Honduras to help build radio stations and train individuals in those communities to run and maintain […]
The (Original) Rainbow Coalition
Bobby Lee moved to Chicago in the late 1960s as a VISTA volunteer, and joined the Black Panther Party. He was instrumental in bringing together the first Rainbow Coalition—a teaming of the Puerto Rican Young Lords and the white Young Patriots Organization. This is a short excerpt of a longer interview with Lee, for an […]
Nicaragua Solidarity Committee
In 1979, when the Nicaragua Solidarity Committee of Chicago (nscc) was first organized to build popular movements around the struggles in Nicaragua, what kinds of organizations evolved doing similar work in Chicago? In addition to the nscc, there was Citizens in Solidarity with the people of El Salvador; there was also Pastors for Peace here […]
Introducing: Chicago Couriers Union
The following interview was conducted by members of the Chicago Couriers Union (ccu) who felt it was best to remain anonymous for various reasons. As a truly democratic organization, we feel that consensus in our actions is a necessary component in the work that we do, including how we represent ourselves publicly. For these reasons, […]
Covering the Landscape: Justice, Change, and Philanthropy in Chicago
Since the 1960s and 70s, I think there has been a change in community consciousness, including in the communities that have been most affected in terms of who goes into prison. “Law and order” became the mantra. Even criminalized communities bought into law and order policies. There are realities about how crime changed in communities. […]
On Teachers for Social Justice: An Interview with Pauline Lipman and Rico Gustein
AREA Chicago Interviews Rico Gutstein and Pauline Lipman (of Teachers for Social Justice) about some recent developments in social justice teacher networking in Chicago. This has been an incredible year already for radical education gatherings and networking opportunities in Chicago. There was the new Social Justice Student Expo at UIC, the Education for Liberation conference […]