By AREA Staff — “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 [...]
By Midwest Unrest — 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 [...]
By AREA — “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 [...]
By AREA Staff — 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 [...]
By AREA — 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 [...]
By Mary Patten — 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 [...]
By Mary Patten — 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” [...]
By Debbie Gould — 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 [...]
By Laurie Palmer — 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 [...]
By Matt Ginsberg-Jaeckle — “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 [...]
By Daniel Tucker — 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 [...]
By James Tracy — 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 [...]
By Aaron Sarver — 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 [...]
By 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, [...]
By Jeanne Kracher — 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. [...]
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