History

2004

  • STOP was founded when community residents and students joined forces to save Grove Parc, a 504-apartment subsidized housing complex, slated for demolition in University of Chicago plans. We worked with tenants to organize a campaign to stop the demolition. We won a public commitment to preserve the complex.


2005 - 2006

  • We worked with tenants to organize the Kimbark Tenants Association, stopping conversion of 100 affordable apartments to condos. And we forced their landlord, Leon Finney, to make repairs to the building.

  • We organized residents to push back against the Woodlawn New Community plan, which excluded low-income housing.


2007

  • We founded our youth program as Fearless Leading by the Youth. Youth led a campaign to win improvements in Cook Count's juvenile-detention center.

  • Grove Parc residents faced displacement again, this time because owners' neglect led to foreclosure. We organized and fought back. We invited to our community Preservation of Affordable Housing (POAH), to work with the tenants’ association to plan and win the permanent preservation of Grove Parc. This included a $250 million redevelopment and one-for-one replacement of all 504 subsidized apartments.


2008 - 2009

  • We organized the Mental Health Movement, which stopped Mayor Daley's plan to close four South Side free public mental-health clinics.


2010

  • Youth-program co-founder Damian Turner was shot. He was shot two blocks south of the University of Chicago hospital, but he was taken ten miles away, to Northwestern, where he passed away. We and our youth program founded the trauma-center campaign, calling for University of Chicago hospital to open a South Side trauma center.


2011

  • We protested closure of six mental-health clinics. This culminated in occupation of the Woodlawn clinic. Though we did not stop the clinics' closures, we made the issue a negative part of the legacy of Mayor Rahm Emanuel and his administration.

  • We formed the Chicago Tenants Council, bringing together tenants associations we organize for leadership development and campaign planning.


2012 - 2013

  • The Kimbark Tenants Association won new ownership and rehabilitation of their building.

  • The trauma-center campaign grew and created the Trauma Care Coalition.


2014

  • The trauma-center campaign won its first major victory: The University of Chicago committed to start taking sixteen- and seventeen-year-olds at its children's trauma center.


2015

  • Our youth’s restorative-justice campaigning won creation of a $500,000 Cook County restorative-justice grant program.

  • We founded the Woodlawn Restorative-Justice Hub.

  • After five years campaigning, we won a commitment by the University of Chicago to open a South Side trauma center.


2016

  • We co-founded a coalition for a Community Benefits Agreement around the Obama Center.


2017 - 2018

  • We developed official STOP values.

  • Our youth program developed a social-justice club at Hyde Park Academy High School. Youth joined the Community Benefits Agreement campaign and won $40 million in improvements to their school building.

  • The Mental Health Movement created the Healing Village, a pop-up healing space near the closed Woodlawn mental-health clinic.


2019

  • We got Ald. Jeanette Taylor to introduce a Community Benefits Agreement ordinance for Woodlawn housing to Chicago's City Council.


2020

  • Amidst the pandemic and George Floyd uprisings, we and our #CopsOutCPS coalition cut the Chicago schools-police (CPS-CPD) annual contract from $33 million to $12 million. We came one vote short of canceling the contract entirely.

  • We got our Woodlawn CBA ordinance passed. It guaranteed that 52 vacant lots owned by Chicago’s government will be set aside for developments including housing affordable for residents at risk of displacement from rising rents — the majority of Woodlawn!


2021

  • Thanks to our youth, Hyde Park Academy became among the first majority Black (south/west-side) high schools to remove a school police officer, and it secured funds for an alternative staff member.

  • With our Community Wellness coalition, we increased funding for Chicago's public clinics by $2 million per year — the first increase since the City closed its clinics.


2022

  • We moved the City to set up 20 specific lots for developments which will have 157 affordable apartments.

  • We put a referendum on three wards’ ballots. It asked if the City should re-open clinics and remove police from mental-health first response — Treatment Not Trauma. Over 90% voted yes.


2023

  • We put on many Woodlawn residents’ ballots a referendum asking if the City should set aside its large vacant lot near the Obama Center to build MORE affordable apartments. Over 90% voted yes.

  • We worked with South Shore organizers to introduce another CBA ordinance, for South Shore and Woodlawn.

  • We won funding to re-open two mental-health clinics in the City of Chicago’s 2024 budget, championed by Mayor Johnson.

2024:

  • Our and allied youth won removal of school-based police from all Chicago Public Schools, and commitments to re-invest funds previously spent on police in community-based safety like restorative justice.

  • Our Community Wellness coalition won removal of all police from the City’s “CARE” mental-health first response program, so that only clinicians and EMTs for the City’s public-health departments respond.

  • Mayor Johnson announced that the City will directly run free mental-health services at THREE locations, including by re-opening the Roseland clinic, which our member Kowboy Jackson chained himself to in protest of its closure.

  • We held our biggest-ever event, a CBA summit with Not Me We attended by 550 people. Mayor Johnson participated.