Double your donation for our organizing with seniors!
Greetings!
I’m Mike Scott, a South Side school aide and treasurer of Southside Together Organizing for Power. STOP is one of the main groups fighting to stop displacement around the Obama Center, and the group that led the successful campaign to get the University of Chicago to open a trauma center.
In a moment, I’ll ask you to chip in—twenty dollars, two hundred, any amount—to help our mission, to advance economic and social human rights by organizing and developing leadership among people most affected by economic and racial oppression.
But first, let me update you on our three member groups, and what we as members of this community and organization have achieved this year:
Our tenant members ensured creation of $20,000 home-repair grants from the City to long-time owners around the incoming Obama Center, as promised in the CBA ordinance we won last year.
The ordinance also committed 52 vacant lots to be set aside for truly affordable apartments.
Our mental-health campaign co-led the successful fight to secure 29 new staff positions for City-run mental-health clinics, this came after a 10 year struggle pushing back against clinic closings and cuts.
Our members also secured a pilot of non-police mental-health crisis response -- #TreatmentNotTrauma.
Our youth members led our neighborhood school to become one of the first majority- Black high schools to replace a school police officer with an alternative based in restorative justice: a Dean of Culture and Climate.
Our youth are students in the school’s social justice club, and they’re organized by our youth organizer Ling Young, a 2020 graduate of the school.
2021 promised a vaccine and a “return to normal.” But of course, we know that there is nothing normal about displacement and criminalization. As we in STOP look to 2022, we know that we must hold City leaders to their commitment to develop quality affordable housing, expand public mental health clinics, and expand restorative alternatives for students.
And to do this, we need your support. Your contribution today will power us through 2022, to turn 2021’s break-throughs into a new, more just, normal:
Contribute $20 a month or $250 now so that for a month, we can support a young AmeriCorps worker becoming a STOP tenant organizer, for older adults fighting COVID and gentrification.
Contribute $10 a month or $125 now so we can turn out members for a virtual town-hall, for instance, on police-free mental-health crisis response with our public-health organizer, Cheryl Miller.
Become a dues-paying member for just $5 a month or $60 now!
Or any amount -- no contribution is too small (or large :)
And, if you contribute between November 23 and December 7, the Foundation for Aging will DOUBLE your contribution. It’s a match to support our organizing with our older adults, who lead a majority of our tenant associations and are key to our inter-generational campaigns.
You can contribute at stopchicago.org/donate or make a check to “Southside Together Organizing for Power” at 602 E 61st St, Chicago, IL 60637.
As we close 2021, thank you for your commitment. Together, we can make 2022 transformative.
Mike Scott
STOP treasurer
PS Remember, thanks to the Foundation for Aging, your contribution goes twice as far, e.g., $60 becomes $120!
