Announcement by STOP and Not Me We: we’re merging!

STOP and Not Me We canvass to turn out residents for the 2023 CBA summit, which led to the South Shore CBA ordinance’s introduction City Council. 

We are Southside Together Organizing for Power and Not Me We. We are announcing that we will merge, effective November 11th, to become one organization called Southside Together. Our tagline will be “Not Me, We.” We are merging to build the power of working-class Black residents on Chicago’s South Side. This merger is one of the most significant developments to Chicago’s community-organizing infrastructure in years.

STOP is based in Woodlawn, was founded in 2004, and organizes around housing, health, and youth. Its victories over the years include winning the South Side’s only trauma center for gun-shot victims at the University of Chicago.

Not Me We is based in South Shore, was founded in 2020, and organizes around housing, youth, and schools. Its victories include holding powerful landlords accountable to make repairs.

Since Not Me We’s founding, it has been working with STOP in the Obama Community Benefits Agreement Coalition and the Police-Free Schools campaign. Together we have worked to expand to South Shore the protections won in Woodlawn, to stop the displacement of working-class Black families around the Obama Center. And together we won the removal of a police officer from Hyde Park Academy.

The neighborhoods our organizations organize are deeply interconnected. Many Woodlawn residents have been displaced by profit-seeking developers raising rents and buying up properties. Many of those residents have been pushed into South Shore, which in turn drives up rents in South Shore. Developers don’t stop at the border of our neighborhoods, and if we are going to challenge them, neither can we. By uniting, we will bring together more neighbors, move more elected officials, and build more of the movement that our communities so urgently need.

The merged organization will continue the organizing and leadership-development work of both organizations for housing, health, youth, education, and mutual aid. We will maintain our member bases in Woodlawn, South Shore, Greater Grand Crossing, and Park Manor. We will maintain organizing with the tenant unions that are a part of our organizations. We will also maintain our coalitions, including: the Obama Community Benefits Agreement Coalition; Tenants United Federation; Treatment Not Trauma; campaigns developed by students at Hyde Park Academy High School; and campaigns developed by students and parents at Parkside Elementary School.

Dixon Romeo, the current executive director of Not Me We, will become the executive director of Southside Together. After nearly twenty years with STOP, Alex Goldenberg is stepping down and passing the torch. All other staff of both organizations will keep their positions. The organizations have shared an office in Woodlawn, which they will keep while also looking to expand.

Southside Together will have an initial board composed of directors from both STOP’s and Not Me We’s current boards. It will be co-chaired by Marcus Gill of STOP and Trina Reynolds-Tyler of Not Me We. Then every two years, board members will be elected by and from Southside Together’s core member-leaders.

A November 2023 meeting of STOP’s and No Me We’s member leaders to discuss a potential merger.

This merger follows nearly two years of facilitated meetings between the boards, staffs, and memberships of both organizations; a series of votes by both organizations’ boards; and assemblies and votes of both organizations’ memberships. We are grateful to the fourteen members of the STOP-Not Me We Joint Negotiating Committee and consultants Lisa Marie Pickens and Shannon Sullivan for working since the spring to lay out the full terms of the merger.

How can you help this merger be successful? We need your voice, time, and money! Hear about ways you can contribute your voice and time by signing up for our newsletter and following us on social media: Instagram, Facebook, X. Contribute your money by donating to, attending, or sponsoring our joint gala this Friday at the South Shore Cultural Center! There, we will kick off this merger and honor the two organizations that have produced it. Gala info is here.

We start this new chapter today, after decades of displacement and disinvestment, in the thick of an existential struggle that will determine if working-class Black families can stay in our neighborhoods. We also start this new chapter days away from an election with profound consequences for our communities and our organizing work.

The work ahead will not be easy, but we have never taken on fights because they are easy. We do this because we love our community, and because we owe it to ourselves and to each other to do everything we can to win. 

In this moment we are called to heed our young people, who often chant the words of Assata Shakur: “It is our duty to fight for our freedom. It is our duty to win. We must love each other and support each other. We have nothing to lose but our chains.”

Onward,

STOP and Not Me We, soon to be Southside Together