There are very, very few organisations I truly support and Chicago Freedom School, an organisation devoted to nurturing and creating youth-led social justice and education, is one of them. Please read this and support them as they ready for their annual Moments of Justice event.
I’m writing to ask people to support an organisation that is one of the few near and dear to my heart: Chicago Freedom School. On November 2, 2019, CFS will be hosting its Moments of Justice event, in celebration of its Twelfth Anniversary.
CFS models itself after the Freedom Schools established in 1964, whose curricula were specifically designed to combat the racism and the erasure of Black history from American textbooks.
The mission of CFS is no less urgent today, with an educational system that touts the virtues of diversity and multiculturalism but which, in cities like Chicago, demonise youth of colour and ensures that the school-to-prison pipeline remains the most predictable marker of a public school system that is otherwise barely funded and supported. This week, the Chicago Teachers Union has launched its strike and its demands include better pay for teachers, certainly, but also better conditions for its students, including reducing class size and increasing support staff like librarians, school nurses, and social workers. But in a radical departure from standard strikes, the teachers are also demanding that the district “do more to lower housing costs and put more resources into helping homeless students.”
This may seem unusual and forward-thinking, but CFS has, consistently and from the start, made such connections between the lives of the youth it works with and the kinds of conditions they live in.
CFS has taken on a difficult mission: to ensure that youth access resources and support in a way that does not simply turn them into “clients” whose numbers bring in revenue from the state, and to do so in a way that advances a truly radical, liberatory way in the world.
I know CFS well, in several different capacities: as an independent and freelance writer and journalist who writes on social justice issues, I know that CFS is one of the most trusted organisations in the city. As a grassroots activist, I have been involved, with fellow activists, in work that often lacks the material and conceptual tools with which to sustain ourselves while doing work that is often unfunded or under-funded. Over and over, CFS has reached out and ensured that we survive, offering both a physical space and massive amounts of material and immaterial support.
I’ve been to CFS presentations, and I can attest to the fact that they are uncompromising, in the best possible way, in their commitment to a world that is truly radical and truly just. The youth they work with are empowered not simply to parrot talking points about justice but to take charge and demand and get it. CFS does the kind of work that takes months to build up and sustain, and the results are not always apparent till years later. For that reason, lacking the flashy results and media spectacles of market-driven justice projects, it’s harder to see the excellent work CFS does. But it does, and it’s the kind of work that needs our support.
CFS founders include the indomitable Mariame Kaba, and the staff includes Laura J. Ramirez Tony Alvarado-Rivera, Jacqulyn Hamilton, and Tanjua Jagernauth. Yes, they really are that small, and they do incredible work with a focused staff and resources.
I know that many of you will be surprised to see this from someone who is sharply critical of the non-profit world; I hope you will read this, then, as proof of my very great support of CFS and its deeply important work. If you don’t know them already, please visit their website and find out more and support them, either by buying tickets to the event or by making a donation (or both, if you’re able). If you know them already, please support them. Either way, please keep them on your radar as an organisation worth supporting. They are small but mighty in their reach and their work!