I Will Not Become Complacent

On Tuesday, November 22, over 250 people from across Chicago came together with JCUA to reject bigotry, racism, and anti-Semitism, and to rededicate themselves to standing with the oppressed. Rabbi Megan GoldMarche of Metro Chicago Hillel delivered these powerful words.

On election night, my wife, Paige, and I decided to host a party for our college students. We figured it would be a historic night – we’d eat red white and blue popcorn and feel good about America, and progress, and the fact that our country validated our values.

As we sat down to watch the election returns, it was clear we had made a mistake.  While it may have been good for the students to be in a safe place surrounded by friends and supportive mentors, this was not the party we had envisioned, and both Paige and I were unprepared for the reality of the returns.

The days that have followed have involved counseling students who are scared for their own rights as queer young people; who are worried about friends whose status in America is less secure than their own, worried about access to birth control and health care, and have fears about where America is going.

I also heard from students who felt judged because they did not vote for Clinton. Or because they supported Trump. Or because they decided not to vote.  I listened to them as well.

I spent the days following the election listening to all of these voices. I spent my free time reading the hundreds of emails that flooded my Jewish community leadership listservs, signing petitions, texting friends in disbelief, and mostly feeling a bit numb.

On the Sunday after the election, sitting in the Philadelphia airport, I finally broke down listening to Kate McKinnon in her Hillary garb singing Leonard Cohen’s Halleluyah on Saturday Night Live. I sat and cried as I played the video again and again until Paige had to make me stop.  I was crying because the narrative I had been telling myself about the passage of time had been crushed. I believe the arc of history bends towards justice — this is my experience, this is my reality as a woman rabbi who in 2016 can be out as a lesbian living in a house purchased by generous donors under the auspices and with the support of the Jewish United Fund in Chicago where my wife and I serve as role models for young Jewish adults.  The America I live in is good to me. It was good to my grandparents who were children of immigrants and worked to provide for their families.  It has been good to my parents, who were able to raise my brother and I with every luxury a person could need, in the Chicago suburbs where I felt safe as a Jew and woman and eventually where I was able to come out at age 28 and celebrate marriage equality passing two years later — and 9 months after that marry my wife with 18 rabbis in the room — America and Judaism has been good to me.

Linking Values to Action

By Iszy Licht
JCUA Member

I first connected with JCUA two years ago through my work as a student activist at Northwestern University. I was the President of a new student group on campus committed to working against gun violence, Northwestern Students for Gun Violence Prevention. We volunteered at the JCUA’s 2014 Freedom and Justice Seder. This event was both meaningful and inspiring, providing me with an opportunity to learn more about the devastating impact of gun violence on Chicago’s communities, while also celebrating and putting into action my Jewish practices and values. I have been an enthusiastic member of JCUA ever since.

I believe in a Judaism rooted in action and social justice. Tikkun Olam, the traditional Jewish concept urging individuals to engage in social action, has always been a major component of my Jewish identity. Through my parents’ values, volunteering experiences, Jewish education at Solomon Schechter and Chicagoland Jewish High School (now called Rochelle Zell Jewish High School), and college courses on racial and socio-economic inequalities, my Jewish identity has become inextricably linked to my beliefs in progressive values and equality.

Reflecting on a Year of Organizing

By Anna Rubin
JCUA’s AVODAH Organizing Fellow Emeritus

As part of closing out my year as a community organizer at the Jewish Council on Urban Affairs, Marla Bramble, the Director of Organizing at JCUA and my supervisor, asked me to reflect on what I expected this year to be like beforehand, and what it has been in reality. This piece of reflection has been challenging for me because I really had no idea what to expect coming into this year. For any of it. What would my housemates be like, what would my job be like, what would Chicago be like? What even is community organizing?

After 11 months of work, programming, and bayit reflection sessions, I can’t say I’ve totally figured out community organizing. But I definitely have a better sense of what it is and what its place is in the Jewish community in Chicago and in my own life.

Organizing this year has looked like many different things for me: I marched for a just budget during Moral Mondays downtown, I occupied the capitol in Springfield while singing “We Shall Overcome,” I shouted “Si se puede” alongside domestic workers after a long day of lobbying. I’ve had the opportunity to work with so many individuals and organizations who are working to combat our city’s problems and challenges through intentional, grassroots, systems-based organizing and action.

But at the beginning of the year there was often this lingering doubt in the back of my mind. I heard speeches and stories from young, black, queer organizers from Chicago who are leading the charge for comprehensive trauma care, police accountability, and an end to the ever-rising death toll in our city. I saw the news stories about the fierce parents of the Dyett hunger strike, who were my first real exposure to people putting their bodies on the line fighting for justice.  And at times I felt like organizing Chicago’s Jewish community was a cop out. As we know, a majority, though certainly not all, of Chicago’s Jewish community lives life with a certain amount of comfort and relative socioeconomic ease. On the most surface level, these battles and others don’t appear to be many of our battles.  Why organize the Jewish community at all? Or to put it in Community Organizing terms, what is my self-interest in focusing my work on galvanizing my fellow Jews?

But after a bit more time, what many of my coworkers and members had been saying to me all year finally sank in: These are my people I’m organizing! There is no race, region, activity, hobby, political affiliation, etc. that I identify with more strongly than I identify with the Jewish community/Judaism. And 1:1 after 1:1 this year (side note: 1:1s are intentional conversations, they are an organizer’s bread and butter, and they are probably the most defining component of my year), I spoke with members of the Chicago Jewish community who told me that their Judaism is also inextricably linked with a personal pursuit of justice in some meaningful way. I’m sure many of you here tonight would say the same thing. I hear the Jewish call for justice being echoed in individual after individual in our city, and I want to help fan these flames. I want to be a part of a community that heeds the imperative for action that is now central to my Jewish identity.

This identity has been shaped enormously by these 1:1 conversations, as well as the countless conversations I had with my housemates this year. My roommate, Sarah, and I often stay up late talking about fears and hopes surrounding our new Jewish community and our personal Jewish identities. Some of my favorite AVODAH programs this year have pushed my housemates and me to think critically about what we want our Jewish community to look like and how we can, and should, be a part of making that change happen.

Through AVODAH and JCUA, I’ve realized that, if the Jewish community is going to continue to be my community, then I have a responsibility to hold us accountable to our values and to ensure that we act powerfully in the world in pursuit of justice. That’s my self-interest, and that’s why JCUA’s work is essential. I view it as a great privilege that I was able to organize my own community this year and to feel deeply connected to our victories and fears.  I am excited to continue to be a JCUA member and to build my own power as well as the power of a Jewish community pushing for transformative social change in Chicago. And while I am sad indeed that my year in the bayit is coming to a close, I am bolstered by the knowledge that I now have a houseful of people who will not shy away from holding me accountable to my values – our shared values – and who will push me to always organize and show up with my Jewish pride at the forefront of my identity.

Building a Jewish Organizing Voice

By Ben Goldsmith
JCUA Member

On July 10^th, I was thrilled to attend Jewish Council on Urban Affairs’ first daylong community organizing training for members. On a clement summer Sunday, 30 JCUA members spent eight hours learning the nuts and bolts of organizing, connecting with each other, and discussing what a Jewish voice in social justice organizing sounds like. The strength of member interest in this training says a great deal about the appeal of JCUA’s contributions to the University of Chicago trauma center campaign and the Domestic Worker’s Bill of Rights campaign to members of the Jewish community. It says that members of Jewish communities throughout Chicago are connecting with JCUA’s vision and are hungry for opportunities to work for social change by organizing Jewishly. For most members in attendance, this was the first formal organizing training. As a full time tenant organizer, I have gone through Organizing 101 types of trainings in the past but I had never trained in community organizing with an emphasis on Jewish values, or what JCUA calls “organizing Jewishly.”

The training was led by JCUA’s Director of Organizing, Marla Bramble, Jim Field, Director of Organizing with Chicago Coalition for the Homeless, and Aryeh Bernstein, a JCUA member and consultant. JCUA members learned about building and leveraging people power, and equalizing power relations to change the minds of decision makers. This included practical skills, including the basics of organizing an accountability session with an elected official or other decision maker, and the effective framing of an organizing campaign. Members also tried their hands at the all-important 1-on-1: the bread and butter of community organizing. In a 1-on-1, the organizer builds a relationship with a community member through…

South Side Town Hall for Trauma Care

By Aryeh Bernstein
JCUA Member

On May 19th, JCUA and the Trauma Care Coalition demonstrated tangible power in a packed town hall meeting in North Kenwood. The meeting focused on influencing the University of Chicago in implementing its Level-I Adult Trauma Center with transparency and accountability to the South Side community. The many passionate and informed voices in the room sent a clear message to the University of Chicago administrators present that the campaign is not over, that the community expects a voice in the structuring of the trauma center, and that it will act to ensure that voice is heeded.

Background about the Trauma Center Campaign

For the past year and a half, JCUA has been a full partner in the campaign to bring a Level-I Adult Trauma Center to the University of Chicago Medical Center (UCMC). For the past thirty years, there have been no Level- I Adult Trauma Centers on the South Side, and gunshot victims in the area have had no local options for emergency care. Since 2010, this campaign has been led by grassroots South Side organizations representing those most impacted by gun violence. Learn more about the campaign and the coalition members here.

Why this Town Hall Just Now

The Trauma Care Coalition has secured two significant victories in this past year.  In December, The University of Chicago announced that after years of refusal, it will, indeed, build a Level-I Adult Trauma Center. In May, the Illinois Health Facilities and Services Review Board unanimously approved the University of Chicago’s application for a trauma center. On the heels of these victories, the coalition called this Town Hall to make sure that the trauma center will be developed with community members at the table and with a comprehensive approach to trauma care.

What Happened at the Town Hall

The Town Hall was introduced by Jawanza Malone, Executive Director of the Kenwood-Oakland Community Organization (KOCO), and Veronica Morris Moore, who led the campaign through the youth wing of Southside Together Organizing for Power (S.T.O.P.). Morris Moore framed the notion that a trauma center can and should provide services beyond enhanced emergency medical response to trauma. To flesh this out, we heard from a panel featuring UCMC nurse Adriana Sanchez, who lives in the Woodlawn community; Carol Reese, a member of Stroger Hospital’s Healing Hurt People (HHP) program; and Sheila Regan, staff member of CeaseFire Illinois. In response to data indicating that patients admitted to trauma centers as victims of violence are vulnerable to re-injury and return admission, HHP and CeaseFire operate violence prevention programs. HHP focuses on emotional health needs, PTSD, and chaplaincy services, while CeaseFire, staffed by residents of the communities whom they serve, works with trauma victims on alternatives to retaliation and other data-supported methods of violence reduction. HHP already works in UCMC’s Comer juvenile trauma center. The UCMC has not yet initiated any relationship with CeaseFire, which does work in four other trauma centers in Chicago, and which faces new challenges to its work since Governor Rauner cut off its state funding in March.

After the panel, town hall attendees broke into working groups  to collect community input. Prominent themes included: the importance of filling staff positions with Black residents of the local neighborhoods; parking affordability; ensuring that the first and most prominent people encountered in the trauma center are social work, mental health, and pastoral professionals, and not security personnel; and that the trauma center partner with organizations like HHP and CeaseFire on a comprehensive approach to trauma reduction – the kind of financial investment which would save the University of Chicago on more costly trauma care down the road.

There were over ninety participants, of all ages, from all the surrounding neighborhoods and elsewhere in the city, and from each coalition partner, including over a dozen JCUA members.  University of Chicago had two representatives present: Cristal Thomas, University of Chicago Medicine Vice President for Community Health Engagement and Senior Adviser to the Vice President for Civic Engagement, and Leif Elsmo, Executive Director of the Office of Community & External Affairs. Ms. Thomas and Mr. Elsmo saw an engaged, knowledgeable, diverse, and well-organized community activated by the awareness that this trauma center is an existential, life-and-death issue for the community.  They are a community poised to use its collective power to ensure that the U of C acts as a responsible neighbor in its implementation. As a JCUA member and as a Hyde Parker, I was proud to count myself in this community.

As a member of the Trauma Care Coalition, JCUA continues to organize for a community advisory board an significant investment in wraparound social services as part of the University of Chicago’s recent commitment to a Level I Adult Trauma Center. For more information about the campaign, visit our website.

 

We Must Stand Together

By Michael Goldberg
JCUA Member

A few weeks ago, I joined members of the Jewish Council on Urban Affairs and the Downtown Islamic Center in a joint community service event at the DIC.

When I arrived I met a group of lively volunteers. Together we worked in an assembly line to prepare peanut butter, banana and honey sandwiches. We packed them into lunch bags with salads and oranges before setting out across downtown Chicago to offer the lunches to people experiencing homelessness.

I was glad to be working alongside people from different backgrounds on a common goal of service to our sisters and brothers facing hunger and homelessness.

Both Judaism and Islam stress the importance and the necessity of feeding the hungry and helping the homeless. Both traditions emphasize social justice for the suffering, the downtrodden and the powerless. In the Jewish tradition, to perform acts of social justice is to do God’s will, and we are all called on to act on behalf of God in this world.

Service to our fellow human beings can be a vehicle for bringing us together. When we do service together we grow in understanding with one another, deepen our sense of fellowship, and inspire hope in ourselves and others.

As two new friends and I were walking down the street and offering lunches to those in need, an onlooker thanked us for what we were doing. I could tell that we had inspired some hope in him.

Now more than ever it is crucial for Jews and Muslims to come together in the name of love, unity, and understanding. We must stand together against all forms of hatred, bigotry, and division.

Amid divisive rhetoric we have an opportunity to show our strength in unity.

We are commanded: “You shall not oppress a stranger, for you know the feelings of the stranger, having yourselves been strangers in the land of Egypt” (Exodus 23:9). As Jews we know what it feels like to be ostracized and scapegoated, and we must do everything within our power to foster unity and to not allow the heinous crimes of history that we will never forget be repeated on our neighbors.

We are children of Abraham. We can and we must come together in the spirit of love, understanding, peace and justice.

Please join JCUA for their annual social justice Seder: “The 11th Plague – Standing Against Islamophobia” on Monday, April 11 at Beth Emet Synagogue in Evanston. This is a great opportunity for people to come together and learn about ways we can work together to stand against hate. Click here to register: www.jcua.org/seder2016

Lessons for Repairing the World from the Trauma Care Campaign

Through March and April, JCUA staff and members are presenting at congregations across Chicago on the Trauma Care Campaign. We are sharing the lessons we’ve learned on putting Jewish social justice values into practice through organizing the Jewish community. On Friday, March 11, JCUA Community Organizer Daniel Kaplan and Member Avra Shapiro made this presentation at KAM Isaiah Israel in Hyde Park.

Shabbat Shalom!

Why are we talking about the trauma center campaign tonight?  Since 2010, black youth in the Woodlawn community have led a campaign for the University of Chicago to remedy the decades-long absence of a trauma center on the South Side. These organizations include Fearless Leading by the Youth, Southside Together Organizing for Power, and Kenwood Oakland Community Organization. Too many people in this area have lost their lives in ambulance rides, bypassing the University of Chicago for distant trauma care. In particular, the lack of south side trauma care has impacted the security and quality of life of black south side Chicagoans. 

Over the past year, the Jewish community has played a significant role in this campaign; and your congregation in particular has been instrumental in our involvement. In November 2015, more than 200 people from across Chicago came to your synagogue to attend “L’Chaim” – a Jewish community meeting in support of trauma care on the south side. Click below to see highlights from “L’Chaim”.

On this day, 15 rabbis and cantors signed a statement in favor of the University of Chicago taking a lead role in opening a south side trauma center. L’Chaim was a tremendous moment for Chicago’s Jewish community. Our public meeting for the trauma center campaign was an unprecedented show of support for a local social justice issue. A little more than a month after this event, the University of Chicago announced that they would build a trauma center on the South Side. We think it’s important to reflect on what this campaign has accomplished, what we have learned, and where we are now. 

Rethinking Revolutionary

By Anna Rubin
JCUA’s AVODAH Organizing Fellow

On January 27, JCUA traveled to Springfield with the Responsible Budget Coalition (RBC) to protest the continuing budget impasse during Governor Bruce Rauner’s State of the State address. The night before, my AVODAH bayit had a program called “Jews and the Civil Rights Movement.” We had the opportunity to speak with Marv Hoffman and Rosellen Brown, who moved to Mississippi near the end of Freedom Summer to teach at Tougaloo College, an Historically Black College founded in 1869. Their time there continues to inform their dedication to racial justice work today.

During the program, they posed a challenging question to us: Do you plan to be a revolutionary? Practically, becoming a revolutionary had not been part of my game plan (I’ve seen Les Mis too many times), but the budding idealist in me wanted to respond yes. After letting us sit with the question for a moment, Marv and Rosellen told us that despite working for years in Mississippi at the height of the civil rights movement, and despite participating in radical educational and literary circles up through today, they do not consider themselves revolutionaries, or even particularly radical. For them, being a revolutionary means blurring lines between your work life and your personal life, means putting your personal safety on the line consistently, means ignoring the potential harm to those around you for what you deem to be the common good. We shouldn’t all be revolutionaries, but we all have a role to play in the fight, and we must be thoughtful and intentional about what that role is. They encouraged us to critically consider how we are living out and acting on our values every day right now, and how we will choose to fight for justice, in our work this year and in our lives moving forward. 

Their words bounced around in my head as we made the three and a half hour journey down to Springfield in the wee hours of Wednesday morning. This was my first trip to Springfield. I had spent the past two months recruiting and planning in preparation for this day, yet I really didn’t know what to expect. Would there be a lot of people? Would everything go as planned? Would it feel like “enough”? That last question had gained additional weight for me since the previous night’s program, especially considering that seven of my housemates decided to take a day off of work to join us on this journey. Would they feel as though their participation was valuable?

Rabbis and Community Members Take to the Bimah to Demand Justice for Chicago’s South Side

By Avra Shapiro
JCUA Member

On the first Sunday of November, I went to shul. It was not Shabbat, nor was it a holiday, but it was a deeply spiritual day, a day that folded itself beautifully into the rhythm of Jewish life just like any other Jewish celebration. JCUA hosted “L’Chaim! A Community Meeting for Trauma Care”, which brought together over 200 people from Chicago’s Jewish community and beyond at Temple KAM Isaiah Israel in Hyde Park. The event marked a major milestone for the trauma center campaign and a new direction of Jewish responsibility for racial and economic justice.

I first began organizing my senior year of college, and as I got deeper into my work, it became apparent that my heart was pointing me in the direction of doing justice work within the spaces from whence I came- Jewish spaces. As a friend and fellow-organizer put it, “I realized it was time to roll up my sleeves and do the hard work within my own community.” Accordingly, when I came to my first JCUA general meeting and understood the unique and strategic role that the Jewish community could play in the trauma center campaign, I knew it was indeed time to get to work.

For the past year, JCUA has been part of a coalition organizing to expand trauma care on the south side in the midst of a “trauma center desert”. The coalition was started five years ago by FLY (Fearless Leading by the Youth) after 18 year old community activist Damian Turner was shot and had to travel 10 miles to the closest trauma center at Northwestern Memorial Hospital. Damian died on the way. Appallingly, Damian was shot only three blocks away from the University of Chicago Medical Center, one of the most well resourced hospitals in the nation. This tragedy was the starting point of a campaign to bring comprehensive trauma care to the South Side, and to call upon the University of Chicago to facilitate and sustain a trauma care center.

We Feel The Cuts

By Dena Goldstein
Guest Blogger

I tossed and turned the night before I heard the news. When the sun streamed through my window that Monday morning, I opened my sleepless eyes and felt cheated I didn’t enjoy a deep slumber. A few hours into work, my supervisor at Jewish Child and Family Services (JCFS) emailed me, asking if I was available to meet in an hour or so. To prepare, I printed out some of my grant proposals and reports to discuss. On my way to her office, she stopped me and told me we were meeting in another colleague’s office. As we found our seats, a co-worker from the Human Resources department swooped in and joined our meeting. I stared at both of them perplexed. Then they told me.

“Your position is being eliminated.”

I couldn’t grasp the weight of those words and how they translated into my lifestyle – how they impacted my pocketbook, career and commute. A blank stare appeared on my face as shock overwhelmed me. I couldn’t believe this was happening.

They told me I had six weeks.

I soon found out that I wasn’t the only person affected. I was one of 15 full-time employees and 8 part-time staff members at JCFS who either lost their jobs or experienced a reduction in work hours as of May 18, 2015. The Illinois state budget cuts were the culprit. I heard about the budget crisis on the news, but never thought it would affect me. I was well aware of the proposal to eliminate the Department of Children and Family Services’ adult transition program for foster children. I wrote grant proposals in support of this vulnerable population, so I was worried about the possible consequences of these cuts. But I was never worried about my own livelihood.

JCUA continues to call for a just, revenue-based budget. Click above to see photos from yesterday’s #MoralMondaysIL action. Click here to join JCUA and add your voice.

The State also eliminated funding for several JCFS programs such as the Digital Literacy Program, Group Respite services and a Chicago immigration program for Russian individuals. The English as a Second Language (ESL) program, which served the West Rogers Park community for many years, closed its doors. Other programs were impacted as well, such as the Pharmacy Technician Training program, which was forced to reduce its size due to the end of a grant cycle and a lack of funds to continue at full capacity.  

The first thing that popped into my mind when they informed me I lost my job was I should pack my bags and move to a different city—maybe somewhere warmer, away from the frigid Chicago winters. I never saw myself in Chicago long term, so now was the time to make the change.

Five months later, you can find me working in Austin, Texas as a Media Coordinator. Although I no longer live in Illinois, I know the budget crisis is still negatively affecting thousands of people’s lives. I was fortunate enough to be able to make the most of a difficult and unexpected situation, but many, if not most, of Illinois’ residents affected by the cuts are not so lucky. They do not have the same support systems and flexibility to be able to leave as the cuts and the impasse continue, squeezing Illinois’ residents more and more each day. While I was able to find stability in my life, I cannot say the same for those who relied on JCFS’ cut services, and for many of my colleagues who also lost their jobs that day. We are members of the Jewish community who have felt the cuts, and our lives have changed completely because of them.