As pervasive and daunting as the housing crisis may seem, some Chicago-area citizens are fighting back, leveraging their organizing prowess and political message against the banking interests hurting their communities.
1/19/2012 Tene Smith prays at a press conference outside her re-occupied home. Photo courtesy of Liberate the Southside
On January 19, a group called Liberate the Southside, alongside other affinity organizations, including Southsiders for Unity and Liberation (SOUL) and Occupy the Southside, held a press conference outside of a home that activists had occupied near the end of 2011.
Having taken control of the house and pumped $2,500 worth of renovations into the property, community leaders and activists gathered to announce that they were moving in a family: single mother Tene Smith and her two children.
Smith works two part-time jobs and takes welding classes at a community college.
Rev. Booker T. Vance, organizer for Liberate the Southside and president of SOUL, spoke at the event. When asked if the action was legal, Vance responded that ?it?s legal in the sense that it?s illegal what [the banks] are doing to the community.?
?This is one of the primary examples of not only talking the talk, but walking the walk,? he continued.
Located at 87th and Kenwood, the home is a foreclosed property that has been vacant for over two years.
Newly settled in her home, Smith expressed excitement that?instead of waiting for solutions?people were creating their own: ?The banks were bailed out by the tax payers, and given a second chance. I feel that working families should be given a second chance, too.?
This is the first home occupation organized by Liberate the Southside, and what happens remains to be seen. But with strong ties to the community, the activists have no shortage of support.
As Lev Hirschhorn, an organizer for both Liberate the Southside and SOUL, told the Occupied Chicago Tribune, cooperative organizing empowers those left out of the decision-making process of the elite and strengthens community relationships in the fight for economic justice.
Hirschhorn wants to change what he says is a ?fundamentally broken? system. He explained, ?The way around that is to build alliances across class and race and to make a system that works for everybody. And the only way to do that is to organize. That?s where you can get the power you need to achieve.?
The work of Liberate the Southside, along with other housing rights groups across Chicago and the nation, heralds a bold form of community organizing that calls attention to the absurdity of mass homelessness in a world of abundant housing infrastructure. Coupled with the Occupy movement and the reintroduction of inequality into public discourse, this brand of activism poses an unavoidable challenge to the powers-that-be.
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Source: http://occupiedchicagotribune.org/2012/03/liberate-the-southside-moves-family-into-vacant-home/
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