Author: Julie Xu

Housing

From Lithuania to Cabrini-Green

Cross-cultural event offers new perspectives on housing and displacement

by 2 years ago

Suitcases arranged in front of a photograph of displaced persons at the Balzekas Museum of Lithuanian Culture. (Julie Xu)

Twenty-two year old Raymond Shaq McDonald was a child when the high rises at Cabrini-Green fell. Nijole Kasuba, a grandmother now, was just seven when her family decided to flee the advancing Red Army after they saw family members deported and killed in Siberia during the first Soviet Occupation in the 1940s. Their stories of displacement might seem very different, but last Saturday’s event, part of Inherit Chicago’s intercultural festival, explored the similarities in these stories of displacement.

Activism | Interview Issue 2017 | Interviews

From Summer Nights to the Long Haul

Resurrection Project campouts build youth leaders and community ties

by 2 years ago

Increase the peace youth leaders hold a private meeting recalling an incident with two local gang factions at the recently re-opened St. Michaels Community Center, Friday, August 4, 2017 (Sebastián Hidalgo)

Every few weeks this summer, a block in a South Side neighborhood was taken over by peace marches, workshops, free food, and an all-night campout. This is the Resurrection Project’s Increase the Peace campaign, a youth-led program that grew out of the tragic drive-by shooting of high school senior Naome Zuber in the fall of 2016. Naome was riding in the back seat of a car when a stray bullet ended her life. Her death galvanized her community; since then, other neighborhoods from Little Village to Englewood have come together as well, on these warm summer nights, to think about structural ways to stop gun violence long after the campouts end.