5th Annual James Thindwa Grassroots Organizing Fund
JOIN US OCTOBER 8, 2024!
Join us in person for the 5th Annual James Thindwa Grassroots Organizing Fund Celebration!
Tuesday, October 8, 2024, at 5:30pm at
Chicago Teachers Union, 1901 W Carroll Ave.
Light food and refreshments will be provided.
REGISTER TODAY!
The event is free but donations are welcome.
In Conversation with...
Meet our special guest and the panel.
Special Guest
Bill Ayers
Bill Ayers — Distinguished Professor of Education and Senior University Scholar at the University of Illinois at Chicago (retired). Bill has written extensively on social justice, democracy, and education as a transformative force in society. His works include the newly published When Freedom is the Question, Abolition is the Answer: Reflections on Collective Liberation, as well as A Kind and Just Parent, Fugitive Days: A Memoir, Public Enemy: Confessions of an American Dissident, and “You Can’t Fire the Bad Ones!” And 18 other Myths about Teachers, Teachers’ Unions, and Public Education.
Moderator
Damon A. Williams
Damon A. Williams is a movement builder, organizer, hip-hop performing artist, educator, and media maker from the south side of Chicago. He is the co-director of the #LetUsBreathe Collective, an artistic activist organization birthed out of supply trips to support the Ferguson uprising in resistance to the murder of Mike Brown. In the summer of 2020, Damon co-created the Black Abolitionist and launched #DefundCPD, a mass redistributive campaign to redirect power and resources away from the Chicago Police Department. Damon is also the co-host of AirGo, a radio show and podcast showcasing culture workers reshaping Chicago and beyond for the more equitable and creative.
Panelist - Final 5 Campaign
Alicia Brown
Alicia Brown is a community leader and current co-director of the Final 5 Campaign. She is a restorative justice practitioner, circle keeper, and abolitionist. She enjoys writing and was recently published in the “Envisioning Justice Curricular Concepts Resource Guide, Incarcerated Mothers: Illinois Humanities” (2019). Additionally, she performs pieces that she has written.
Alicia is a proud mother of four beautiful children, and is striving to make the world better for them.
Panelist - Chicago Dissenters
Alex Y. Ding
Alex Y. Ding is an organizer and trainer based in Chicago. They are a co-director of Dissenters, a national anti-militarist youth organization fighting to divest from war and policing, and reinvest in life-giving institutions. They have 10+ years of experience in student and community organizing on campaigns to divest from policing and the U.S. war machine, end life without parole, fight for free college, various electoral campaigns, and more. Alex believes in the power of transformative organizing, campaigns, and base building to transform both our people and our material conditions.
Panelist- Black Midwifery Collective
Nora Kropp
Nora Kropp is a Certified Professional Midwife (CPM) specializing in community-based (out-of-hospital) birth. She has a public health background and over 30 years of experience as a perinatal health researcher and organizer. Nora trained as a midwife in Nepal and at Maternidad La Luz in El Paso, Texas. She worked in a rural home birth practice in North Carolina, in family planning and abortion services at Planned Parenthood in Chicago, and with global perinatal health research teams in the US, Asia, and South America. She lived in India for ten years, where she co-founded the Bangalore Birth Network and helped incubate a freestanding birth center. She served as a Social Science Ethics Committee member at the Indian Institute of Management, Centre for Public Policy in Bangalore. Nora currently works with the Black Midwifery Collective in Chicago, where she
Past Recipients of the James Thindwa Grassroots Organizing Fund:
Bring Chicago Home (2023)
Bring Chicago Home Campaign (Housing Justice) is a grassroots movement of Chicagoans committed to creating a dedicated revenue stream to combat homelessness in Chicago. The coalition aims to restructure the Real Estate Transfer Tax (RETT), a one-time tax on properties when they are sold to create a substantial and legally dedicated revenue stream to provide permanent affordable housing for people experiencing homelessness. The new tax would generate $163 million annually to be dedicated to combating homelessness.
Illinois Worker Cooperative Alliance (2023)
Illinois Worker Cooperative Alliance (Workers Rights) is a multiracial, multilingual alliance of worker-led organizations formed to promote, educate and support the development of worker cooperatives in Illinois. IWCA is proud to be the first Seed Commons lending peer active in Illinois. Their vision is to create stable economic resources and workplace democracy for low-wage communities.
Not Me, We (2022)
Not Me, We is a Black-led organizing group in the South Shore neighborhood of Chicago fighting for issues around racism, housing, and education. They organize poor and working-class community members, allowing for mutual aid and collective power.
Survivors Know (2022)
Survivors Know is a membership organization of survivors that channels the power of those most impacted by sexual violence and sexual harassment to organize workplaces against misogyny and violent patriarchy. They place survivors’ needs, rights, and hopes over those of perpetrators, corporations, and institutions.
Coalition to Decarcerate Illinois (2021)
The Coalition to Decarcerate IL is a group of activists, loved ones of the incarcerated, and formerly and currently incarcerated individuals working to end the extreme, unending, and ineffective prison lockdown in the Illinois Department of Corrections (IDOC). Since March 2020, their incarcerated community members in IDOC have often been confined to their cells for 23 hours a day, while COVID-19 continues to spread and their mental health worsens. For the past year, the coalition has been mobilizing and advocating for protecting the mental and physical health of people in prison. Their work is focused on pressuring the Illinois Government and IDOC to implement effective COVID-19 precautions, end the ineffective and torturous lockdown, and release people.
IL Workers in Action (2021)
The Illinois Workers in Action is a grassroots organization that empowers Black and Latinx workers through education, organizing, solidarity, worker power, and rights. They address violations and discrimination in the workplace, build leadership and worker power. Some of the violations and discrimination include wage theft, harassment, sick days, and OSHA violations.
Lift the Ban on Rent Control (2020)
Lift the Ban Coalition is a statewide coalition advocating for rent control and the repeal of the Rent Control Preemption Act — which prohibits local communities from implementing rent control — as a policy option to sustain affordable hous-ing throughout Illinois. Passing the referendum offers a tool for Chicago’s economic well-being and access to affordable housing for all.
SoapBox Productions and Organizing (2020)
SoapBox Productions and Organizing utilizes multimedia curation to elevate social movements in Chicago centering education, entertainment, and structural change. Their video and photography work challenges dominant narratives to raise consciousness and critique oppressive systems. Their long-running podcast “Bourbon ‘N Browntown” creates dialogue with guests about important historical and con-temporary social movements.
Who was James Thindwa?
James Thindwa, a former Crossroads Board member and longtime Chicagoan, died of cancer in January 2020. James had a passionate commitment to social justice and an abiding belief in the power of ordinary people to change the world. Born in Harare Zimbabwe and raised as well in Blantyre Malawi, James moved to the United States in 1974 to attend Berea College in Kentucky. There he began his commitment, as an African immigrant, toward forging solidarity with African American struggles. Upon earning an MA from Miami University, and briefly considering a career in academia—and wisely rejecting it—James began his beloved work as a community organizer. Spanning issues from climate justice to racial justice and the right of workers to unionize, James’ incredible organizing skills touched countless people and communities. The staff director of Citizen Action Coalition of Indiana, Ohio Citizen Action and Metro Seniors in Action in Chicago, he also served for many years as executive director of Chicago Jobs With Justice, where he fought in numerous campaigns, most memorably in the fight for a municipal living wage ordinance. His work with JwJ was featured on a Bill Moyers show in 2009, of which James was very proud.
More About James Thindwa
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