History
We started as two groups: Southside Together Organizing for Power or “STOP,” founded in Woodlawn in 2004, and Not Me We, founded in 2020 in South Shore. In 2024, we merged to become Southside Together!
2004
Southside Together Organizing for Power was founded when community residents and students joined forces to save Grove Parc, a 504-apartment subsidized housing complex, slated for demolition in University of Chicago plans.
We worked with tenants to organize a campaign to stop the demolition. We won a public commitment to preserve the complex.
2005 - 2006
We worked with tenants to organize the Kimbark Tenants Association, stopping conversion of 100 affordable apartments to condos. And we forced their landlord, Leon Finney, to make repairs to the building.
We organized residents to push back against the Woodlawn New Community plan, which excluded low-income housing.
2007
We founded our youth program as Fearless Leading by the Youth. Youth led a campaign to win improvements in Cook Count's juvenile-detention center.
Grove Parc residents faced displacement again, this time because owners' neglect led to foreclosure. We organized and fought back. We invited to our community Preservation of Affordable Housing (POAH), to work with the tenants’ association to plan and win the permanent preservation of Grove Parc. This included a $250 million redevelopment and one-for-one replacement of all 504 subsidized apartments.
2008 - 2009
We organized the Mental Health Movement, which stopped Mayor Daley's plan to close four South Side free public mental-health clinics.
2010
Youth-program co-founder Damian Turner was shot. He was shot two blocks south of the University of Chicago hospital, but he was taken ten miles away, to Northwestern, where he passed away. We and our youth program founded the trauma-center campaign, calling for University of Chicago hospital to open a South Side trauma center.
2011
We protested closure of six mental-health clinics. This culminated in occupation of the Woodlawn clinic. Though we did not stop the clinics' closures, we made the issue a negative part of the legacy of Mayor Rahm Emanuel and his administration.
We formed the Chicago Tenants Council, bringing together tenants associations we organize for leadership development and campaign planning.
2012 - 2013
The Kimbark Tenants Association won new ownership and rehabilitation of their building.
The trauma-center campaign grew and created the Trauma Care Coalition.
2014
The trauma-center campaign won its first major victory: The University of Chicago committed to start taking sixteen- and seventeen-year-olds at its children's trauma center.
2015
Our youth’s restorative-justice campaigning won creation of a $500,000 Cook County restorative-justice grant program.
We founded the Woodlawn Restorative-Justice Hub.
After five years campaigning, we won a commitment by the University of Chicago to open a South Side trauma center.
2016
We co-founded a coalition for a Community Benefits Agreement around the Obama Center.
2017 - 2018
We developed official values.
Our youth program developed a social-justice club at Hyde Park Academy High School. Youth joined the Community Benefits Agreement campaign and won $40 million in improvements to their school building.
The Mental Health Movement created the Healing Village, a pop-up healing space near the closed Woodlawn mental-health clinic.
2019
We got Ald. Jeanette Taylor to introduce a Community Benefits Agreement ordinance for Woodlawn housing to Chicago's City Council.
2020
Amidst the pandemic and George Floyd uprisings, we and our #CopsOutCPS coalition cut the Chicago schools-police (CPS-CPD) annual contract from $33 million to $12 million. We came one vote short of canceling the contract entirely.
We got our Woodlawn CBA ordinance passed. It guaranteed that 52 vacant lots owned by Chicago’s government will be set aside for developments including housing affordable for residents at risk of displacement from rising rents — the majority of Woodlawn!
Not Me We formed with eight members. We developed our political education and theory of change.
We began monthly mutual aid at Parkside Elementary, which has continued in the years since. We confirmed our presence through four Local School Councils.
2021
Thanks to our youth, Hyde Park Academy became among the first majority Black (south/west-side) high schools to remove a school police officer, and it secured funds for an alternative staff member. STOP and Not Me We collaborated on and jointly claimed win.
With our Community Wellness coalition, we increased funding for Chicago's public clinics by $2 million per year — the first increase since the City closed its clinics.
We formed the CBA policy committee and publicly proposed CBA policies for South Shore.
We organized with tenants in a building owned by Vincent Lane, winning revocation of its license and payouts for displaced tenants. And we organized in three new buildings.
2022
We moved the City to set up 20 specific lots for developments which will have 157 affordable apartments.
We put a referendum on three wards’ ballots. It asked if the City should re-open clinics and remove police from mental-health first response — Treatment Not Trauma. Over 90% voted yes.
We conducted weekly canvasses to get a referendum for a CBA on the ballot in the 5th ward. We hosted community meetings to discuss the need for a CBA. We organized a large rally outside of Mayor Lightfoot’s house for a South Shore CBA. And we reached about 2000 community members.
2023
We put on many Woodlawn residents’ ballots a referendum asking if the City should set aside its large vacant lot near the Obama Center to build MORE affordable apartments. Over 90% voted yes.
We worked with South Shore organizers to introduce another CBA ordinance, for South Shore and Woodlawn.
We won funding to re-open two mental-health clinics in the City of Chicago’s 2024 budget, championed by Mayor Johnson.
We organized two new tenants unions, Catalyst Tenants Union and 312 Tenants Union, to prevent eviction and displacement of more than 100 Black families in Woodlawn and South Shore.
We hosted two public town-hall meetings and got the South Shore CBA ordinance introduced in Chicago’s City Council.
We launched a youth organizing summer program with eight young people from Parkside Elementary.
2024:
Our and allied youth won removal of school-based police from all Chicago Public Schools, and commitments to re-invest funds previously spent on police in community-based safety like restorative justice.
Our Community Wellness coalition won removal of all police from the City’s “CARE” mental-health first response program, so that only clinicians and EMTs for the City’s public-health departments respond.
Mayor Johnson announced that the City will directly run free mental-health services at THREE locations, including by re-opening the Roseland clinic, which our member Kowboy Jackson chained himself to in protest of its closure.
We held our biggest-ever event, a CBA summit with Not Me We attended by 550 people. Mayor Johnson participated.
We organized parents to get a new principal at Parkside Elementary.
We joined the national Tenants Union Federation as a co-founding member.
STOP and Not Me We merged to become Southside Together!