Newsletter | September 2019
Membership Party
On Friday, August 23rd, ATU threw a membership party at Tortuga’s Latin Kitchen to celebrate the power of organized tenants and to officially launch our dues model. Over 60 community members turned out for an evening of food, drinks, and dancing — and to share stories of their common struggle for dignified housing.
Those who signed up to be dues-paying members of ATU received a package including t-shirts, buttons, stickers, tactics zines, membership cards, and our brand-new member handbook (see excerpt below!). Members also donated prizes for a fundraiser raffle, drawing from their array of talents to offer items and services like baked goods, haircuts, and psychic readings.
On behalf of us all, many thanks to the Party Planning Committee for their work in organizing a great night, to those who offered their time and labor, and to anyone who came out and celebrated!
If you weren’t able to attend but would like to become a dues-paying member of ATU, please contact us here!
APDN Block Party
The Albany Park neighbors from the Lawrence/Lawndale/Wilson block had a final communal block party on Saturday Sept. 14th coordinated by the Albany Park Defense Network (APDN). APDN seeks to ensure that all immigrants and residents can feel safe, thrive and remain in the community they helped build.
The perfect summer afternoon and evening was filled with music, endless food, grill smoke, bouncy castles, lawn chairs, families, laughter, community, and new friends meeting and building a more organized neighborhood against ICE raids.
APDN is a coalition of neighborhood organizations including Organized Communities Against Deportations (OCAD), the Autonomous Tenants Union (ATU), 33rd Ward Working Families, Latino Union, National Domestic Workers Alliance, Albany Park Neighbors for Peace and Justice and Christ Lutheran Church. We invite other organizations and all residents to join us! We are organizing a rapid response network to document and deter immigration enforcement activity in the neighborhood and support families under threat.
Albany Park is one of the most diverse neighborhoods in Chicago. It is home to dozens of immigrant communities and more than 40 languages are spoken in its public schools.
What Is Gentrification?
Click through for an excerpt from ATU’s newly published Members Handbook.
