FTP - Chicago

10/07/2022

It’s that time of year again! DM us with any questions or drop off coordination.

09/22/2022

We are raising funds to secure our storefront for the coming year. We need your support to continue our organizing in Albany Park!

The Julio Zhindon-Guaman Workers Center, The Albany Park Organizing Committee, and For … dan tom needs your support for Save The Albany Park Organizing Space

07/25/2022

Funds Needed to Keep Our Space and to Continue Organizing!!

Please Donate!!

https://gofund.me/5ca7ee3d

06/23/2022

Read, share, hold onto this knowledge. Decolonizing takes many forms.

05/21/2022

Our garden beds at the Chi Nations Youth Council garden are officially in progress! Very soon we’ll be providing our weekly food distributions with fresh produce. Growing and distributing our own food on land controlled by Indigenous communities is a political act, and one we are joyous to engage in. The South African Communist Party shares this position too: https://limpopomirror.co.za/articles/news/29080/2015-02-06/autilise-your-backyard-gardens-to-defend-the-revolutiona-sacp.

05/17/2022

Help our Comrades in Albany Park Save Their Space

Official Post from Albany Park Organizing Committee

05/13/2022

Take action now! Tell Kim Foxx to exonerate community members targeted by her war on drugs!

Background:
Since April 1st, 2021, CPD has been arresting community members off the CTA’s Howard Red Line stop as a part of their Operation: End of the Line. CPD has been surveilling and arresting our neighbors due to an alleged rise in crime in this area of Rogers Park. They have been charging Howard residents with felony drug charges, and many have been sentenced to time in prison or put on parole.
Kim Foxx, the State’s Attorney for Cook County, was elected in 2016 on a platform which promised to “prioritize resources away from low-level offenses to focus on violent crime.” At the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, Kim Foxx promised to refuse to prosecute low-level drug offenses. This was a lie. Our neighbors have been arrested and charged, some for transactions that were proven to have involved less than $50. Kim Foxx’s Assistant State’s Attorneys have been at every court date for our neighbors, despite the promises Kim Foxx made to her constituents.
We are demanding that Kim Foxx drop all the charges related to the Operation End of the Line and uphold her promise not to prosecute low level charges. We believe that this Operation is a continuation of the racist war on drugs, where predominantly Black men are targeted by the state and have their lives turned upside down when they are sent to prison or put on parole. We believe that drug use is a public health crisis, and that criminalizing poverty and drug use is one way that the State maintains a monopoly on violence. We believe in a harm reduction model, which uses evidence-based, life-saving approaches to drug use that sustainably diminish overdose, disease transmission, and other drug-related dangers. This practice builds trust between individuals and with organizations, all while encouraging collective care. Developing trust opens opportunities to use drugs more safely, and fosters new connections built around healthcare. Harm reduction must be implemented by the community, for the community.
We have attempted many times throughout the past year to contact Kim Foxx. We have called and emailed her, we have gone to her office, and we have attempted to speak with her Assistant State’s Attorneys at court. Kim Foxx has not responded to us.
We are hoping you will use the below email script to send an email to Kim Foxx’s office to demand her to drop these charges and uphold the promises which she was elected on.

Kim Foxx’s email: [email protected]

Email Script:
Dear Cook County State's Attorney Kim Foxx,
I am reaching out in support of community members of Rogers Park, who demand that your office overturn sentencing and drop any remaining charges that resulted from the Chicago Police Department’s “Operation: End of the Line.” Despite your promise to refuse to prosecute low-level drug offenses during the COVID-19 pandemic, assistant state’s attorneys have pursued many of these charges, resulting in our neighbors being put in jail and on probation.
Please respond to [email protected] to further discuss rectifying this racist operation.
We look forward to hearing from you,
YOUR NAME

05/10/2022

A message from our comrades in Albany Park:

Help Us Raise Funds To Save Our Organizing Space

We have 4 ongoing programs that are primarily run out of our organizing space at 3625 W Lawrence:

Food and Clothing Distribution

Our food and clothing distributions happen every Sunday at 12pm out of our storefront. We provide between 30-60 families with food and clothing every week. We offer canned, fresh, and refrigerated food to the community members who come on Sundays. Much of our clothes and food are sources from donations from supporters in the community.

English Classes

English class takes place at the storefront every Tuesday at 6pm. Community members gather for free English classes in our backroom. Our classes are open to all students and are 100% free.

Garden

We run a series of plots out of the Chi Nations Youth Council garden at Wilson and Pulaski. We bring neighbors together to help with the maintenance of the garden and bring the fruits of our labors back to the community in the form of fresh produce.

Workers Center

We are working with jornaleros to build a workers center based out of our store front. We are organizing the disparate jornaleros in our community to form a union and hiring center. Many jornaleros are often exploited by their bosses and go long periods of time without good paying work. We seek to unite and defend the rights of all workers in Chicago by asserting the legal rights of jornaleros, providing resources and support when needed, and helping connect jornaleros to employment.

We are asking all who support the work that is being done to donate what they can to save our space. We need consistent sustainable funding to continue our organizing.

Official Post from Albany Park Organizing Committee

05/09/2022

Help the Albany Park Organizing Committee save their organizing space.

A message from our comrades in Albany Park:

Help Us Raise Funds To Save Our Organizing Space

We are the Albany Park Organizing Committee, an organization made up of the working class and poor people of Albany Park and the surrounding communities. Our primary purpose is for the advancement of our class. We seek to develop community control over community resources through struggle, solidarity, and education.

We have been organizing in Albany Park for 2.5 years. Over this time we have established a network of poor and working class activists and supporters who work together to support each other and the masses of Albany Park. Through collaboration and feedback from the neighborhood we have initiated programs and campaigns designed for the people and conditions in our community.

In our time building our organization we have accomplished and achieved a lot:

• Our food and clothing distribution has been meeting the needs of community members since we began our work 2.5 years on the corner of Central Park and Lawrence.
• For the past two winters we have turned our organizing space into a warming center for our cold and unhoused neighbors.
• We have stood up and defeated gentrifier developers who sought to commodify our community.
• Over the pandemic we gave the community access to medical care and facilitated the distribution of PPE, vaccines, and tests as we worked together to make it through the worst of COVID-19.
• We tend to a community garden that provides fresh produce for our distributions.
• We meet the request from our community for ESL resources with weekly ESL classes.

We are asking all who support the work that is being done to donate what they can to save our space. We need consistent sustainable funding to continue our organizing.

Official Post from Albany Park Organizing Committee

05/04/2022

The so-called supreme court is gearing up to criminalize abortion once again. A time like this can pull us into pessimism too easily, so we've been reading zines like this to preserve our revolutionary optimism.

Before Roe v. Wade legalized abortion in the U.S. in 1973, the Abortion Counseling Services of Women’s Liberation was a group of over one hundred women in Chicago who each anonymously answered to “Jane.” When the group started in 1969, even providing information about abortion was a criminal act. Still, abortions were being sought and performed—and many people died as a result of the black market conditions of a procedure gone awry. Jane’s role was to refer pregnant people to honest, safe, and reliable doctors and to provide them with empowering information, options, and agency in their own healthcare. And later, to learn to perform these abortions themselves and teach agency.