Stories from the Frontlines
Campaign Overview
Chicago's environmental justice movement is decades old, and most of it was never written down. We are recording it, from the organizers who started this work to the ones carrying it now.
Status: Active and ongoing, growing as a video series and as live community events.
Led by: CEJN, with member organizations and community partners across the city.
Scope: Citywide
Environmental justice as a movement started in Chicago, in Altgeld Gardens, with a mother asking questions about her neighbors' health. Nearly fifty years of organizing followed, and most of it lives only in the memories of the people who did it. When an organizer retires or passes, that knowledge tends to leave with them.
Why This Exists
Stories from the Frontlines brings legacy organizers and the people picking up the work into the same room, on video and in person. Recent sessions paired organizers who built this movement in the seventies and eighties with younger organizers now carrying it, including a participant who helped write the original environmental justice principles.
It is also a place for individual stories. The pollution and its impact on family, what a neighborhood used to look like, what it took to get one hearing scheduled. Each story connects to a fight that is still going.
What It Is
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