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A note about our summer...
Greetings!  


We are excited to write to you as the three Youth Coordinators for the Chicago Freedom School (CFS) 2012 Freedom Fellowship, which just concluded this past week. We are each alumni of the Freedom Fellowship and CFS has been a very important place in each of our lives.

This year, we had 18 youth from high schools across the city and from a range of neighborhoods.  Over the past four weeks, they learned about oppression, social justice histories, movement-building principles and how to work collectively to create change. Some personal highlights for us were:
 
  • Engaging with other youth from Hands of Peace, which brings Palestinian and Israeli youth to the United States to learn from and work with peers here. While we live across the world from one another, we quickly saw how much we share in our experiences with violence and our hope to find ways to make a positive difference in our communities.
  • Marching in the Disability Rights Parade, which was an unplanned weekend event that most of the youth volunteered to attend. This was a great way for us to act on what we had learned about being visible allies to other communities in their struggles for justice and equal rights.
  • Working in cohorts every week to develop Organizing Campaigns to carry out this fall and beyond. The two areas of organizing are Healthy Communities and Fair and Just Schools. In each group, we worked to identify specific target areas for action, created tactics to reach our goals and built timetables and action plans for our efforts ahead.

 

We will remember a lot of laughter, and tears too. Along with the other CFS staff, we worked hard to create a safe and peaceful place where we each could put down our guard and work together in truth, support and hopefulness. We believe that happened and are excited for the next phase of the program. If you want to learn and see more, check out Richard's 2012 Freedom School Summer Montage.

  

Thank you for the support you have provided to the Freedom School in the past. We hope you will consider making a donation today to help support the work ahead! We have been told that if every person who gets this email contributes just $20, we would be able to meet the costs for the Freedom Fellows organizing work this coming year.

  

Your support really does make a difference and we are grateful for any amount you can provide!

  

Peace,

  

Karla A., Cristina R., and Richard W.

2012 Freedom Fellowship Youth Coordinators

 
2012 Chicago Freedom School Summer!
2012 Chicago Freedom School Summer!


 
 
 
 
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Chicago Freedom School
719 S. State St.
Chicago, Illinois 60605
hannah@chicagofreedomschool.org
312-435-1201