For those of you who don’t know me, I’m Mara, and I’ve been JCUA’s Manager of Youth Organizing and Education for the last five years. As I move into a new role at JCUA, I’d like to take this moment to reflect on all of the powerful high school organizing work we have built over these last years together!

In the last five years, we’ve had over 70 unique participants in the Or Tzedek Internship, built out a youth-led Organizing Caucus at JCUA, and had 12 teens participate in a summer leadership intensive. 

Or Tzedek, our flagship program, and the center of our youth organizing work, is an academic year-long community organizing training program for Chicagoland high school students. Participants come together for workshops on community building, identity development, community organizing skill building, and social justice issues in Chicago and Illinois (housing, immigration, policing, and the environment). Halfway through the year, participants go on a weekend-long Shabbaton retreat where they select one of the campaigns they have learned about to focus their action on in the second half of the year. Through this program, JCUA has become a political and spiritual home for so many of our young people as they become powerful leaders on the issues they care most about.

As youth have become more integrated into JCUA’s campaign work overall, I have seen them form close intergenerational relationships with other JCUA members, staff, and coalition members. Over the years, youth have organized a Youth Weekend of Action for statewide tax reform, have organized their Rabbis to sign on in support of housing justice, have led canvasses to talk to their neighbors, have traveled to Springfield to lobby their legislators about immigration justice, have spoken at rallies outside of City Hall, and so much more.  Our youth have shown us they are not only the leaders of the future, but can lead our movements for justice today!

As we look toward starting the 6th cohort year of Or Tzedek and welcome a new Youth Leadership Coordinator staff person, we ask that you support this work of training our young folks to be powerful organizers, and in helping them form the relationships and community they need to sustain their justice work for the long term. On September 29, Or Tzedek  cohort members will begin the work of deep relationship building, learning about the issues that impact them and their neighbors, and the Jewish history and traditions that guide us today.

Donate to support a student’s stipend, to sponsor a workshop, to help us put on our crucial mid-year Shabbaton, or to create materials for a youth-led action item!