We will be meeting next on Thursday, February 10th from 7:30 – 8:45 pm on Zoom. Please fill out this RSVP form to let us know if you can make it!
We will be meeting next on Thursday, February 10th from 7:30 – 8:45 pm on Zoom. Please fill out this RSVP form to let us know if you can make it!
Register here to join JCUA’s first Non-Violent Direct Action Training! This training is meant to give JCUA members the theoretical background, skills, and grounding necessary to participate in non-violent direct action, including potential civil disobedience. Attending the training is not a commitment to join any action, but we hope that attendees will be open to taking action with JCUA and our coalition partners in the future.
As of now, the training will be held in-person. All participants must send proof of vaccination in advance, get a negative COVID test that week, and wear a mask throughout the training. We will be monitoring COVID numbers in advance of the training, and let you know if anything changes.
This program is for members of JCUA’s Or Tzedek teen organizing fellowship. For more information about the fellowship, please contact Mara Wolkoff (mara@jcua.org).
Sign up here to join the February meeting of JCUA’s housing & economic justice committee, where we’re fighting to make sure all of our neighbors are housed and that our city and state’s resources are distributed more justly. Our current campaign is Bring Chicago Home, which seeks to create a dedicated revenue stream for homelessness.
This program is for members of JCUA’s Or Tzedek teen organizing fellowship. For more information about the fellowship, please contact Mara Wolkoff (mara@jcua.org).
Please join us for our upcoming Organizing 201 training! Zoom registration to come.
This program is for members of JCUA’s Or Tzedek teen organizing fellowship. For more information about the fellowship, please contact Mara Wolkoff (mara@jcua.org).
Sign up here for this Town Hall meeting for residents of the 3rd, 4th, 5th, and 7th Wards. The town hall will give residents an opportunity to learn about homelessness in Chicago and what the Bring Chicago Home Campaign is doing to address it, and allow people the opportunity to directly encourage their alderpeople to support this important legislation.
Please register here to join us for the virtual monthly meeting of our Community Safety Committee. We will have a brief orientation for new committee members at 5:40PM.
About the committee:
Formerly known as the Police Accountability Committee, Community Safety is committed to ensuring restorative and power-shifting approaches to criminal justice and policing. JCUA members are passionate about these issues for a variety of reasons. As a multiracial organization, we recognize many of our members are further exposed to police violence because of their racial identity or where they live. As organizers, social workers, and other community workers, we see the impact of communities being heavily policed and systemically divested from. As Jews, we know that our ancestors have survived state-sanctioned violence, and that we have a responsibility to speak up about those who are experiencing it today. Guided by these recognitions and values, JCUA members spent years working on the GAPA (Grassroots Alliance for Police Accountability) and ECPS (Empowering Communities for Public Safety) ordinances to give communities a powerful voice in determining what policing, policy, and reform in Chicago looks like. After ECPS passed in City Council this summer, JCUA is at the forefront of ensuring a successful implementation of the Community C0mmission on Public Safety.
This program is for members of JCUA’s Or Tzedek teen organizing fellowship. For more information about the fellowship, please contact Mara Wolkoff (mara@jcua.org).
Please sign up here to join the JCUA North Suburban Organizing Team for a learning and action event with our partners at HIAS and the JCUA Immigration Committee, being kicked off by Rabbi Ari Margolis from Congregation Or Shalom.
We will learn why and how we as a Jewish community can, and must, take action to support refugee families in IL, look at current refugee resettlement through a Jewish (and Passover) lens, and provide action steps for how you can support refugees in IL.
Register here to join us for our monthly Immigration Committee meeting on Zoom. There will be an orientation for new committee members at 5:40 pm.
About the committee:
JCUA became involved in organizing for immigrant’s rights shortly after the election of Donald Trump in November 2016. Many members of Chicago’s progressive Jewish community were compelled to take action against the Trump campaign’s hateful anti-immigrant rhetoric, guided by their Jewish values of welcoming the stranger and their Jewish family’s complex histories with immigration. Originally named “Do Not Stand Idly By,” JCUA’s Immigrant Justice Committee became a consistent facet of the organization’s work. In order to connect with Chicago’s powerful immigrant community, JCUA joined ICIRR, the Illinois Coalition for Refugee Rights, which works at the city, state, and federal levels to pass legislation that makes Illinois more welcoming for immigrant families and communities. Recently, members have supported campaigns limiting local law enforcement interaction with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), erasing Chicago’s Gang Database, and providing a pathway to citizenship for all undocumented people in the United States.
Passover is when Jews retell the story of leaving Egypt to find safety. In that spirit, JCUA is holding “For We Were Strangers” — a joint fundraiser with HIAS Chicago to support refugee resettlement. Half of the money raised will support the HIAS Welcome Fund, which serves refugee families as they settle into Chicago. Our fundraiser will kick off with a Relational Fundraising Training–please register here!–where we’ll dive into issues of wealth and class and learn relational fundraising skills.
This program is for members of JCUA’s Or Tzedek teen organizing fellowship. For more information about the fellowship, please contact Mara Wolkoff (mara@jcua.org).