Ep. 55 - Organizing against Displacement with the Obama Community Benefits Agreement ft. Ashli Giles-Perkins & Ebonée Green

BrownTown and guests discuss the effects of the future Obama
Presidential Center (OPC) on Chicago's South Side, the organizing
for a CBA to ensure affordable housing for area residents, as
well as its relationship with healthcare, education, and police
violence. Ashli and Ebonée share how they came to the Obama CBA
coalition via BYP100 and breakdown what exactly a community
benefits agreement is as well as its importance to the Woodlawn
neighborhood, the South Side, and Chicago as a whole. Ebonée
details Chicago's public housing history before David explains
why his parents' journeyed from Mexico to Chicago. As the gang
digs deeper into Chicago politics and organizing, they go from
Obama's legacy amongst everyday Chicagoans to Mayor Lightfoot's
handling of the George Floyd uprising to the re-ignited fight to
divest from police and invest in Black communities.


After nearly five years since the announcement about the Center's
plan to "revitalize" the South Side, the CBA coalition stands
strong with growing support from across the city and the nation.
"We cannot separate the COVID-19 pandemic, protections for
essential workers, and defunding and abolition of police from the
right that we have to stay in our neighborhoods. As the current
uprisings have made clear: we must fight for investments in our
communities and our futures because it will not be given to us.
Housing matters. Black Lives Matter" (Obama CBA). Originally
recorded July 2, 2020.


GUESTS
Ashli Giles-Perkins is a 2020 graduate of Loyola University
Chicago School of Law and an Organizing Member of the Chicago
chapter of Black Youth Project 100. Ashli attended the University
of New Haven, and is originally from Connecticut, where she got
her organizing start. Ashli is a founding member of Bridgeport
Generation Now, Connecticut Organized for Racial Equity
(CT-CORE), and served as a Bernie delegate to the 2016 Democratic
National Convention in Philadelphia. Ashli’s work centers on
education equity, policy, and social justice. She has been a
member of BYP100 since January 2019. She enjoys traveling,
poetry, Jamaican food, trap music, dismantling systemic
inequalities through organizing, and she is a fierce mixologist
who owns a mobile bartending LLC.


Ebonée Green is a resident of South Shore in Chicago. She is an
artist, advocate, and urban educator. Ebonée holds a BA in
English from Boston College and MSEd in Education, Social Policy
from Northwestern University, and was recently accepted into
Harvard Graduate School's Doctor of Education Leadership program.
Ebonée is Florida born but rides hard for Chicago. She is an
organizing member of the Obama Community Benefits Agreement (CBA)
Coalition with BYP100.


This episode is part of a multimedia, cross-platform
collaboration with the Chicago
Reader. Visit
SoapBoxPO.com/Obama-CBA for
more!


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SOAPBOX MULTIMEDIA


WATCH more about the Obama CBA here.

READ more about the Obama CBA here.



Other topics mentioned:


July 11, 2020 - Lightfoot's Tent City Occupation &
all-day protest

UIC Voorhees Center on Affordable Housing & the Obama
Center

Original Obama Center announcement

#CopsOutCPS Campaign

SoapBox's What's Beef?: The Construction of Street
Culturalism



Follow Ashli on Instagram (personal, business) and Twitter; and
Ebonée on Instagram and Twitter. Learn more about the Obama
Community Benefits Agreement Coalition on their website and on
Twitter! Shoutout to all the coalition members!


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CREDITS: Intro music and engineering by Genta
Tamashiro with audio snippets of Ashli, recorded by Dakota
Sillyman at the June 11, 2020 Tent City action. Audio engineering
by Genta Tamashiro. Episode photo by Maxwell Evans, Block Club
Chicago.


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