Sisters, Brothers, and Kin,
Before the Pandemic, the East Side Freedom Library was making great progress convening our neighbors to share their stories about housing experiences and issues. We were working towards the articulation of a vision that had been built from the ground up. This process had involved film screenings (“Jim Crow of the North,” “Sold Out,” and “Detroit 48202”), informative panels (“The Labor Movement and the Fight for Housing Equity”), breakout conversations, and an East Side Housing Summit in November 2019. We had assembled a coalition that included such East Side organizations as Dayton’s Bluff Neighborhood Housing Services, MICAH, ABC Realty, Payne-Phalen District Council, Home Ownership Center, Cookie Cart, and others. Watch this great seven minute video that TPT-2 produced about our work: Building a Housing Movement on the East Side.
The Pandemic disrupted our momentum, but an AARP Community Challenge grant, which we received in August, has enabled us to reinvigorate this project. Ben Werner, who had been a leader in our coalition, has stepped in to take the lead in creating layers of organization which can democratically create an East Side Housing Plan which places equity at its center. We have revived the coalition as a working group and additional organizations have joined. We are also coalescing a Community Advisory Council as a vehicle for East Siders with the whole range of relationships to housing – landlords, home owners, renters, and the unhoused – to speak to each other and provide direction to the working group. Our goal is to produce an East Side Housing Plan by mid-2021.
Last month, we hosted an online forum which provided information about St. Paul’s new tenants’ protection ordinance. Here is a nine minute video which the AARP made about our work. Next week, the working group will conduct a phone-a-thon to reach East Side seniors and, on December 10, we will convene a Second Annual East Side Housing Justice Summit, online, with creative facilitation provided by our partners in the Million Artists Movement. We hope you will attend the Summit and, even more, become involved in this work. Please let us know if you are interested.
Love and Solidarity,
Peter Rachleff and Beth Cleary