ABOUT US
OUR MISSION
Communities United (CU) is a survivor-led, intergenerational racial justice organization in Chicago. At the heart of CU’s organizing is the development of grassroots leadership to build collective power to achieve racial justice and transformative social change. With this approach, CU focuses on advancing affordable housing, health equity, education justice, youth investment, immigrant rights, and shifting resources from the criminal justice and juvenile justice systems into restorative justice alternatives.
CU develops community leadership to build a shared root cause analysis of problems impacting their communities, to develop and advance innovative power-building strategies, and to engage in creating transformative systems change. CU takes a healing through justice approach to our work, acknowledging and addressing present day and historical trauma in communities of color, and working to promote personal and collective healing through the process of creating social change.
WHAT WE DO
LEADERSHIP DEVELOPMENT
We engage the community that have been most directly impacted by systems or policies that have harmed us and give them a voice/opportunity to become active agents of change/leader of change.
NARRATIVE
CHANGE
We amplify the lived experiences of youth and adult leaders to shift public narrative to drive change.
RESEARCH
We conduct community-led research to create change in systems and policies.
POLICY
We build coalitions and alliances to lead research and educate policymakers about issues impacting our communities to create systems change.
WHERE WE ORGANIZE
CU’s communities are powerful and resilient. CU members are low-income people of color coming from predominantly Black and Immigrant communities of Albany Park, Austin, Belmont Cragin, Roseland and West Ridge, which span the west, northwest, and south side of Chicago.
