Logan Square Neighborhood Association
Q: Can you tell me more about the Logan Square Neighborhood Association? What are your specific roles in the organization? What is your organization’s mission?
Intern 1: So, LSNA has been around for like 60 years, and it's mainly focused on--it's a coalition of a bunch of different organizations, and the main goal is really socioeconomic and racial equity. So it's a really powerful grassroots organization. A lot of people come together for common goals, whether that be protesting or, you know, putting pressure on politicians for the things that are important to us, as a community. And then my role and all of our roles this summer, we are youth organizers in the housing department. So housing has a really important kind of role in Logan Square because of the gentrification that's been happening in the past couple of decades. People are being displaced as the rent goes up, so we're really focused on fighting for affordable housing.
Intern 2: That's part of the work we do at LSNA. The majority of it is like these grassroots issues and what we really get to make of that.
Intern 3: And we know that local politics is the most consequential, but it often gets the least amount of attention.
Intern 1: The crowning achievement at LSNA in recent years has been Emmett Street. It's kind of just been a kind of an act of like almost like an act of rebellion against gentrification because you go into the heart of Logan Square and you see this giant affordable housing complex and it reminds everyone that there's still people here that are working for affordable housing despite everything else that's going on. In the lead-up to this accomplishment, there were a lot of rallies, right, like kind of rallies and lobbying, and it was kind of like people really getting together and having a goal and working towards it and now it was it was really accomplished. So Emmett Street, the building has kind of been a motivation to keep working for similar things. So now we have a lot of other projects that we're kind of trying to make Emmett Street part two.
Q: What are some pertinent social justice issues currently impacting Logan Square?
Intern 4: [Translated from Spanish] I would like to see more [inaudible] to work with the community. It would also be really great to work more with kids in the community. And these projects help people and the environment and [inaudible]. On the other hand, in my experience in LSNA, I’ve seen that it really helps immigrants and they also offer housing resources in all of the parts of the city.
Intern 3: I think that gets at a fundamental thing of gentrification in terms of changes, is that when we look at a certain change and we say, "is it good or is it bad?" Because a lot of people say gentrification is good because you're just improving the community and how can you say improvement is bad? An easy way to explain it is we ask ourselves every time there's something new: "why?" Like what is this coming for and who is it intended for and who is going to benefit? Those kinds of questions kind of reveal to us what sorts of things we like and what sorts of things we don't. Because you'll see a lot of positive developments that objectively are nice. And yet we don't want them in our backyard because they are not for our people and they are to help a different demographic that's not Logan Square's community.
Intern 1: Yeah, and I think gentrification is just inherently segregating. I mean, we're kind of seeing like another phase of movement--of the demographic movement kind of. Because in the past, there was obviously white flight into the suburbs and you know, people didn't want to be, white people didn't want to be in the inner city. There was also a lot of, you know, redlining. There's just a lot of historic trends that have segregated the city. And now something that Christian tells us a lot about is how now people in the suburbs are kind of realizing "oh Chicago's where it's at, Chicago's interesting." You know, "it's fun." There's nightlife, there's food, we want to move there. And now there's like almost a new phase of wealthy white people coming in from the suburbs and kind of just like wreaking havoc on everything.
Q: The advocacy work that the LSNA does seems to be incredibly impactful. Can you speak to some more accomplishments or current initiatives that you’re most proud of?
Intern 2: We're very proud of our Parent Mentor Program. It started off as like a smaller initiative that has grown gigantic in our words. And so one of the proudest things that has happened recently is that we got an 8 million dollar increase to our budget so that we can spend--so it's basically, yeah, it's a huge victory for us because we have way more resources for our parents. So the Parent Mentor Program is we have a program where we're able to include parents from locally to work at their school within the classroom. So they're basically a teacher aide and the teacher is able to, you know, just get more help so that they can ask the parents "hey, can you check on this one student? He might need a little more help or one-on-one."
Intern 5: I've lived in Logan Square over 20 years now, so like my mom was a part of the Parent Mentor Program when I was in school, and that was around early 2000s, late 2000s. My mom came here as an immigrant, and that was kind of a place where like, I didn't feel unsafe in my school because my mom was there. I met lifelong friends because of the Parent Mentor Program at LSNA. My mom was a parent mentor and got to meet other parents. And usually it's like Hispanic moms that really want to be a part of their children's school. So like, it was really cool to see my mom work on her skills--and obviously their process has changed now since, like 15 years ago. But the skills that they teach the parents at LSNA is really, I don't think any other organization is doing it like we are.
Intern 6: We should highlight—getting in La Placita, because it's also one of the bigger things we've accomplished. So where right now is... Kedzie? Kedzie and Milwaukee—
Intern 3: Right at the Logan Square Blue Line—
Intern 6: Yeah, right where the Eagle is. That area is getting transformed into a bigger green space to be more walkable, like family-friendly, because as you mentioned before, it was like the mega-mall where people and families would go and spend time together on the weekends. And I feel like La Placita will be getting back to that, where you have a space that you are comfortable to go outside, hang out with your family, you know, have a picnic, plan a barbecue, you know? And so, it very much just brings back the whole idea of the community coming together and being this big family that has all this good positive news to share with each other, like by just hanging out in the big green space.
Intern 3: And the reason it was such a victory for us is because the Chicago Department of Transportation explicitly agreed to call it La Placita and sort of designed this to be a Latin American style placita, because we really needed to create more spaces where representation was actually going on and people felt like this was their neighborhood still. So that was really important for us.