On Tuesday evening European fellows took an action and joined almost 3 000 Chicagoans in the fight to take back the jobs, schools, housing and safety net. On October 15, Romanian fellow Lia Gaudi and Slovak fellow Boba Baluchova (the newest interns in ‘Chicago Coalition for the Homeless’: CCH) with 150 co-workers, organizers and leaders from CCH attended the event: “Take Back Chicago!” in UIC Forum at 5 pm. The girls were there already at 3 pm and helped the organizers from the core organizations ‘Grassroots collaborative’ & ‘Stand up! Chicago’ to set up the room and distribute printed materials about the event.
At this event about 35 organizations called for affordable housing, fair taxes, increasing of minimum wage, stop public schools’ closing (more info: http://standupchicago.org). Majority of the main hall of UIC Forum (fast-food and supermarket workers etc.) declared that a salary: 8,5 USD/per hour is not enough for living in dignity…
The fellows Annamaria Kovacs (Hungary) and Laura Stefanut (Romania) joined their friends Lia & Boba and took a lot of photos during the rally. Being present during the preparation of program, planning the agenda and setting up the room is very important for community organizer – to use the power of people, to have a control of event and to push the guest-speakers (politicians on hot chair on the stage) to make right decisions. It was inspiring rally – full of courageous people.