Say what you will about 2020, but it was a year for people in Chicago to make their own agendas and to control their own destinies. Chicago organizers took action not just for themselves, but for young people growing up in the city, especially in Black and Brown neighborhoods. In the face of adversity, these folks who call the Windy City home got to work in times of crisis, and their work hasn’t gone unnoticed. Here are 11 people who gave a damn in 2020; and they’re nowhere close to stopping any time soon.
In 2016, Laundi Keepseagle, a Standing Rock Reservation native, met rapper Vic Mensa at the No DAPA protests, where they discussed sustainable change that would be grounded in community and safety for Black and Brown youth. Two years later, Save Money, Save Life was born. SMSL’s mission is to use art, education, entertainment, and projects to foster and empower BIPOC folks, whether it be training street medics volunteers to aid gun violence or hold drives for back-to-school aid initiatives. Over the course of this year, the organization pivoted from their regular programming and helped distribute 100,000 pounds of food across the city, raised funds and awareness for homeless youth during a sleepout, and took to the streets to protest for George Floyd and Black lives. Keepseagle has, among other youth programs, a Black and Indigenous teen exchange program in the works for Summer 2021. “Living on a reservation, I didn’t really understand the rest of the world, which limited possibilities for myself, and I know a lot of people from the city also experience that. We live within these borders and don’t understand the rest of the world.”
Rivka Yeker & Morgan MartinezFounders of Hooligan Magazine
Pidgeon Pagonis found out they were intersex after retrieving their medical records at 18 during their freshman year at DePaul University, and thus the journey toward ending the unnecessary medical procedures began. At the time, Lurie’s Children’s Hospital, where Pagonis was harmed at birth in the late 80s, was across the street. This past July, with the unstoppable work by the Intersex Justice Project, cofounded by Pagonis, Lurie’s released a statement acknowledging the harm done to patients and is making conscious efforts to end intersex surgeries. “A lot of us who are in a social movement come from a place of oppression or trauma,” Pagonis says. “When you grow up different [in a way] that’s so foundational to society [like] the [gender] binary, you feel like you’ll never be loved as you are.” Now at 34, Pagonis is focusing on writing their memoir coming out in fall 2021 and plans on taking steps toward restorative, healing practices, citing, “Activism can be an addiction.”
