We’re hosting monthly webinars to share best practices, resources and tools from mutual aid projects in Chicago and beyond.
By Andrea Hart
EAT community out sharing COVID resources to informal economy workers (Photo: Provided)
The world may look a lot different since our last Public Newsroom in December 2019 but one thing hasn’t changed—Chicagoans know how to come together to fight for each other. Community-led efforts to provide mutual aid or address information needs during the COVID-19 pandemic have popped up across the city. And as we’ve surveyed our community to hear about their info needs during this pandemic, some folks have said they miss having a space to exchange ideas and best practices.
At its core the Public Newsroom is a dedicated space for this kind of connection. While we’re still cooking up a restructure of our Public Newsroom, we’ve decided to make a slight return with a digital, monthly version of our workshop series to bake into our City Bureau Pop-Ups. This time we’ll be showcasing community-led efforts that are providing mutual aid, supporting local information needs and fostering joy. Each workshop will only be an hour long, and we’ll still make it interactive with breakout rooms and icebreakers. In these unprecedented times, this is our attempt to double down on the Public Newsroom as a resource space, a deconstructive space.
We’re kicking off this reboot on April 30 with a webinar featuring Chicago’s Nicole Laport, the communications director of Equity and Transformation (EAT). EAT is a nonprofit that builds social and economic equity for Black Chicagoans engaged in the informal economy, serving the core communities of Austin, Englewood and West Garfield Park. EAT defines informal economy workers as the “childcare providers, the bucket boys that we pass on the way to the train everyday, the bootleg DVD man or woman at your local barber shop, the person selling loose cigarettes two for a dollar in front of the local liquor store, the trans and cis gendered commercial sex workers in our community—they are survivors.”
Laport will share how EAT developed a three-part community care intervention in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, including: The Life Kit with up-to-date information and resources on COVID; gift cards for residents not eligible for federal stimulus; and podmapping tools to establish community care networks.
Check out more details and register for the webinar on April 30 here. Registration is required for this event to ensure safety and avoid Zoom Bombing.
Have a community project you want to share? Email us at info@citybureau.org. Presenters are paid for their time.
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