Alternatives

Youth voices are at the center of Alternatives' work, and are a valuable part of our communities. Young people deserve the best resources we can offer them, including equitable funding for schools.

On March 26, young people in our Youth Leadership Development programs joined 120 advocates down in Springfield for the Funding Illinois' Future Coalition K-12 Advocacy Day. They spoke with state senators about teacher shortages in their schools, leading to classrooms where grade levels are combined and getting the support students need from teachers is challenging. They also shared that if funding continued to increase at the current rate, they would be 25 years old and would never have attended an adequately funded K-12 public school. The campaign coalition demands that legislators increase school funding by $550 million this year to help close funding gaps.

We're proud of the young people we work with every day, but we're especially proud when they feel confident enough to stand up for themselves and their communities through advocacy and civic engagement.

At last night's Cocktails & Complicity, guests could pick up a free book (or two) to build their knowledge on community, resistance, and freedom. What would you have chosen? The options were:

- We Do This 'Til We Free Us: Abolitionist Organizing and Transforming Justice, by Mariame Kaba
- Let This Radicalize You, by Kelly Hayes & Mariame Kaba
- The Impossible Will Take a Little While: A Citizen's Guide to Hope in a Time of Fear, edited by Paul Rogat Loeb
- Emergent Strategy: Shaping Change, Changing Worlds, by Adrienne Maree Brown (FYI, Tanya Lozano highly recommends this one!)

Catch us at the next Cocktails & Complicity later this summer. Sign up for our newsletter to stay up to date on all our events.

Episode 35 of Alternatives' Broken Office Chair podcast brings you into our March Cocktails and Complicity discussion on creating a community of care. True community requires a commitment to showing up for one another in ways that are both consistent and equitable.

Catch the honest insights from our guest speakers on how to foster these vital connections in your own life.

Stream the full episode:

Broken Office Chair Podcast Welcome to Broken Office Chair, a podcast produced by Alternatives and hosted by Alternatives’ Executive Director, Bessie Alcantara, a Chicago native and a first-generation Salvadoran-Mexican American passionate about dismantling systemic racism.