By Veronica Morris Moore
Earlier this year, Crossroads Fund and the Cricket Island Foundation came together to provide their grantees with a social justice youth media workshop. The goal of this workshop was to give the participants a better understanding of framing and how to create media with social justice values. Global Action Project (GAP) facilitated and designed the workshop. GAP works with young people most affected by injustice to build the knowledge, tools and relationships needed to create media for community power, cultural expression and political change.

Crossroads Fund is excited to announce our 2013 Youth Fund for Social Change grantees! Below you will find the complete list of grantees, as well as a reflection on the Youth Fund grantmaking process by Veronica Morris Moore, a member of the Youth Fund grantmaking committee and the Lisa Fittko Intern at Crossroads Fund.

The mostly Latino immigrant packers and machine operators of Artistic Stitches, Inc., an embroidery company with contracts with some of Chicago’s largest businesses like Chase Bank, declared victory Thursday after a job walkout in protest of wage issues and an innovative community organization/union partnership led to a successful union drive. At a time when American union rates have reached their lowest in nearly a century, the campaign shows the potential for the labor movement’s revitalization with innovative new organizing strategies.

“Try not to focus on the thing that’s wrong. You’re organizers; ya’ll could go on for days about what's wrong with the world. Focus on the changes you want to see” urged Curtis Muhammad, an elder involved with Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) and the Civil Rights Movement, to a room full of eager youth activist and adult allies. The annual Crossroads Fund youth gathering is an opportunity for youth activist to convene across the region and build together to ensure that youth are not only active in their projects, but as individuals in communities.

Crossroads Fund is excited to welcome our new Lisa Fittko intern, Veronica Morris Moore. Veronica, raised on the southside of Chicago, began her journey as an organizer shortly after graduating high school in 2010. She comes to us from Fearless Leading by the Youth (FLY), a Woodlawn based, youth led organization that is fighting to make the lives of people in their community better.

Today, the doors to the Tamms “Supermax” prison in downstate Illinois close for the last time. No longer will inmates there be kept isolated from all human contact, locked in their cells 23 hours a day, in conditions that many argue clearly meet the definition of torture. The closure of Tamms came about through the actions of Governor Quinn, who vetoed all funding to keep the prison open, but it would not have been possible without the years of grassroots organizing and advocacy by community groups and the families of prisoners held there, including Crossroads Fund grantees.

Over the past year the Illinois Safe Schools Alliance has worked with parents, students and teachers in the East Aurora school district to help draft policies to protect transgender and gender non-conforming students.

Naming an organization is never easy. When our founders got together in 1981, they wanted to start a new kind of foundation: A 501(c)3 public foundation that would support grassroots groups working for racial, social and economic justice in Chicago, where decisions would be made by activists and members of the community, not just people with wealth.  Crossroads Fund seemed like a great name.

When you think of tools your organization can use for social media outreach, memes may not be the first thing that comes to mind. You might think memes are only good for funny animal photos and internet inside jokes, but a number of grassroots organizations are harnessing the power of memes to educate the community, spur people to action, raise money and gain followers.

Memes are incredibly easy to produce and adapt. Essentially photos and (usually humorous) text, anyone can slap together a meme without programming experience, expensive software, or even a camera! Not only that, they are easy to access and share on social media sites like Facebook and Twitter. And memes get attention. Beyond the dream of “going viral,” photo posts get an average of 20 more views on Facebook than links and other types of posts.