Dear Evanston,
The DE Racial Justice Book Group has not yet resumed, BUT, happily, it has inspired other groups to start their own reading circles -- one related to housing justice and the other to environmental justice:
Evanston Development Cooperative
This Wednesday, October 27, from 6:30 p.m. to 8:30 p.m. join Evanston Development Cooperative to discuss the book, Race for Profit: How banks and the real estate industry undermined Black homeownership, by Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor.
The discussion will take place at YoFresh Yogurt Cafe, 635 Chicago Ave.
Register here.
About EDC EDC was started by Dick Co and Robinson Markus who met at Northwestern University. Co was a climate scientist concerned about carbon emissions in the built environment, and Robinson was researching the displacement of Black Evanston homeowners after the subprime mortgage crisis.
Both believed that community is the only immunity from climate change, racism, and inequality, which inspired the creation of their local green-construction cooperative in 2018. Today they have worker-owners and more than 40 members in the community.
Then ...
Collective Resource
On Thursday November 11, Collective Resource Compost will discuss "Garbage Wars: The Struggle for Environmental Justice in Chicago," written by David Naguib Pellow. The book chronicles how and why the waste industry—including dumping, incineration, landfills, recycling, and all of the pollution and hazards that come along with it—disproportionately impacts minority and lower-income communities in Chicago and throughout the U.S.
For more information, click here.
This group meets on Zoom.
About Collective Resource
Collective Resource Compost began when Erlene Howard, an Evanston resident, became interested in composting but couldn't find a good place to do it in her condo environment. Howard, a bookkeeper by trade, is a frequent consumer of organic fruits and vegetables. She was inspired to start a food scrap recycling service when she realized that, if composting were made more convenient, more people would do it.
Her first pickups started with three customers, using her Toyota Camry for collection. Collective Resource Compost’s customer base has since grown to over 2100 residential and nearly 200 commercial customers.
During their first six months of business, Collective Resource Compost collected a single ton. Now they collect at least twice that amount every day, averaging 20 tons per week.
The company reached a total collection milestone of 7,000 tons in November 2020.
