Founding organizers of the Tenant Union, SisterNet, Champaign-Urbana Reparations Coalition, Amasong, and GirlZone and organizers from the Education Justice Project, Uniting Pride, the King’s Guard, the IMC, and the Public i discuss their work, share ancestral insights on effective collective leadership and solidarity movements, and help us know how to join and stand in solidarity with efforts strengthening our community. 

Celebrate our leaders who bring us together to work for peace by ensuring rights and justice! 

Moderators:

·      Sam Smith is a CU community member who works with the engagement team at the Krannert Center for the Performing Arts; He also acts as the Envisioning Justice Anchor Hub for Illinois Humanities. 

·      Aimee Rickman is an educator, organizer, ethnographer, director of the Youth & Social Media Research Lab, GirlZone co-founder, and author of Adolescence, Girlhood, and Media Migration.

Panelists:

·      Imani Bazzell is a community educator, organizer, and founding director of SisterNet, a local network of African American women committed to the physical, emotional, intellectual and spiritual health of Black women. 

·      Kristina Boerger co-led the struggle culminating in the University's adoption of a policy of non-discrimination against Lesbians, Gay men, and Bisexuals in the mid-1980s, also working in the Divest Now Coalition; soon after, she founded Amasong: Champaign-Urbana's Premier Lesbian/Feminist Chorus, which under her direction attained national recognition while strengthening C-U womyns' connections.

·  Grant Chassy is a writer and editorial collective member for the Public i newspaper, focusing on news and politics.

·  Rebecca Crist was a core organizer of GirlZone, whose liberatory feminist efforts are documented in the 2009 book Girls, Feminism, and Grassroots Literacies: Activism in the GirlZone, and a founding member of Champaign Ladies Amateur Wrestling, a comedic feminist wrestling group that raised funds for CU community aid organizations.

·      Founded in 2010, Uniting Pride is a nonprofit resource center serving the greater East Central Illinois region, committed to uplifting and empowering the LGBTQIA2S+ community through inclusive advocacy, affirming programs, education, and vibrant community events; Joshua Gavel is Executive Director.

·      Esther Patt is the director of the Champaign-Urbana Tenant Union and a former Urbana city council member who has lived in C-U since 1973.

·  Averhy Sanborn is a Senior at UIUC and the President of The King’s Guard, which is the student-led effort to find a new, inclusive mascot for the University of Illinois community.

·      Jessica Thornton is the Academic Manager for the Education Justice Project at the University of Illinois.

·      Dr. Jeffrey Trask founded the Champaign-Urbana Reparations Coalition in May 2023, and has since been appointed to serve as a Commissioner on the Illinois African Descent Citizens Reparations Commission and Midwest Regional Leader for First Repair, among other leadership roles.

·  Gus Wood is President of the Urbana-Champaign Independent Media Center (IMC)'s board of directors.

***

Other local organizers will be tabling to provide information on their important work and on how to get involved. They include:

·      Education Justice Project

·      First Followers

·      The Refugee Center

·     UC Jews for Ceasefire 

·     WEFT

Edited segments of this panel that aired on WEFT community radio's Catch the Beat in July 2025 are permanently archived here .