Equity Designer for #Chicago : Alvin Schexnider

I’m a southern kid from VA/NC who has lived in Chicago for almost 9 years and who has firmly planted roots here. I live on the border of two neighborhoods called Humboldt Park and Logan Square, which are rapidly gentrifying. I wish to see more interventions from a municipal policy standpoint that stabilize the displacement of long time residents (often Latinx) in these two neighborhoods. I also have spent a significant amount of time with organizations in the North Lawndale neighborhood on the west side, which is predominantly Black.

In Chicago, many of the predominantly Black neighborhoods are not seeing any significant resource investment and/or business development.

Folks I know in Lawndale often wish for even a sliver of the resources that gentrifying neighborhoods have, but without said displacement. How do you have one without the other? It’s complex. But it won’t happen for sure without solutions that are co-created with the folks who are actually from the neighborhood.

“You ultimately judge the civility of a society not by how it treats the rich, the powerful, the protected and the highly esteemed, but by how it treats the poor, the disfavored and the disadvantaged….” — Bryan Stevenson

Aspects of Equity-Centered Community Design are able to be seen in both my day-to-day job and also in the community work I am privileged to engage with. In my previous role at Greater Good Studio, which is a human-centered design firm for social impact clients, I work with a team of people who are continually trying to recognize and better steward our own power and privilege in relation to the communities our clients themselves operate in. I also definitely see community design in the work of Chicago Freedom School, an incredible organization here in Chicago that I work with, that provides educational programs and trainings where young people and adults allies can study the work of past movements, deepen their understanding of current social problems, and have the tools to build new coalitions and strategies for change.

Alvin Schexnider is a Board Director of Creative Reaction Lab. Based in Chicago, IL, Alvin is the Senior Director of Operations at Erie Neighborhood House.