Grantee Partner Spotlight with Kenwood-Oakland Community Organization

KENWOOD-OAKLAND COMMUNITY ORGANIZATION EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR, SHANNON BENNETT, SAT DOWN WITH WOODS FUND CHICAGO IN THIS MONTH’S SPOTLIGHT.

Let’s start off with you telling us about KOCO and the work the organization does. 

KOCO is a grassroots, membership-based, community organizing and social service organization, with a strong focus on organizing, but we do have social services we provide. We were started  in 1965, by a group of clergy and community members. We are a part of two adjacent communities: Kenwood and Oakland. Some of these women were mothers who wanted their sons to be able to go within the community without any issues. We were dealing with in 1965 — when we started — with a lot of white flight. And a lot of the issues that come with that when neighborhoods are transitioning. So the clergy, and really community groups like Community Renewal Society, had a role in helping KOCO form. Our first director was Reverend Jesse Jackson, senior. Only here for a short period of time. A lot of people don't know that history. KOCO has survived and sustained the work and stayed true to our mission, which is to work with low income and working class folk to develop space to facilitate strategies for low income and working families, to impact policies and decision making that impacts their lives. So that's anything from fighting for quality, public education; to working to make sure that we have affordable housing in a gentrifying community; safe, secure housing; making sure our seniors are protected; and we fight, with seniors, to have their rights be respected; and in areas of housing and healthcare. 

We are an organization that prioritizes youth-led organizing as well as intergenerational organizing. I like saying youth are the present — so youth organizing on their own issues around employment, around safety, and overall, our youth work is around investing in young people: youth investment. 

We have a strong focus at KOCO and a history of being at the forefront of education issues in the city. We are one of the lead organizations that first started advocating for an elected representative school board. We fought to save Dyett High School. We went on a 34-day hunger strike to save the high school — the first time in [Chicago] history that a school was closed and reopened. 

We just recently had a victory to save Mercy Hospital. They were slated to close. And we went on a four-month fight with a coalition of organizations and clergy and religious organizations and unions and labor organizations. And we saved Mercy Hospital from closing. The doors we're going to be shuttered in March, and we have saved that hospital. There's new owners coming in in June and it's a major major victory. We co-led the fight with the STOP organization [Southside Together Organizing for Power] for the Trauma Center at the University of Chicago. So yeah, we you know — we do a lot [laughing]. 

We also right now in the heat of the thick of a fight to pass historic legislation. The coalition is called Lift the Ban, and [it is working] to bring rent control to the state of Illinois. And the bill passed a key House Committee and we are working with our legislative partners to get it passed in this session — by May. We've been working on this for about six years. And this is a historic moment that this bill is, similar to the school board bill, is at a critical historic stage where it might pass. Those two pieces of legislation we've been working on for maybe 10 years. All this has been in coalition so I don't want to say KOCO has done all this by ourselves. But we have been the lead in those key coalitions.

You've had quite a few concrete and legislative wins that have really impacted the community.

Yes, yes, we've been blessed.

That's quite the history for an organization.

Yeah, we've been around for a while. And in December, just my personal story. In December, I transitioned from being Deputy Director, to Executive Director. After being here for 30 some years in different roles.

Shannon, you just stole my next question [laughing]! I was going to ask you to tell me about your history with the organization since I heard you were recently promoted from within.

So yeah, started here, in 1991, as a student at Columbia College. I was there thinking I wanted to be a journalist and was thinking that I had something to say. And then I got bit by the bug. I started volunteering at a very new mentorship program that had started on the South Side. And I started commuting from the west suburbs to the South Side, volunteering as a mentor. At that transition, I got more involved in the organization as a volunteer around some of the youth programming, some of the family programming, and the rest is history. [During] my time at KOCO, I've done everything from housing organizing, to Lead Organizer, Deputy Director, youth organizing. And yeah, there's a wealth of experiences. 

I think what this place means to me, is that KOCO is a home for nurturing leadership, as various directors, former directors of KOCO, former leaders of KOCO, who have gone on to run their organizations. But bigger than that, the everyday average community leader. Because we see all of our folk as leaders, whether they see that or not. They have a home here to be nurtured and developed and recognize their power. So that's kind of like what KOCO has always been for me and other people. It's a space to nurture and develop leaders.

Tell me more about why investing in Black leadership and Black led organizations is so critical at this moment.

I’ll give you the KOCO story. There's a previous executive director, JayTravis, who now is the Co-Director of the Midwest Academy, which trains people all over the country around organizing. There's Jitu Brown, who is our current board chair, but he's created an organization that's national with 35 organizations in the country, and organizations in South Africa, and Puerto Rico, who are part of the international organizing around education. He's the Director of the Journey for Justice Alliance. Our previous Director who just left, Jawanza Malone, is now the President of the Wieboldt Foundation. One of our organizers Rob Wilson, runs a sister organization called Lugenia Burns Hope Center, which organizes a little further west in Bronzeville. They're an organization that is a powerhouse around education issues, housing issues. Can't forget one of my former education organizers, Jeannette Taylor is now Alderwoman of the 20th ward. You get my point. So we've been blessed to be a space that people can develop and use — and not for careers necessarily — but it's just the natural trajectory of what leadership does when it's done correctly.

Tell me a little bit more about that. How is it done correctly at KOCO?

I think part of it is first coming in understanding that the organization is just the space to facilitate the development of strategy and leadership. So people come in, and they may attach to a particular issue area. But the whole goal of involvement is for people to recognize their own innate ability and learn skills and use the skills that they have to transform their community and make change. So our philosophy around organizing is organizing results in one or two things: it either changes laws or policy, or creates resources or improves resources. So if you're not bringing in policy changes or creating new laws, or improving laws, or bringing in a needed resource into a community, it probably isn't organizing. Those are two of the outcomes that we see for organizing. When we see parent leaders come — someone who, you know, didn't really know how to even go into the school and advocate for the child — come with a strong voice on policies and laws about school and education. That's the transformation we're talking about here at KOCO. We think it is a place where people can learn skills, express the skills they have, and then develop policies or resources to transform their communities.

You're really talking about fostering leadership on all levels of organizing and community.

Yeah. Recognizing our power — so many spaces don't allow for that. But in our organization, and the work we try to do, we claim our space. And we claim our space when we are in other spaces also, because there's no way that we should have to shrink. Whether we're talking to the mayor of the city, the governor, or we're talking to the legislators, talking to powerful corporations — we don't shrink. That's the leadership here at KOCO.

So now that you're at the helm at KOCO, what direction do you want to take the organization in? Where do you want to focus?

I think we continue to do the work we’re doing, because we're not done. But if you had to put it in some nuggets, one of them is to identify and help develop new Black leaders. Support for Black leaders is so needed. At the core of what we're about is that we think Black folk need to be leading Black folk, and that's just clear — so that pipeline to nurture that leadership is crucial. So that's one aspect. I think another aspect is to be able to have more grassroots residents from the city and from our spaces in the South Side and communities that we organize in, understand, and recognize their power toward impacting decision making processes. Ie. we are — I didn’t mention this campaign, — we are the organization that helped co-lead and get a historic piece of legislation from the city to secure 50 city-owned lots for our Community Benefits Agreement in relation to the Obama library. People made sure that in a time where gentrification and displacement is at its height, in a place like Woodlawn because of their library, just because of the announcement of the library, we had to do something to protect some of the housing. So we have been able to push the city when the city didn't want to be pushed that far. I say that to say that every time I think about the faces of those campaigns, whether it's one of our seniors, whether it’s one of our youth. That's what we are trying to do — to have every average day Black folk be a part of the decision-making in the development of the city. Not development for us. Development with us and by us. So the pipeline: bringing people, regular everyday grassroot folk into spaces to recognize their power to develop things. 

And then I think it is very important to have citywide and statewide and regional connections. To understand how we have to move collectively to make change. It’s not good to just be in silos. So we need to have citywide strength as Black folk. We need to have strength statewide and regionally — between some of the midwestern states. And of course, nationally. That's the other thing I think I want to make sure that KOCO's moving toward, which we already do. That we're not just space space or place space, organizers. We have to organize broadly.

Shannon, have you seen — with the last year, and COVID, and us all moving more online — have you seen more of an opportunity for that kind of collaboration and connection with organizations having to move more online?

Yeah… no, because I think because of the strain and the changes, that this pandemic, and then this social uprising has caused, sometimes you just really had to stay afloat above water. So many of our efforts had to change. We couldn't do a lot of face to face meetings and things, of course, so everything did go online. But what we did at KOCO and I didn't mention it, which is one of the biggest things we've been able to sustain our work with, is we said, No, we're not going to just not do anything to help our people. So we started our mutual aid project in April. It's been going every day since. Only stopped on Thanksgiving and Christmas. Twice a week, we've delivered over 240 bags to residents, mostly seniors in our community. So twice a week, we get volunteers and staff, we packaged bags, we get boxes of food delivered, and we take it to senior citizens. It has been a tremendous uplifting to our people. They've been so thankful, and to date we’ve served over 6,000 seniors — since April. That’s local. It has expanded nationally, through other networks. Groups have asked how did you all do your project? So we have versions of it happening in different places in New York, New Jersey, Louisiana it's been replicated. We took the model, we did some trainings with groups who are connected to us and they picked it up. 

The technology issue with online learning, we're giving away laptops. I’m staring right now at a group of laptops we got to give away. We try to deal with the digital divide, which is something that impacted our young people. But I think it's also because they've been isolated during this madness. So they need to learn how to use the technology. So we do workshops to help seniors understand the technology. We're about to start because the numbers are going down a very socially distance safe exercise class for seniors that we had before the pandemic. So we haven't been paralyzed. We've been active at KOCO. It's been hard because you had to make some adjustments. But as far as the connectivity nationally, I think it's about at the same level, in my opinion. I think people are more aware that we're all going through similar things. But now we have to do the work to actualize the network, to actualize the connectivity nationally.

I know a lot of organizations pivoted to mutual aid over the last year because of the critical need. What’s the future of that work for KOCO? Do you plan to continue with it once we start to open back up?

It’s a mainstaple of our work. People have asked when are we going to stop. We've been going two days a week. 240 bags each day. Some people are like when are we gonna slow down? And we're not because the need is still there. Our seniors love this project. They've been so isolated. When seniors call about a bag or, you know, they call the office, conversations are so rich — in depth. And we're able to build from it. We're going to start a free medical medicine delivery service because of this. We connected with a black pharmacist. And we're going to be connecting with this pharmacist to deliver medicine to seniors for free. We also are in the process of starting a medical clinic at the church we use to organize. The project is called KOCO Serves. Please mention that it's called KOCO Servers. That's the name of our mutual aid. What we do — KOCO Serves — this church used to have a clinic. Because of the organizing with the state Mercy Hospital, we're networking with doctors from Northwestern from UIC, Mercy. We're about to start a free medical clinic at this hospital. So it's a lot of stuff happened.

Oh! I didn’t mention this — I’ve gotta mention this. As seniors are very much in this process, we're going to open our own senior center / restaurant — called Silverfox. If you could imagine during the daytime seniors will be coming in getting free exercise classes, computer classes, just hanging out. But also there's a restaurant where you have breakfast and lunch. In the evenings, when seniors kind of sometimes for safety reasons don’t like being out, the space is going to flip and become a venue for live blues and jazz, building on the rich history of Bronzeville. The home of the blues, a lot of jazz greats. So we're going to in the evenings open up the venue for live blues and jazz. This is all in this space that currently houses the KOCO office. So we have a three storey storefront. And the second and third floors have to be redeveloped. So we're going to move our office to the second floor, the first floor will be the Silverfox. Can you imagine? It's going to be wonderful. We're working with different organizations trying to get city funding for it. It's got to be phenomenal. So we hope to open that within a year or two.

Shannon, this is amazing.

[Laughs] We're busy over here. A little workshop that could. 

It doesn’t sound so little! 

We’re just trying to do our part. We’re very intergenerational — I didn’t mention that. Seniors and youth work together all summer long. On that mutual aid project. Can you imagine teenagers and seniors packing bags together? Conversations they had? The relationships they develop? So we're very intergenerational — we always have been. Like I said, I started here at 19.

Bronzeville Nia — we have a project that we're trying to get off the ground, seeking funding for it, that takes young people and creates pipelines into three areas, it deals with young people between the ages of 14 and 24, and it prepares them for pipelines into the areas of technology into the area of entrepreneurship, and the third area is traid. We set them up with mentors. And then we start to give them training in particular areas. And the whole goal is to give them internships and entrepreneurship spots. We're going to partner with professionals, corporations, unions, and then once they go through two levels of training, two phases, the third phase is where they'll be placed in an internship or an apprenticeship that will hopefully turn into a job and a career. That’s the new project. We've had different iterations of it and because of funding we had to slow things down. But this next iteration, we're waiting till we get the funding, but it's going to be phenomenal. There are going to be so many wraparound supports for the young people. They'll do weekly check-ins to help them be successful throughout the different phases. 

Shannon, thank you so much. This is such exciting work. Thank you for taking the time to sit down and share it with us.