PATHS Chicago

Upon joining OCF in 2022, PATHS Chicago had gone through many iterations with its network of partner orgs presently composed of Black Lives Matter Chicago, Equity and Transformation, Intersections for Complex Healing PLLC, The Kola Nut Coll...

Published on January 2, 2024 by Mike Strode (KNC)

About

PATHS (Partners in Abolition, Transformation, Healing, & Solidarity) is a collaborative of movement building organizations organizing for a city actively committed to a “just transition” to a liberatory and life sustaining economy. We acknowledge historical and contemporary structural violence in the form of anti-Black racism, heteropatriarchy, economic injustice, community disinvestment, and other forms of oppression.

We value the transformative power of community-led decision-making and seek social, economic, and racial justice through the support and engagement of the people most impacted in community organizing and policy advocacy work. PATHS centers and prioritizes the safety, wellness, and liberation of Black women, youth, transgender and gender non-conforming (TGNC), formerly incarcerated, low-income and poor folks, among others.

Our partner organizations include: Action Now, BLM Chicago, BYP 100, Chicago Torture Justice Center, ChiFresh Kitchen, Equity and Transformation, Kola Nut Collaborative, the #LetUsBreathe Collective, R3 - Resist.Reimagine.Rebuild., and Upside Down Consulting.

VALUES

PATHS adopts healing practices, embraces restorative justice initiatives, demands economic democracy through worker cooperatives and community controlled capital, establishes collectively owned and stewarded land, advances food sovereignty and environmental sustainability, and adopts abolitionist practices so that the lived experiences of marginalized peoples are centered and radically improved.

PURPOSE

At PATHS, we create movement spaces and principles of engagement that embody our vision of liberation. We do this by:

fostering relationship building within our communities and among fellow organizers as the basis for building our collective power
strengthening organizational capacities and advocating for policies that ensure our sustained growth and ability to thrive
supporting the solidarity economy -- the global movement to build a just and sustainable society and economy rooted in values of solidarity, cooperation, mutualism, equity and inclusion, participatory democracy and resilience -- and the ever-increasing need for healing care in the landscape of social movements - all the more acute in this unprecedented moment of a global pandemic, increasing state repression and peoples’ uprising, and economic crisis.

VISION

In the future we envision for Chicago, marginalized people have full political self-determination to successfully advance a thriving Black progressive agenda. PATHS is committed to. Globally, we envision a world where racial capitalism has been abolished by dismantling anti-Black punitive policies, state- sanctioned institutional violence and demeaning cultural representations that sustain it and we rebuild a Black, feminist, abolisitionist, solidarity economy.

While our anti-racist and anti-capitalist vision is a stark departure from conventional society, economy and polity, we draw strength from our rich legacy of Black liberation and Freedom movements grounded in the solidarity economy principles. We can point to diverse examples, however imperfect, from the Zapatistas in Chiapas, the Women’s Movement in Rojava, Cooperation Jackson in Mississippi, and elsewhere in the US. Chicago’s history of peoples’ resistance, incredible community organizing and creative energy, and incessant inequalities and state repression are building blocks for ramping up our liberatory movement.

Our team

Mike Strode (...

Admin

Camille Kerr

Admin

Stacey Sutton

Admin