July-August 2005

Building a better Belmont Cragin

By Anthony Passarelli

I’ve seen Hector around my neighborhood. I knew he lived on my block. It wasn’t until we introduced ourselves that I really got to know my neighbors.
It was just over one year ago now that my neighbor and friend, Hector, got sick of going to the alderman’s office by himself and getting no results. He began talking to me about organizing; getting neighbors together to speak with one voice about issues on our block. 

We had (and still do have) very typical problems: rats in the alley, increasing crime, parking, gangs and the usual big city ills.

We decided that our alderman’s track record was very weak when only one person confronted him on these issues. We then decided to get another neighbor to go with us to a ward night meeting and not take “no” for an answer.

We, along with our neighbor Linda, went to the 30th Ward Office to get problems on our block taken care of. We talked about our problems, and scheduled a community meeting with our alderman and the adjacent block that shares an alley with us. The alderman came. Next the alley was baited with rat poison and the police paid more attention on our block.

Then we realized three things: (1.) It was not so hard to get most people on these two blocks to a meeting. (2.) What Hector tried to do on his own for the past year, took US one meeting. (3.) There are problems in our neighborhood as a whole that need to be addressed.

We expanded our organizing efforts from two blocks to a geographic block of blocks.  We knocked on doors, passed out flyers and talked to our neighbors. We held community meetings with and without our elected officials. We continued to expand our “turf” as more people stepped up and got involved.

Today, a little over a year later, we are the Belmont-Cragin Neighbors Association. We hold monthly community meetings where issues are discussed and neighbors get to know each other. We have a relationship with three local churches, the local chamber of commerce, two schools, the police district and most importantly, ourselves. We have just got out our second newsletter and passed out over 1,500 copies. The weekend of July 9 we turned out over 100 neighbors in less than six hours to rally in response
to a shooting in our neighborhood.

We believe that having a strong, organized neighborhood is the key to living in a place where we can raise our families and live without fear.