Jewish Council on Urban Affairs - JCUA

Big news for our community: Anna Rubin is JCUA's next Executive Director! 🎉

If you've organized with JCUA over the past decade, you know Anna — as an Avodah fellow, a staff organizer, our political director, and most recently our Interim ED. She knows how to organize, and she understands that it's through sustained and relational organizing that we build a just future for everyone.

Read the full announcement and a message from Anna: jcua.org/anna

JCUA is co-organizing two town hall events with the Treatment Not Trauma Coalition to celebrate the citywide expansion of Crisis Assistance Response & Engagement Program (CARE) Vans, discuss the state of mental health care in Chicago, and ask our alderpeople for their commitment to getting mental health resources in our communities:

Northeast Town Hall, Tuesday, July 28, 6pm-8pm, Broadway United Methodist Church

Northwest Town Hall, Thursday, July 30, 6pm-8pm, Roosevelt High School

We are working to make CARE available 24 hours a day, 7 days a week and to reopen Chicago’s mental health clinics. Join us!

Lorenzo Salgado Araujo and Joan Sebastian Guerrero both were murdered at the hands of ICE this past week.

Across America, in cities and small towns, unmarked cars are chasing down workers and parents who are connected to their communities, families, and workplaces. We all saw what ICE did in Illinois and other cities. We know how ICE operates. We know they are pushing their lies to justify these atrocious murders. We know that ICE acts as the lethal arm to advance authoritarianism in our communities.

JCUA is joining Illinois Coalition for Immigrant and Refugee Rights and Chicago Alliance Against Racist and Political Repression for a vigil this evening for Lorenzo, Joan Sebastian and all people harmed by ICE and to call for the abolition of ICE.

We'll meet at 8pm this evening at the Nuestras Historias Mural on 26th and Pulaski in Chicago. See you there.

We're excited to share that JCUA has been selected as a BREAKWEEK grantee, thanks to R&R: The Rest of our Lives, which provides funding and resources for our entire staff to take a full week of organization-wide closure.

Our entire staff will be off beginning tomorrow, Friday, July 3rd until Monday, July 13th.

We're grateful to R&R: The Rest of our Lives for this investment in the JCUA team's wellbeing, and we look forward to coming back renewed and ready to keep building power for justice across Chicagoland!

See you soon!

Thank you to everyone who joined us for Kol Or's 9th Annual Juneteenth Havdalah at KAM Isaiah Israel on Saturday, June 27th.

From the farthest parts of Eastern Africa to the farthest parts of the Western Hemisphere the cries, songs, and hopes for liberation have echoed for generations. During the event, we celebrated rituals of freedom and African American liberation through music, dance, and learning.

Sixty years after Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and the Chicago Freedom Movement marched into Marquette Park to confront segregation, redlining, and organized racial violence, we are called again to meet the fierce urgency of now.

On Saturday, August 1st, 2026, thousands from across the country will gather in Chicago for The Fierce Urgency of Now: A National March into Marquette Park — a historic, multi-faith movement-building moment demanding freedom from mass criminalization, full protection of voting rights, economic justice, and a future rooted in dignity for all.

Pre-March Program at 63rd & Kedzie: 9AM
March Toward Marquette Park: 11AM
Main Program: 12PM
Post-March Activations: 2–5PM

Register now: fierceurgency.now

Are you a renter? Want to build solidarity with fellow renters and learn about an upcoming opportunity to organize for renters' rights?

Join us for a Renter Roundtable this Wednesday, July 1 at 6:00 PM in Ravenswood. Come meet your neighbors, share your experiences, and learn about the Protecting Renters Ordinance moving through City Council that would create:

- A Tenant Bill of Rights
- A registry to hold landlords accountable
- A ban on junk fees
- Just Cause for Eviction

RSVP at jcua.org/roundtable

We were honored to welcome Representative Delia Ramirez to Acts of Change on June 14th!

After an introduction from Marla Bramble and Kalman Resnick, Rep. Ramirez received the Miriam Award for Inspiring Community Leadership and spoke about the work of community organizing, the urgency of fighting every form of oppression, and our responsibility to stay in the struggle together.

Mazel tov and felicidades!

At Acts of Change on June 14th, our Board President Cydney Wallace delivered a powerful State of JCUA address, speaking about how far we've come and what this moment demands of all of us.

"Our safety and freedom as Jews is bound up with the safety and freedom of our neighbors next door, across the street, in the next town over, and throughout our state. We do not and cannot have one without the other."

Read her full remarks at jcua.org/cydney

Happy Juneteenth!

Today marks 161 years since Union troops in Galveston announced their intent to enforce emancipation in Texas. Every year since, Juneteenth has been a celebration of Black liberation and a refusal to let the work of freedom be called finished.

This Juneteenth arrives in the midst of major attacks on Black freedom: the Supreme Court's destruction of the Voting Rights Act, white supremacists' re-imposition of Jim Crow maps across the South in a direct assault on Black political power, and last week's raid on the offices of the Ohio Organizing Collaborative. These actions are blatant attempts to prevent Black and Brown people from voting, seize control of elections, and entrench minority rule.

Let this Juneteenth be a celebration and a call to continue widening the narrow, winding path towards freedom.

Next Saturday, June 27th at 6:00 pm in Hyde Park, JCUA's Kol Or Jews of Color Caucus is hosting its 9th Annual Juneteenth Havdalah, celebrating African American culture and liberation through music, dance, song, and learning.

From the Horn of Africa to the Cape of Good Hope to Elmina Castle, from the West Indies to Rio de Janeiro to Natchez, throughout the Black Atlantic the cries, songs, and hopes for liberation echo across the generations.

All are welcome to join! Register at jcua.org/juneteenth