As the new year kicks off, we’re taking a moment to reflect on all we accomplished in 2025. We faced many challenges, but we are stronger together and together we were able to fight back and make some big wins for our community!
We had some big organizing wins, including Green Schools, Green Social Housing, and wins for tenants. We also saw huge numbers of folks showing up for their city and their neighbors through our events, trainings, and rapid response volunteer networks. This is how we build power to fight back against the Billionaires, Big Tech, and Big Corporations that have hijacked our economy and government at every level! We will keep going next year, bigger and stronger than ever, until we win! Thank you to everyone who made this a powerful year.
We often say in organizing: when we fight, we win. This year, we had many wins to celebrate! Our teams fought hard for housing, climate justice, progressive revenue solutions, and safer communities, and all year long we saw breakthroughs.
Our Housing Justice team worked with tenant unions to fight back against corporate landlords and won two tenant union fights this year – in April and June. We also worked for many months with the tenants at the Leland Building to find a solution that would preserve this building as an affordable SRO and keep the tenants in place. Many of you came out last year to support this building in a big demonstration, and called on the city to support us at the 2024 Town Hall and through countless petitions! After lots of hours of organizing, in December 2025 the city and an affordable developer finalized a solution to preserve the Leland and keep the tenants in place! Details will be coming soon.
Our Environmental Justice team scored two big wins back to back this summer: Green Social Housing and Green Schools. Green Social Housing, which is also a big win for housing justice, is a massive investment in permanently affordable, environmentally-sustainable housing throughout the city. This is about building for a future in a real way. Our leaders are already involved in the planning committee meetings as the developments begin! Green Schools is a huge win not just for students and teachers but for all of us. The first phase of this project will bring 12 environmentally-sustainable school projects to our neighborhoods by the end of the 2026 school year. It’s so satisfying to see progress happen so quickly!
Finally we also know that when we want projects and investments in our communities, we need money to make it happen. And when budgets come up short, too often our leaders look for cuts instead of asking Billionaires and Big Corporations to pay their fair share. That’s why we’re always fighting at the state and city level for real funding solutions that protect our communities. With lots of work, we won $375 million in new progressive revenue in the May state budget, money for programs like our violence prevention work, the statewide Parent Mentor Program, and other state programs that protect our communities as federal programs have been cut. We also fought for a city budget this winter that would protect our communities from the worst of Trump’s cuts. Though we didn’t get everything we hoped for, we did make many important progressive revenue wins for our city, including a tax on social media companies to fund mental health centers, moving funds from police vacancies to other city services, and protected and expanded funding for youth jobs, among others.
All of these wins are possible because of the work of many, many people working together, and through the work we do with countless coalition partners across the city and state. Thank you all!
Training is fundamental to our mission, and this year we double down in a big way:
We also invested in the growth of people within our ONE Northside organization. Twenty-two board, staff and core leaders took advanced training opportunities, and throughout the year ONE Northside nurtured the growth of 25 interns!
It takes a lot of people power to stand up to the Billionaires, Big Tech and Big Corporations that have hijacked our economy and our government. Luckily there are a lot more of us than there are of them, and we worked all year long to get people organized and ready to fight back and win a country that works for all of us. And lots of people were ready and excited to get involved and take action!
In 2025 we held ten New Member Orientations and 260 people joined as members of ONE Northside!
Our issue teams were always busy: we led 44 issue team meetings this year and more than 150 total trainings, events and community meetings.
Our biggest event was the Town Hall in November, with 520 people in attendance. We talked about what it will take for all of us to move together to hold the Billionaires and Big Corporations accountable.
Altogether more than 2000 new people took action with us this year, whether big or small. That’s 2000 new people who stepped up to join the fight, get trained, protect their communities and build a better Chicago!
This year our Violence Prevention team worked hard to be there for our neighborhoods and do whatever it took to keep our families, especially our young people safe. Through street outreach, victim services, and case management, they are seeing their work pay off. This year the team:
Compared to last year, shootings have decreased 47% in Rogers Park, and 68% in Uptown!
Meanwhile our Parent Mentors have also been hard at work this year, providing much-needed support to our public schools. Though many on this team were deeply and personally affected by ICE’s attacks on our neighborhoods, their strength and hard work are amazing. They are anchors of our communities and our schools, and the losses and terror so many of these families faced this year has been devastating. We want to celebrate the love and hard work of this incredible group, though. With 60 Parent Mentors in 8 North Side schools, this team is putting in 480 hours of support every week for students and teachers! Wow!
When we took on Rapid Response work in September, we anticipated it would be a short term pivot from our core organizing focus areas. Now many months later, we are committed to staying the course for as long as it takes. When ICE and Border Patrol attacked our communities, so many of you responded to help; as volunteers, with donations, by getting trained and getting whistles, and so much more. The North Side truly stepped up in heroic ways, supporting us and each other through this horrific time. Thank you all so much. Here’s just some of what we (and all of you) made possible:
We’re grateful for everyone who joined us for an event, meeting, training, or even just signed up for our mailing list in 2025! It was a big year of building power, as many people stepped up to say “enough is enough.” The stakes are high and at times it can feel scary to stand up to those in power. But we are powerful too, when we are together, and the future is ours to write.
On to 2026!
