To live out our motto — “By Community, For Community, In Community” — we have the goal of politicizing community members to no longer cede their democratic power to others. We believe that while voting is a component of participatory democracy, it is not the only component. With that, we launched our first Participatory Democracy Hub (the Hub) in Illinois’ second largest city (Aurora), where community members came together to learn about local government, collectively imagine what they want to see in their communities, and share space in other community building events. Participants included the unhoused, formerly incarcerated, high school and college students, retirees, and other marginalized or disempowered community members. We held our first People’s Movement Assembly to imagine and create beloved communities together, through co-governance.
