Recently, our intern from Free Spirit Media, Cassidy Casanova interviewed Santera, hear what she had to say!
Learn More About IL Green New Deal
Social Housing Campaign
What are you hoping to accomplish while working with the Coalition to IL Green New Deal?
I hope that the Green New Deal will promote a continued understanding of the interconnectedness between housing, labor, the climate crisis, racism, sexism, and other forms of oppression. This understanding will ensure that the policy’s proposed solutions comprehensively address all these issues in a harmonized manner.
What is powerful about a Green New Deal?
I appreciate how the Green New Deal addresses and targets root causes of violence and oppression (such as corporate greed) and invests these resources into social services and institutions that benefit everyone in the state. By dismantling oppressive systems and investing in reparative institutions such as green social housing, we can lay the foundation for a just IL.
What inspired you to work with Grassroots Collaborative?
Over the past decade, through organizing and life experiences I have gotten pretty clear about what institutions and cultural practices I am committed to dismantling. I owe this awareness to the invaluable labor and organizing of feminist prison abolitionists who have dedicated their lives to challenging the prison industrial complex (PIC). As I continue to co-struggle in my communities to address the violence of the PIC, I am drawn to Grassroots Collaborative’s approach to investment-focused organizing, where we actively build and advocate for life-affirming institutions!
How will the IL Green New Deal benefit Chicago communities?
Through organizing with the IL Green New Deal Coalition, I have learned that 70% emissions in Chicago come from buildings. With Green Social Housing, we will be able to chip away at this horror while providing health and safe housing for our city!
