Heard Any Good Stories Lately?

by Rev. Steve Stanley
Organizing Fellow, ONE

Stories are what life is about. Hearing each others’ stories is what building community is all about. I work with ONE’s building leaders in Uptown, known as the Northside Tenant Action Coalition. I get to hear stories everyday from across the neighborhood. I try to help people work together for better neighborhoods. While I often don’t know what that means, I do know that it begins by people taking the opportunity to share their stories.

But that can be asking a lot of people because it takes courage to actually speak up. It takes some nerve and it takes time when it would be much easier just to play it safe and mind our own business. That is why the most important work is not done by community organizers, but by the good neighbors who are willing to step up and speak out. Organizers work to create important space for stories to be told and heard, but nothing positive can really happen until there are good people in the neighborhood willing to step up and speak up to tell how it really is.

When brave citizens get out of their easy chairs and onto the sidewalks, when they meet in the coffee shops and schools or in their neighborhood groups and prayer meetings, then good things can begin to happen. Hearing life’s stories enables us all to visualize what is really going on in our community. Hearing stories creates common cause and unites us for action. Yet it also honors our diversities and reminds us that we are all in the same boat after all. We are many; we are ONE. I am glad to be part of that.

Wilma’s Story…

Wilma Pittman Gibson, a leader in ONE’s Northside Tenant Action Coalition recently shared her story for the first time at a public event On April 12 she spoke at a downtown Chicago march and rally sponsored by the Chicago Housing Initiative (CHI). This grassroots action convened at the Bank of America Headquarters. There it highlighted BOA’s failure to pay $1.7 billion it owes in taxes. Then the people marched over to Senator Mark Kirk’s office to tell him not to balance the budget on the backs of the poor. Sen. Kirk has publicly supported budget cuts to limit “basic human needs” programs. At the same time Sen. Kirk has also been a beneficiary of $2 million in campaign contributions from the financial industry.

At this rally, Wilma courageously stepped up to share her story about being homeless before finding housing in a Section 8 development. We thank Wilma for her audacity to speak and for her continuing courage to share and care.

Here is the transcript of Wilma’s story:

“My name is Wilma Pittman-Gibson. I’m a resident and board member of United Winthrop Towers Cooperative, and I am also a member of the Organization of the Northeast. I was asked to speak today because I have experienced being homeless.

This is my story: My family and I ended up homeless because I refused to become a victim of domestic violence. Being homeless is like losing your soul. It tears up families, especially if you have a boy, 8 years or older. A lot of shelters will not accept them. At the time I became homeless, my son was 13, and I was told by DHS that it would be easier to place me in a shelter if I could find someone I could leave my son with.

Day to day life in a shelter strips people of their dignity. As an adult, you’re told when to eat, when to sleep, when to get up. You’re up at 6, and each family as a whole gets only 15 minutes to take a bath. You get breakfast, but it might just be a bowl of rice to eat. I would take my son to school and I would go out and look for work and I had a lot of doctor’s appointments at that time. Then I would go back and pick him up and needed to be back in the Shelter by 5, because if you’re not back by 5, you go to bed hungry. There were many days that we missed dinner because we had so far to travel. Even if my son hadn’t been able to finish his homework, it was lights out at 9, no matter what you were doing. It made it hard to be a parent and it took a lot from my son. But he continued to go to school and he got a scholarship.

My story is already the story of thousands of families. If the budget cuts to HUD go through, it will be the story of thousands and thousands more. As I speak now, there’s a family of four I know that’s living out of their car and sleeping wherever they can at night because the mom just lost her job. We ALL know families in this situation.

There’s not enough affordable housing as it is, especially with so many families losing their jobs. With so many families in need, cuts to housing should not even be on the table.

And what makes it the most painful is that if just one big bank or corporation like Bank of America would pay their taxes, none of these families would need to be homeless and the HUD programs could be fully funded.

My one message to Senator Kirk is, please do not put the HUD Housing Budget on the table for cuts.

Housing is a human right!
We won’t give up without a fight!”