Contributed by Debbie De Palma, ddepalma92@gmail.com, January 2019:
Following the success of the Justice Day celebration in Winnetka in 2015, and the Justice Summit that followed shortly thereafter, a group of activists involved in the Justice Project and several new recruits formed the Northbrook Justice Team. We met regularly to explore how we might promote the 19 Principles of a Welcoming Community in Northbrook. For several months, we focused on affordable housing, especially at a proposed new development at 1000 Skokie Blvd. Our efforts were ultimately unsuccessful since Northbrook has not proven to be a community that actively seeks to reach the 10% affordable housing goal written into its comprehensive plan. Northbrook regularly passes up opportunities to require developers to set aside units as affordable or contribute otherwise to the creation of affordable housing. Some members of our group continued to be active around local gun control issues, and there has been some progress in that area. Restaurants and grocery stores that sell liquor must now post no guns signs.
When members of our group became aware of the new Cook County minimum wage and earned sick leave ordinances, our Justice Team became very active in this issue. An Open Communities' staff member connected us with Arise Chicago, and our group worked quite intensively to try to prevent Northbrook from opting out of those ordinances. We printed flyers, stickers and yard signs, and joined forces with other local activists as the Northbrook Working Families Coalition. Northbrook did opt out of both, though two Village Trustees voted "no" on opting out of the earned paid sick leave ordinance. Members of NWFC continued appealing directly to Village Trustees through face-to-face visits, letters to the editor, e-mails, and especially by speaking during Village Board meetings. Toward the end of 2018, Northbrook Trustees voted to opt back into the earned paid sick leave ordinance, but later refused to opt back into the minimum wage ordinance, at least until the Spring.
The Village Boards’ unresponsiveness to voters’ opinions as expressed through local referenda, and the ongoing entrenchment of several Village elected officials drove some earlier Justice Team activists to focus on upcoming local elections -- to help ensure that candidates that support a more open and welcoming Northbrook community would be on the ballot. Some became involved with the Northbrook Caucus, which vets and slates candidates for the Village Board, Library Board, School Boards and Park District Board. One Justice Team member joined the Northbrook Community Relations Commission, and another joined the Board of Open Communities.
Our group later became involved in advocating for a proposed assisted living facility -- Heritage Woods -- with 25% of its units designated as affordable. Due to tremendous NIMBY pressures, that project was abandoned by the developers.
At this time, our members continue to monitor local elections and development issues (especially Meadow Plaza, Green Acres, the former Grainger property, which includes 10 acres near "downtown" Northbrook, along the railroad tracks). We look forward to working collaboratively with other groups to promote fair wages and working conditions, to address the need for affordable housing, to protect the environment, and to promote diversity and inclusion at all levels and in all sectors of our community. Some of us have become active with League of Women Voters, Curt's Cafe-Lake County (itself part of the legacy of the Justice Project in Highland Park), R.A.I.N. (Racial Awareness on the Northshore) and to promote greater civic engagement. Many of us continue to work on many issues that the Justice Project championed, and hope to re-focus our efforts after the upcoming election, when we hope Village Trustees and other elected officials will be more sensitive to the will of the voters.
