Cosponsored by Department of Environmental Studies, Students Allied for a Green Earth (SAGE), UIS Campus Senate Committee on Sustainability

Kim Wasserman, executive director of Chicago’s Little Village Environmental Justice Organization (LVEJO), Chair of the Illinois Commission on Environmental Justice., and 2013 winner of the Goldman Environmental Prize for North America will speak on her experiences as a community organizer. For twenty years Wasserman’s group has turned anger into positive energy in a series of successful grass-roots campaigns addressing issues including safe schools, public transportation, youth empowerment, community gardens, Superfund site remediation, open space, and the closure of two polluting coal fired power plants. Wasserman’s work addresses crucial questions for society, including “what does it mean to organize within communities”, and “how can communities support each other?”

Kim Wasserman is the Executive Director of the Little Village Environmental Justice Organization (LVEJO), where she has worked since 1998. Kim joined LVEJO as an organizer and helped to organize community leaders to successfully build a new playground, community gardens, remodel of a local school park and force a local polluter to upgrade their facilities to meet current laws. As Executive Director of LVEJO, she has worked with organizers to reinstate a job access bus line, build on the recent victory of a new 23 acre park to be built in Little Village, and continue the 10 plus year campaign that won the closure of the two local coal power plants to fight for remediation and redevelopment of the sites. Mrs. Wasserman is Chair of the Illinois Commission on Environmental Justice. In 2013, Mrs. Wasserman was the recipient of the Goldman Prize for North America.