The Moran Center for Youth Advocacy, in partnership with the Evanston Public Library, AbbVie, and Kirkland & Ellis, will hold a walk-in legal clinic Thursday, June 30 to help people in Evanston and the surrounding areas with sealing evictions and advise on the criminal record relief process.

Residents who wish to take advantage of the Enhance Record And Seal Evictions, or ERASE project, are welcome to meet with School-Based Civil Legal Clinic (SBCLC) volunteer attorneys from 3 – 5 p.m. on Thursday, June 30 at the Robert Crown Branch Library, 1801 Main Street in Evanston. Residents who have questions about the program can send an email to clinic@moran-center.org or call (224) 714-0348.

Having an eviction on your record, even when there has been no court judgment, can make it more difficult for renters to secure housing because the eviction lowers renters’ credit scores and often paints an unfair picture of renters’ ability to pay rent. A new Illinois Law, 735 ILCS 5/9-121.5, which became effective in May of 2021 and expires August 1, 2022, makes it easier to seal a prior eviction record. It does not prohibit landlords from obtaining a reference from a previous landlord, but having an eviction sealed can improve a credit store and make it easier to apply for a new rental agreement. This is not for tenants with a pending eviction. 

Through the ERASE Project, attorneys at the Moran Center will prepare the necessary paperwork free of charge on behalf of residents who wish to take advantage of this temporary law. The Moran Center will refer renters outside of Evanston to the Lawyer’s Committee For Better Housing. Moran Center expungement attorneys will also be available to advise and answer any questions about the process for criminal record relief.  Having a criminal record can also be a barrier to applying for housing.  

The ERASE Project is one of many programs at the Moran Center that helps dismantle systemic barriers to the health, safety, and well-being of young people and their families. One of the only legal aid agencies in the country to integrate legal and therapeutic services, the Moran Center provides community-based legal, social work, and restorative services for youth and families. 

Since its founding in 1981, the Moran Center has been a champion for thousands of disinvested youth and families. The Center’s holistic, healing-centered, client-driven approach advances our vision of a more just, racially equitable, and restorative society.

Download the flyer for the June 30 ERASE Clinic:

Safe spaces for our young people from the Evanston Collective

A year ago, Evanston’s youth-serving organizations united in response to escalating youth violence in our community to launch the “My City, Your City, Our City” Safe Summer Initiative. We employed young people to select and approve the activities. We centered their voices. We paid them for their wisdom and energy. Collectively, we then hosted six BLOCK (“Bringing Love to Our City and Kids”) parties and four community-wide events (“First Fridays”). We opened up Fleetwood-Jourdain and Robert Crown, providing safe, public spaces for youth to gather throughout the summer. More than 500 young people regularly attended these events. We held 79 consecutive days and nights of programming. And due in part to this effort, Evanston experienced 0 cases of gun-related, youth violence last summer.

As we prepare for this summer, we recognize the urgency and importance of coming together and providing safe, engaging spaces for youth. Over the past several months, we’ve lost five youth to gun violence, countless other youth have experienced interpersonal, institutional, and communal violence, and three nooses recently dangled in a tree in front of our schools.

As our youth’s attorneys, case managers, coaches, counselors, healthcare providers, and mentors – as their adults – we commit to getting more proximate to our kids this summer. We commit to centering their voices, and their needs. And we, the white members of this coalition, commit to holding ourselves accountable for the scourge of white supremacy which continues to infect everything from our institutions to our personal interactions.

Many in our community are asking right now ‘what can I do?’ Join us. Answer our call to connect and get proximate. Start by attending the First Friday event on Friday, June 3rd from 6-9 pm at Mason Park. Wear orange in recognition of Gun Violence Prevention Day.  Then, join us at one of the many other community events happening this summer…

• Community Building Equity Summit, Friday, June 10th, Mason Park, 10 am-2 pm
• Juneteenth Celebration, Saturday, June 18th, Robert Crown (Parade) annd Ingraham Park (Concert), 10 am-6 pm
• First Friday, July 1st, Mason Park, 5-9 pm
• National Night Out, Tuesday, August 2nd, Clark Street Beach-Arrington Lagoon, 4-9 pm
• First Friday, August 5th, Mason Park, 5-9 pm
• Back to School Event, Saturday, August 13th, Mason Park, 2-6 pm

Tell all the high schoolers in your lives to drop in at Gibbs-Morrison Monday-Friday from 6-9 pm; encourage high school and middle school youth to come by Fleetwood-Jordain on Mondays and Wednesdays from 6-9 pm beginning Monday, June 6th and Robert Crown on Fridays from 6-9 pm. And check out the City of Evanston’s Safe Summer webpage for updated information about My City, Your City, Our City throughout the season.

Not only are we again providing safe, public spaces and a full calendar of activities, but we are also working together to create youth-led communal systems of accountability where young people agree on shared values and ways we treat each other in public spaces. Rather than exclusion and shunning, we will support young people to acknowledge the harms they’ve caused and communally decide on how to repair those harms.

We know that when young people are connected to – and invested in – their community, they are far more likely to be their best selves. When they are heard, valued, and centered, they are highly motivated to remain in community. Connectedness keeps them and all of us safe.

In Proximity,

The City of Evanston’s Youth & Young Adult Division

Connections for the Homeless

Curt’s Café

Erie Family Health Centers

Infant Welfare Society of Evanston

James B. Moran Center for Youth Advocacy

PEER Services

Youth Job Center

Youth & Opportunity United

Evanston Cradle to Career

 

A reflection for Gun Violence Awareness Day

Among the many fabled tribes of Africa, no tribe had more fearsome or mightier warriors than the Masai. The Masai warriors traditionally greeted each other by asking, “And how are the children?” Even warriors with no children of their own responded with, “All the children are well.” This greeting meant, of course, that peace and safety prevailed; that the Masai faithfully honored their reason for being, their proper function, and their responsibilities.
An excerpt adapted from a sermon by Reverend Dr. Patrick T. O’Neill, First Parish, Framingham, MA (1991).

Imagine if we greeted each other with that question today, “And how are the children?” The truthful answer would be, “Our children are suffering!”

Our children are suffering, terrified by yet another school shooting.

Our children are suffering, reeling from the isolation and fear brought on by the pandemic.

And our children are suffering, harmed by the insidiousness of white supremacy, engendering institutional and interpersonal violence, including gun violence.

How do we know our children are suffering? Because they’re telling us! Some of our children are responding to their pain in the most human of ways – by causing harm. When Black and Brown children act out, however, community members – specifically white community members – respond with fear. They demand the surveillance and exclusion of Black and Brown youth and the enforcement of “Zero Tolerance” policies that perpetuate systemic wrongs. But, when Black and Brown children are persecuted, our community has demonstrated that they’re willing to tolerate such persecution. Where was the fear, the outrage, the demand for absolute punishment and expulsion, when nooses hung from a tree out in front of our schools?

As professionals whose role it is to zealously advocate for all of our children, we fervently reject “Zero Tolerance” as public policy, and demand unequivocally that it not be applied when responding to children’s behavior. Our children are simply manifesting the world around them – a world that adults, and expressly white adults, created for them. “Zero Tolerance” does the opposite of holding children accountable. Exclusion scapegoats children and enables us—the adults—to evade responsibility for addressing the roots of our children’s actions. “Zero Tolerance” policies do not keep communities safe. The most credible research tells us what keeps communities safe: children feeling connected to at least one adult in their school; being engaged in their community; basic human needs of food and shelter being met. Read the Moran Center’s recent report, “Reimaging School Safety” which captures this research in the school context, laying out alternative, restorative solutions and approaches to harm.

Yes, we need to hold all of our children accountable for the harms they’ve caused. How? By being trustworthy adults; by listening to them; by meeting the needs of their families; by creating solutions with, not for, them; by creating supportive environments where they can face the harms they’ve caused honestly, and hear from those they’ve harmed; by creating restorative, community-based solutions based on the wisdom and experience of community members most impacted; and by valuing the principle that no child – no one – should be reduced to the worst thing they’ve ever done.

And we adults must hold ourselves accountable too! To the white people asking “What can we do? How can we stem gun violence? How can we combat the hatred symbolized by those nooses hanging outside our schools?” It’s the same answer to all of these questions: We must confront racism, white supremacy, and opportunity hoarding within ourselves, within our families, and within our community. We must challenge our white neighbors, friends, and family members to confront their vast privileges and dig deep into the hard truths of what it truly means to see all of our children as our own. Let’s do this work with urgency so that we can then say with honesty and certainty that all our children are, in fact, well!

Patrick Keenan-Devlin

Executive Director