Each day, decisions are made that affect you, your family, and your community… decisions about your children’s schools, youth health care, public transit, land use, the environment, jobs and contracts. Are you involved in these decisions? Are your interests being served, your needs met? Do you know who is making these decisions and who is benefiting from them?

In the tradition of Jefferson, King, Alinsky and Obama, community organizing is an essential democratic tradition, one that insists that everyone have a voice in the conversation of public affairs, not only the rich and powerful, the political boss or captain of industry. Everyone should have a seat at the table of power. Self determination requires the power of organizing people and a common methodology for collective action. SOUL is dedicated to providing a vehicle for ordinary people to act together and build the power they need to get a seat at the table and have their voice heard.

SOUL’s mission is to empower the Southside of Chicago and the South suburbs to fight for social justice and address issues and concerns within the community. SOUL serves as an organizing vehicle that:

• Provides a methodology for people to act effectively together;
• Trains people to become leaders and build powerful public lives;
• Establishes a set of ongoing structured relationships so that people can work together on a variety of issues over time;
• Provides a democratic structure for decision making;
• Brings together resources: relationships, talents, constituencies and interests that cannot be garnered by any one individual, congregation, neighborhood or single issue group;
• Provides, through its affiliations with other networks and coalitions, a racially, economically and geographically diverse base of people to greatly expand everyone’s power and impact.