The Dignity of Resistance: Women Residents’ Activism in Chicago Public Housing

This chronicles the four decade history of Chicago’s Wentworth Gardens public housing residents’ activism. This case study explores why and how these African-American women engaged in organizing efforts to resist government disinvestment in public housing and the threat of demolition. Feldman and Stall, utilizing a multi-disciplinary lens, explore the complexity and resourcefulness of Wentworth women’s grassroots organizing - the ways in which their identities as poor African-American women and mothers both circumscribe their lives and shape their resistance. Through the inspirational voices of the activists, Feldman and Stall challenge portrayals of public housing residents as passive, alienated, victims of despair. We learn instead how women residents collectively have built a cohesive, vital community, have cultivated outside technical assistance, organizational and institutional supports, and have attracted funding - all to support the local facilities, services, and programs necessary for the everyday needs for survival, and ultimately to save their home from demolition.