COMMUNITY ACTIVISM IN OAK PARK: COMPETING AGENDAS ...

efreshments and appetizers and making copies of the meeting agenda, list of objectives,
and sign-in sheet.
We held our first meeting in November of 2005 at the neighborhood multi-service
center in Oak Park. To our surprise, only two people attended our first meeting, one of
which was the owner of the Jersey Market that was threatened with closure by the city,
through eminent domain. He also brought a friend. Daniel stated he attended our Oak
Park Neighborhood Latino meeting because he wanted us to hear his views about why he
wanted to keep his liquor store open and was hoping that we could help him accomplish
this in some way. We were interested in hearing his story and were sympathetic to his
reasons for wanting to keep it open. We understood that the neighborhood benefited
from the liquor store being open, but did not know how to further persuade community
members to think differently about the liquor store. Many community members felt
strongly about their decision to close the liquor store and city representative were already
in the process of closing down the store. We brainstormed what changes Daniel could
make at his liquor store to make it more “neighborhood friendly.” After our meeting we
wished Daniel the best of luck and told him we hoped to see him speaking with
community residents, at more Neighborhood Association meetings, to propose his
changes to the store. Although we were a little disappointed about the low attendee turn-
out of the meeting, my fellow Oak Park Neighborhood Latino board members and I were
happy we got to meet the owner of the liquor store.
After our first meeting we did not attempt to have any more meetings because we
felt we did not have the time and resources to coordinate meetings and gather attendees
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