The Chronicling Care Oral History Project aims to provide grounding as well as sustenance for Chicago’s growing web of covid-conscious organizers and organizations. In recalling and recording stories of community care, we aim to cultivate the interdependence of this collective. Our efforts to generate collective memory through ethically informed oral history practices are life-affirming. They are also future-oriented. We are proclaiming our belief in and commitment to a more livable and just future, and we are offering future generations a tangible record of our struggle.
Collecting and preserving our experiences of organizing for the health, safety, and flourishing of our communities is nothing short of a radical act. To enter our stories into a living archive is to call our community’s past, present, and future into being. Building this repository of stories out of our shared skills, experiences, and dreams is a form of care work. Together, we can share knowledge and learn from the setbacks and failures that have emerged over the course of the past several years of organizing for covid safety and community. We can connect our struggles to ancestors and movements past. We can strategize for ever-more accessible and liberatory action. We can learn to accompany each other through the pain, grief, and isolation we’ve been forced to individualize.
To build this living archive, we need the support of covid-conscious individuals and organizations across Chicago. We need storytellers as well as storykeepers. You might be one or both. No technical or other specialized expertise is necessary. We offer the training and resources to get you started as an interviewer and/or interviewee. If neither of these roles sounds like a good fit, we can also help you find other ways into the project.
Stay tuned for when we put out a call for volunteers!
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