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Chicago Area Ethnic Resources was founded in 2007
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CAER was founded by former members of the Illinois Ethnic Coalition (IEC) to continue the work of providing information on the Chicago area’s diverse groups and to help stakeholders better know and access the communities that define our region.
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A pioneer of diversity and intergroup relations
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In its heyday, IEC was the premier organization in Chicago where leaders of ethnic communities could come together and find common ground, transcending the racial divisiveness that characterized Chicago politics. The group’s focus was to foster pluralism as a central tenet of American society. The year was 1971 and “multiculturalism,” a product of the Civil Rights revolution, was beginning to finds its voice. Early IEC programs focused on introducing ethnic studies in the public school system and shaping curricula in collaboration with the Illinois Department of Education. IEC also was pivotal in advocating for the establishment of Chicago’s first fully-integrated magnet schools.
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Working across racial and ethnic lines in a city divided
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Throughout the 1980s and '90s, IEC leaders worked together on a national multi-ethnic coalition that led to reparations for Japanese Americans wrongfully interned during WWII. In 1983, the IEC joined with hundreds of communities across Chicago to create the “What’s Your Agenda” series under Chicago’s first black mayor, Harold Washington. In 1985, it organized members of Chicago’s white ethnic, Asian, Latino and African American communities to stand in sub-zero temperatures outside the South African Consulate to protest apartheid. In the ‘90s, the group convened, with the Attorney General’s office, the first statewide conference on hate crimes and in 2000, members led Cook County’s first funded effort to ensure a fair and accurate count for the decennial census. Throughout the decades, the IEC worked with local and national media, educators, social service professionals and the business community to lead and provide content for programs on diversity.
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One-of-a-kind resources give the mainstream access
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Today, partnerships and coalitions that transcend race and class to seek social justice are common. But 20 years ago, this coming together was fairly radical, especially in a city recognized not just for its diversity, but also divided by it. The greater Chicago metropolitan area is among the most diverse in the nation. While many older established groups have assimilated, communities who arrived after 1965 are evolving and influencing the body politic in new ways. Many have left the city for the outlying suburbs and thousands of “newcomers” have bypassed the city altogether, creating challenges and opportunities in once homogeneous enclaves.
CAER was created to continue the educational focus of the former Illinois Ethnic Coalition, especially the publication of resources that help the mainstream public understand and respond to diversity and changing demographics. The new editions of the Directory of Chicago Ethnic Organizations and the Chicago Area Ethnic Handbook are CAER’s first projects.
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