FINAL DAYS: MATCH DOUBLES DONATION Details on page 2 ■ Youth-led bike repair pop-ups PAGE 3
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June 25, 2025
AUSTIN FORWARD. TOGETHER. 2025 QUARTER 1
THE AUSTIN COMMUNITY PUBLISHED ITS FIRST QUALITY-OF-LIFE PLAN CALLED AUSTIN FORWARD. TOGETHER. (AFT) IN 2018. THIS QUARTERLY PUBLICATION DESCRIBES HOW AUSTIN COMING TOGETHER (ACT) IS SUPPORTING THE COMMUNITY TO IMPLEMENT AFT AND OTHER EFFORTS.
FREEDOM TO ASPIRE
Delivering on our promise to the community THIS ISSUE INCLUDES A SPECIAL FEATURE PROFILE OF SCALING COMMUNITY VIOLENCE INTERVENTION FOR SAFER CHICAGO (SC2) STARTING ON PAGE 7
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June 25, 2025 ■ Also serving Garfield Park ■ austinweeklynews.com
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Co-governance framework gives locals decisionmaking power
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Emilia Merchen and other St. Catherine-St. Lucy parishioners who were baptized and confirmed in the church stand to be recognized. The church is being closed by the Chicago Archdiocese
Pilot projects include enhancing urban agriculture and decarbonizing buildings By JESSICA MORDACQ Staff Reporter
The West Side may be seeing more urban agriculture, reentry services and decarbonized buildings in the next year, thanks to a new cogovernance framework in Chicago. Earlier this year, Chicago United for Equity and Chicago’s Office of Equity and Racial Justice launched a co-governance framework that creates a way for city government and community members to partner to bring more programs, policies and resources to Chicago neighborhoods that need it most, like those on the West Side. This month, they announced the framework’s first pilot initiatives. “We have to start with the people who know the work and have the lived experience being the designers – not just the people who are cosigning the design,” said Candace Williams, interim executive director of Chicago United for Equity, See CO-GOVERNANCE on page 6
ERICA BENSON
St. Catherine-St. Lucy Church hosts one last Mass Austin-Oak Park parish’s legacy will continue through school, ministries By GREGG VOSS Contributing Reporter
Prior to Sunday’s final mass at St. Catherine of Siena-St. Lucy Catholic Church, organ music settled over dozens
of congregants as they filed in, joining their voices with hundreds more in the nave. Here stood the statue of St. Lucy, holding an olive branch and staring down at the sheer throng of people, an estimated
800 who made the trek from around the area and even across the country to partake in the Eucharist one last time at the church. See LAST MASS on page 13
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