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The United Neighborhood Organization (UNO) was established in 1984 by a group of community leaders and local Priests. Modeled on an Alinsky style of community organizing, UNO sought to build grass-roots leadership within Chicago's Hispanic neighborhoods that could organize for power and address local issues. UNO brought a no-nonsense approach to public action and leadership training, partnering with parishes in working-class neighborhoods like South Chicago, Little Village and Back of the Yards. Through these efforts, UNO challenged everyday residents to get involved and contribute to the advancement of their community.
While UNO's scope and audience has expanded over time, its mission has remained the same. For two decades, UNO has challenged Hispanics to play active roles in the development of a vital American community. UNO has carried this mission into an array of major campaigns and initiatives, ranging from Chicago's school reform movement in the 1980's, to its own naturalization drive that has serviced over 65,000 since the 1990's, to the establishment of the UNO Charter School Network in 2004.
Understanding the vision and aspirations of its community, UNO has continuously positioned itself at the forefront of cutting-edge issues and delivered real results through a combination of neighborhood base-building and pragmatic power politics.
UNO has also worked to promote a public agenda that brings the conversation on Hispanics to a practical center, aligning perceptions and policy regarding our community with the ambition and ability that exist at its grass-roots.
Chicagoland’s Hispanic community is similar to its Irish, German, and Polish counterparts, among others. As with these immigrant groups, Hispanics have come to the United States to build upon and benefit from American opportunity, working hard to create better lives for their families. Representing an historic wave of immigration to the United States, Hispanics are the newest incarnation of the American tradition.
However, like the paths of our predecessors, Hispanic immigration also carries a set of serious challenges, which will continue to try our community's ability to prosper in the United States. The nation’s largest drop-out rate, gang violence, and teenage pregnancy, among other problems, have for decades created a rift between Hispanic potential and accomplishment. Even so, practical solutions to these problems are rarely put forth. Rather, pragmatism plays second to politically-expedient and media-driven agendas that benefit by portraying Hispanics as a victimized community in need of social justice.
This depiction is hugely inaccurate. A community driven not by self-doubt but opportunity, Hispanics must be challenged to take full advantage of American possibilities through civic participation and deep investments in family, neighborhoods and education.
Since its inception UNO has seen Hispanics rise to the occasion when presented this challenge on an individual level, employing the same determination that drove them to this country to do what is right for their families. What remains for Hispanics is to create this same type of engagement and success on a wide scale, as a healthy American community.
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