RESISTING SPATIAL VIOLENCEJCUA’s 2019 Haggadah Insert

Every year during the Passover seder we recite four questions that ask us “why on this night” are we behaving differently from every other night of the year. These questions examine what we are eating, how we are eating, and how we are sitting - physical, tactile activities that stand in stark contrast to how we usually interact with the world around us. These questions are an invitation to dig deeper - why do we eat the way we eat? Why do we sit the way we sit? When do we decide to change those behaviors? What behaviors do we participate in that we no longer think about as we go about our day?

This year, JCUA is offering a fifth question for your seder - a question of how we might interact differently with the physical world around us every other day of the year:

Learn more about the global impact of spatial violence atJCUA’s Passover film screening and discussion of the

award-winning documentary

Not In My Neighbourhood

Sunday, April 28, 1:00 - 3:30 PMKAM Isaiah Israel, 1100 E. Hyde Park Blvd.

RSVP & More info at jcua.org/resisting-spatial-violencejcua.org

What is something I can do differently in the coming year to resist spatial violence in my community?

• The overwhelming disinvestment in communities, neighborhoods, buildings, and institutions in neighborhoods on the South and West Sides of Chicago.

• The gentrification and lack of rent control in neighborhoods across Chicago, forcing thousands of families from their homes and out of the city entirely.

• The funnelling of city and TIF funds away from communities and into harmful construction projects like the West Side Police Academy and Lincoln Yards.

• The construction of further methods for caging members of our communities, such as the proposed immigration detention facility in Dwight, IL and the new prison in Thomson, IL

Spatial violence is the harmful transformation of spaces through colonization, architectural apartheid, gentrification modes and other modes of systemic oppression. People of Color, and within the Jewish community, Jews of Color, experience the most extreme forms of spatial violence. At JCUA, we see spatial violence in:

On Passover we move out of a narrow place of struggle towards a vision for a better world. This Passover, we hope we can come together around our Seder tables and in community to connect our struggles globally and talk about how we can fight for a city, and a world, in which all are free.