06/01/2026
A note from our ED:
June is here, and with it, Pride Month. 🏳️🌈🏳️⚧️
When people picture Pride in Chicago, they often picture the North Side. The parades, the crowds, the rainbow crosswalks. Those things matter. But Pride lives here too, on the South Side, in neighborhoods like Beverly and Morgan Park, in the quieter and just as essential work of making sure everyone who calls this place home actually feels at home.
That work is part of what community development is really about. At BAPA, we talk a lot about blocks, corridors, and storefronts, but beneath it all is a simpler idea: a neighborhood should be a place where every family sees itself reflected. Where neighbors look out for one another. Where difference is something we welcome rather than something we tolerate.
I think about this as a professional, and I think about it as a dad. My husband and I are raising our son here because we believe this is that kind of place, and because we want to keep building it into that kind of place for every family that comes after us.
So this Pride Month, I am thinking about all the ways a neighborhood can tell someone you belong here. Not just in June, but all year long. That is the work, and I am proud to get to do it.
Happy Pride. 💗
