Little Village
Little Village, known as La Villita, is a neighborhood on Chicago’s Southwest Side. It is one of the city’s most densely populated neighborhoods and home to one of the largest Mexican immigrant and Mexican-American communities in the Midwest. The 26th street corridor is one of the most economically active commercial areas in Chicago.
It is also a frontline environmental justice community. A century of industrial land use has left Little Village with legacy pollution, ongoing toxic emissions from factories and diesel trucks, aging water infrastructure, and among the least green space per capita of any neighborhood in Chicago. The community bears a disproportionate burden of environmental harm while having had limited power over the land use and policy decisions that created those conditions. That is the context in which LVEJO was founded, and it is the reason our work is rooted here.
Land Acknowledgement
Chicago is situated on the aboriginal homelands of the Council of the Three Fires: the Odawa, Ojibwe, and Potawatomi Nations, and the Illinois Confederacy: the Peoria and Kaskaskia Nations. Many nations call this region home. We name this history as part of our commitment to understanding whose land we occupy and what it means to fight for environmental justice on it.
Why We Do This Work Here
Residents of Little Village have organized for decades to change these conditions, including closing coal plants, reclaiming contaminated land as public green space, restoring transit access, and building community-controlled food systems. That organizing history is the foundation LVEJO builds on.
We do this work here because this is where the harm is, and because the people most affected are the ones best positioned to lead the fight.
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