The Coalition was founded in Spring 2019 by community members from neighborhoods impacted by the War on Drugs, Mass Incarceration, and Systemic Disinvestment. After town hall meetings where IL Lawmakers promised to use the momentum of cannabis legalization to repair the harms from the Drug War, neighbors organized to form CEIC.

After reading the legalization bill and understanding that meaningful repair wasn’t included, we established as a nonprofit in 2020 to deliver services to our neighbors and to advocate for real investment.

Program history:

The first program series we formed in 2019 was Education Workshops, including How to Start the Record Clearing Process and Know Your Rights w/ Cannabis

In late 2019, we launched community resource fairs to help our neighbors access mutual aid, employment, housing, ID services, and more.

In 2021, we launched our in-house wraparound reentry services.

In 2022, we launched our re-entry collaborative, the Community Legacy Resource Fellowship.

In 2022, we launched CEIC’s Youth Team, who provide all the same resources and programming for their peers.

Collaborations:

We understand we cannot repair the harm done by ourselves. We work with mission-aligned organizations on the South, Southwest, and West Sides of Chicago, to host programming and promote resource utilization.

More information: https://www.cannabisequityil.org/our-impact.html

Mutual Aid

Supporting local networks of care and our neighbors by meeting their most pressing needs: food, clothing, removing barriers to access through record clearing, referrals, and more.

Team Members