Logan Square activist hailed as ‘the voice that we needed’
Tami Love, 57, a Logan Square community activist known for her work in parent mentorship programs, died Feb. 21 after a long battle with cancer, according to family.
Love was a committed leader who advocated for families and public housing, said her daughter, Brandie Love Johnson.
“Seeing the work she did and how it made an impact in the community, it really inspired me,” said Love Johnson, who is a special education teacher at CPS. “She was the voice that we needed.”
Love joined the Logan Square Neighborhood Association as a parent of three children at Funston Elementary School, where she participated in the first group of parent mentors in 1995.
The program grew to 10 schools in Logan Square, then to 150 schools across Illinois, according to the neighborhood association.
Love helped launch the Community Learning Center at Funston, according to a GoFundMe page. Love then worked in community organizing and family issues and focused on parent organizing in schools. In 2004, she took a job at the Logan Square Neighborhood Association to advocate for fair public housing on the North Side.
Love focused on helping Lathrop Homes residents organize in the face of redevelopment, said John McDermott, former housing and land use director at Logan Square Neighborhood Association. McDermott, who was Love’s supervisor, said their relationship felt more like a partnership.
They focused on advocating for the Lathrop Homes in the early 2000s.
Initially, the Chicago Housing Authority said they were going to keep the homes and rehabilitate them as public housing in 2001 but the work never started, he said.
“Tami had the sense to realize that if you’re dealing with a big government bureaucracy and they had a plan and then they suddenly say it’s TBD, it can’t be good news,” he said. “She was the source of energy and focus with residents.”
Love also led early demonstrations and rallies to draw attention to units where families had left and the housing authority had kept the units empty, McDermott said.
“We got these photos of family life and stapled them onto the boards to symbolize families coming into the units,” he said. “Tami’s temperament was an incredible asset. She had little patience for officials and anybody in a position of power being condescending to people or patting them on the head.”
While she had no patience for injustice, she had a lot of patience for ordinary people, McDermott added. She encouraged community members to be involved and become leaders themselves.
“She played a crucial role in helping the residents of Lathrop Homes find their voice in the course of several years,” he said.
Love later returned to the organization’s parent mentor program and fought for state funding and parent training, “to make sure the values and heart of the work was replicated with fidelity,” her colleagues wrote on the GoFundMe page.
“Tami was the most incredible trainer. Her humor and sincerity could keep a room laughing and lively for hours. No one could read a room like Tami could,” her colleagues wrote. “Tami took time to meet people where they were at, to listen, to try to learn their language, to celebrate small beautiful powerful personal changes as well as the big picture systemic changes.”
Love is also survived by children Kevin Lawson Jr.; Katrina Lawson; and six grandchildren.
Love Johnson said her mother loved astronomy, planets, stars and “everything in the universe.” She especially enjoyed tending to her garden and filled her apartment with plants and tended to her hydrangeas outside, she added.
“She was the symbol of strength and power, she was also very loving,” Love Johnson said. “She was really the CEO of the family and took care of all the business.”