The first time I met Slim was in 1967 or ‘68.
We were organizing against the Vietnam war at Los Angeles City College, trying to set up a student organization. There was already a Black Student Union and a chapter of MEChA (The Chicano Student Organization of Aztlan).
Slim was in L.A. on an organizing tour for SDS.
I knew Slim through my older brother, Mike, and had invited him to our meeting.
Slim talked to our group about what was happening in the world and about what he had seen around the country. He told us that we should be a chapter of Students for a Democratic Society.
He was very persuasive. So, that’s what we did.
I talked to my brother this afternoon and got the news that Slim Coleman had died after a long illness at the age of 82.
Sixty years of memories.
It’s hard for me to imagine the campaign to elect Harold on the north side without recalling Slim who had organized those early meetings at a church on Kedzie in Logan Square in 1982.
Not many in the white wards took Harold all that seriously when he first announced.
At the first meetings, half the chairs were empty.
Within months, the church wasn’t big enough to hold all the volunteers.
Slim would stop by our apartment overlooking Palmer Square. His greeting was always the same.
Slim never asked me “How are you doing?”
The greeting was always, “So, what are you doing?”
A distinction of great significance.
And there was an expectation of a substantive answer.
No small talk.
That didn’t change when Slim became a preacher and set up shop in a storefront on Division Street.
At a Puerto Rican street festival on Division a few years ago, I ran into Slim in front of his Aldeberto Methodist Church.
Wearing his priestly white collar now, he placed his hand on my shoulder in a way that I half expected a blessing. But I received no blessing. Instead I was asked, “So, what are you doing?”
In that sense, nothing had changed.
Aldeberto had become a sanctuary for immigrants.
Elvira Arellano and her son Saul Arellano found sanctuary in Aldeberto for over a year. Slim and his wife, Emma Lozano, who was also a pastor at Adelberto, fought off any attempt by the immigration police to take them.
In fact, it may have been Slim who first brought up the idea of Chicago as a Sanctuary City to Harold Washington. Harold declared Chicago as one of the first Sanctuary Cities in the United States.
Slim’s greeting remained the same whenever we crossed paths.
“So, what are you doing?”
Slim can’t be the one to ask anymore.
It’s a shame.
It’s a question that should be asked of us more than ever these days.
My condolences to Slim’s wife and comrade, Emma Lozano. Condolences to his friends and family.
Rest easy, Slim.