Christine Geovanis, who worked in communications with the Chicago Teachers Union and for Cook County government and was active in a number of local and global social justice causes, has died at age 64.
Geovanis was born in the South Chicago neighborhood. Her father was a one-time steelworker who became a City Colleges professor and her mother was an early childhood education teacher and director. The family later moved to Berwyn and Geovanis graduated from Morton West High School before attending the University of Chicago. She then worked for the university in its medical school’s fundraising department.
Geovanis was active with Neighbors Against Police Brutality in the 1990s and with her husband, Dick Reilly, started a group called the Chicago Coalition Against War and Racism to mobilize opposition to the 2003 invasion and occupation of Iraq. With Reilly, Geovanis formed two alternative media websites, HammerHard MediaWorks and Chicago Indymedia.
Through it all, Geovanis remained driven by a desire to seek justice while not being stuck in how things had been done in the past, friends and colleagues said.