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.
“She loved people and justice, and she was inspired by how accessible that fight was to everyone, and she took full advantage of that opportunity,” said CTU President Stacy Davis Gates.
Geovanis died of complications from brain cancer on Feb. 12 in her Little Village home, said her sister, Janet.
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 worked as a freelance grant writer for several years before taking a job in 1991 with Cook County, where she handled employee communications and public relations for the next two decades. In 2010, she was a whistleblower in a scandal involving Carla Oglesby, who had been then-Cook County Board President Todd Stroger’s deputy chief of staff. A county Board of Ethics report found that Oglesby had rigged contracts with her former public relations firm, and also that she had told investigators that her former PR firm had done work that in reality had been done by Geovanis.
Geovanis also got involved in politics, performing campaign work for U.S. Rep. Jesús “Chuy” García and former state Sen. Miguel del Valle.
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.
Other causes to which Geovanis lent her time and energy included protesting the Dakota Access Pipeline, supporting Black Lives Matter and Occupy Chicago and most recently, voicing her support for Palestine in the current Middle East conflict. She had defended Palestinians’ rights to their homeland dating back to her elementary and high school years, her family said.
“She and her late husband Dick (Reilly) were so incredible at mentoring and fostering real relationships with new generations of activists,” said Jeff Pickert, a roommate and friend. “Chris took on this nurturing role where we could say, ‘I want to be like her when I grow up — I want to be in this for decades.’”
With Reilly, Geovanis formed two alternative media websites, HammerHard MediaWorks and Chicago Indymedia.
Geovanis left her county job in late 2010 and in 2017 was hired by the Chicago Teachers Union as its communications director.
“I met Chris in 2015 when I was still doing the legislative and political work for the union during Chuy García’s campaign for mayor,” Davis Gates said. “I watched her debate a roomful of men and not back down, and I fell in love with her at that moment. From that point on, it seemed like she was at every rally and every demonstration that I attended.”
Davis Gates said the CTU “anchors organizing as the priority and the work.”
“Chris Geovanis practiced that within the communications sphere,” Davis Gates said. “Reporters and editors left discussions with Chris Geovanis with a better understanding of our movement than they did before they started talking to her. She saw her work as a communicator, the very same way that a labor organizer sees their work.”
Geovanis greatly enjoyed her job with CTU, her sister said.
“(She loved) the people she worked with (and) at CTU, she also really loved to work with reporters and took an enormous amount of time to talk with them,” Janet Geovanis said.
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.
“It wasn’t just that she would come into the (organizing) space like, ‘I’ve done this for decades, I know this,’ but she would come in with experience but let each generation of activists influence her politics as well,” Pickert said. “And she did a lot of behind-the-scenes work. She was a brilliant media strategist.”
Pickert said Geovanis inspired a group of younger activists who looked up to her when they were getting started with activism in their teens and 20s.
“In that role, we could say, ‘I want to not be burned out and self-righteous but celebratory and strategic and intentional about why we do this activism,’” Pickert said. “And she was so good at that.”
Geovanis held a Master Gardener certificate and grew herbs, strawberries, tomatoes and beans in her home garden. She also drew and painted using pastels, pencils and oils, her sister said.
Geovanis’ husband died in 2020. In addition to her sister, Geovanis is survived by a brother, Nick, and two other sisters, Vivienne and Carla.
Services were held.
Bob Goldsborough is a freelance reporter.
