MoveSmart.org board member and co-founder Rob Breymaier, executive director of the Oak Park Regional Housing Center, has a great column in the Wednesday Journal (Oak Park's weekly newspaper). He writes:

Our diversity continues to require effort because the structure of segregation continues to dominate the region. We owe a lot to the vanguard Oak Parkers of the previous generation-both those who stayed put and those who moved in. They witnessed the blockbusting and panic peddling that made its way through Chicago's West Side. They steadfastly opposed the hostile and hateful mentalities that denied housing to people of color elsewhere. Their insistence that Oak Park could find a better, more dignified way to embrace racial change provided us with a foundation for an open and inclusive community.

Oak Park truly is a special place, and the region as a whole has much to learn from their efforts to preserve and expand diversity. Perhaps the most important lesson is that enforcing the law was only half the battle - stable integration in the face of a region as segregated as Chicagoland requires affirmative marketing. The hope of MoveSmart.org is to quickly and effectively scale-up this affirmative marketing, to lay bare the very real benefits of integrative moves to all housing seekers and to empower them with the information to make such a move.