Last week, I was proud to convene a hearing of the Cook County Board’s Health and Hospitals Committee to discuss the maternal mortality crisis, an issue that is too often overlooked across the country.

The urgency of holding this hearing cannot be overstated. We recently heard the news of the tragic death of Tori Bowie, 2016 Olympian and track athlete, who died in her eighth month of pregnancy, likely due to respiratory distress and eclampsia. An astounding 75% of the gold medal-winning team that Bowie was on has either died from or experienced these complications during pregnancy.

If the City of Chicago is going to replace the 400,000 lead pipes that bring water to our homes during our lifetime, it has to make drastic improvements.

The process of getting the lead service line replaced at my mother’s house was arduous to say the least. After applying for the city’s Equity Lead Service Line Replacement Program, she dealt with over a year of waiting, submitting documents, going downtown, and resending documents. Finally this June, after months of waiting for crews to show up with little notice, my mom was able to have her lead service line replaced.

While the union plumbers were truly kind and professional, our city officials who oversee this process need to make it much more efficient and equitable. Our communities deserve a solution to this health crisis.

Public transit plays an invaluable role in the lives of millions of riders across the Chicago region and has the potential to reach even more people — but the system has been drastically underfunded for decades. The pandemic exposed what we already knew:

our system relies too heavily on fare revenue, limiting our ability to focus on delivering reliable service to the people who need it the most.

 

As a proud resident of the City of Harvey, I strive to advocate for my community, especially when it comes to healthcare access and affordability. Which is why I know that our elected leaders in Washington are committed to improving the health and wellness of their constituents, particularly in underserved communities. However, recent proposals being considered by Congress could have devastating impacts on patients’ access to care.

I am a CPS mother and third-generation CPS graduate. I am a former teacher, former school and district leader, current advocate for educational justice in my role at Kids First Chicago, and a Latine woman from Humboldt Park.

As the Springfield legislative session draws to a close, the clock is ticking on the delivery of district maps for the CPS School Board elections that will begin next year. Since 2021, Kids First Chicago has been working with our Elected School Board Task Force (ESBTF), composed of CPS parents, to determine parents’ priorities for the new school board. After three years and conversations with hundreds of parents, it is clear what they want: fair racial representation so that the elected board looks like and understands the student body they serve.

As Chicago transitions to a new mayoral administration that promises to shake things up, life-long advocates wonder how Chicago can address the giant chasm of accountability that has persisted for years.

For the past eight years and two mayors, environmental justice activists have been more focused on greenwashing efforts to cover up policies and actions that have deeply hurt our communities.

The weakness of the arguments made by those benefiting from the tax credit scheme called “Invest in Kids” can be assessed by their reliance on half-truths, misstatements of facts, and false assumptions.

Since 2020, the hunger crisis in Illinois has worsened, resulting in the routine exhaustion of federal funding by Illinois food banks before the end of each year. The budgetary deficits are usually unmet by private donations and federal grants. Illinois food banks are forced to ration their food supplies to pantries, reducing available food to the hungry in our state. 

As one of the top growers of commercial corn and soybeans, Illinois farmers are among the most productive agricultural growers in the world. Most of our farmland (75% of our state’s total land area) is healthy, producing plentiful commodity yields generating over $20 billion a year.  However, rising input costs limit profit margins for typical Illinois farmers, and it becomes difficult for farmers to donate any of their yield to the hungry. Illinois should improve our food donation system by incentivizing our farmers to donate a small portion of their crops to the hungry.  We can use economics, common sense and public policy to tackle this crisis.

Families should have the ability to choose an excellent education for their children no matter where they live or their level of income. For this reason, it is my hope that the Illinois General Assembly extends the Tax Credit Scholarship Program as they continue to see the impact of this program for deserving children and families.

The Tax Credit Scholarship Program, made possible by the Illinois Invest in Kids Act, provides need-based scholarships to Illinois K-12 students and their families to attend the non-public school of their choice. Without this program, many hardworking families may not have the ability to select their best fit school due to financial constraints.

Kevin Artl, President and CEO of the American Council of Engineering Companies of Illinois speaking alongside Illinois Governor J.B. Pritzker

Illinois is the center of the nation’s transportation grid with its staggering infrastructure network of more than 147,000 miles of roadways, 7,800 bridges, nearly 10,000 miles of railroad track, 107 public and private airports, 1,095 miles of navigable waterways and a public transit system that supports 450 million trips annually. Maintaining, repairing and modernizing this network is an immense task that created challenges and called for a huge infusion of both capital resources and human capital investments.