This is a time of grave crisis for our city and our people. Children are being killed in the streets where they play and infants are shot in their homes while police guard Trump Tower and the Christopher Columbus statue. Without work, renters are hopelessly behind on their rent and fighting off illegal evictions. Over 5,000 Chicagoans, the overwhelming majority of them Black and Latinx, have died from COVID, leaving their families with unspeakable loss and staggering medical debt. Food pantry use has more than doubled this year as unemployed parents struggle to pay for food for their families.

Overshadowed by the Biden/Trump hoopla this election cycle is a major initiative on the Nov. 3 ballot that should not be overlooked. In fact, its success or failure will have a dramatic impact on the fiscal solvency of the state moving forward.

The ballot initiative will ask voters whether the state should scrap it’s flat income tax rate, where everyone pays the same tax regardless of income, or move to a gradual structure where individuals who make over $250,000 will pay more in taxes. Additionally, any individual making below that will either pay the same or less.

After years of public meetings, design review and a dismissed lawsuit aimed at blocking the project, a 100-unit, 100 percent affordable housing development has broken ground on what was formerly a surface parking lot in Logan Square. But like all the land in Chicago, it had a previous life. Prior to the creation of the surface parking lot, that land housed people, via one of of Chicago’s most important forms of vernacular architecture: the workers cottage.

Reserve Management Group (RMG), which last year purchased the assets of North Side metal recycler General Iron, is expanding its Southeast Side operations by building a new metal recycling facility to serve the region’s demand for processing end-of-life vehicles, appliances, and other discarded metal goods into reusable raw material.

With nearly a dozen affiliated companies operating 14 facilities in 10 states, RMG has established an environmentally responsible presence in Chicago’s 10^th Ward for over 30 years. Since 1987, RMG companies have conducted metal and electronics recycling, stevedoring, and shipping operations, and they have owned the 178-acre repurposed brownfield at 116^th Street and Avenue O, the site of former LTV and Republic steel mills, for approximately 20 years.

“We are completely frightened by, completely impressed by and completely in support of wherever this is headed.”

So said an August 27^th Chicago Teachers Union tweet, when protesters graced Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos’s sidewalk with a guillotine.

Not some isolated incident, such flippancy about lawlessness shows a need for our city’s major union groups to more conscientiously heed the 2019 findings of the Senate Intelligence Committee: Russian social media trolls try to weaken our country by perpetuating and exacerbating tensions, including through inflammatory sentiments like their Tumblr front handle bleepthepolice.

Every 10 years, the U.S. Census Bureau begins the process of counting every person living in the country, in part, to ensure that federal dollars are properly being allocated to states. The census guides and informs how much in federal funding Illinois, and every state, receives. To put it in context, the 2010 census results drove the allocation of $34.3 billion in federal funding, according to a report by the George Washington Institute of Public Policy. Yes, that's a billion with a “B.”

The federal government has counted its people since 1790. So why has the process of collecting U.S. population data become so difficult this time around?

Joseph Wallace, Gizzell “Gizzy” Ford, Ja’hir Gibbons, Semaj Crosby, A.J. Freund. What do they have in common? All of them were murdered and before their deaths, all of them were the subjects of investigation by the Illinois Department of Children and Family Services (DCFS).

Now add to that list Kerrigan “Kerri” Rutherford, age 6 from Montgomery, Illinois. Her mother and stepfather have been charged with involuntary manslaughter in connection with her July 2^nd death, which Kendall County authorities allege was the result of the couple having given Kerri enough of a prescription drug, olanzapine, to kill her.

Many families are suffering a Covid-related loss of income but so are many of the people who provide them with their homes. In this Covid era, the cost of providing housing has increased while rental income has declined due to the inability of many tenants to pay their rent.

According to the National Low Income Housing Coalition, “mom and pop” landlords own more than half of all rental units nationwide (22.7 million out of 45.8 million). Here in Chicago, where small two- to six-flats and courtyard buildings make up so much of the fabric of Chicago’s neighborhoods that percentage is much higher.

Even though our communities would collapse without their work, as a society, we don’t treat Black women as essential.

The pay gap for Black women has only narrowed by nineteen cents from 1967 to 2018. Black women are paid, on average, thirty-eights cents on the dollar less than white men. This loss represents $1,962 per month, $23,540 per year, and a staggering $941,600 over a 40-year career. Ultimately, this affords Black women less opportunity to build wealth and economic security for themselves and their families.