Chicago's next City Budget comes up for a vote shortly. The financial crisis it addresses, created in part by the Trump Administration, but mostly by the racism and class subservience of past administrations that privatized and cut city services, closed schools and mental health clinics and covered up police torture, abuse, and murder, to the tune of a billion and a half dollars in civil judgments over the past 14 years, but factually since 1972. The financial short fall due to their past deference to banks, real estate developers, and criminal schemes, now falls on the shoulders of only the second progressive Black mayor in Chicago's history; some 40 years after Harold Washington's historic peoples coalition victory. A revolution in its day, not unlike that which recently put New York State congressman Zohran Mamdani into the Mayor's office of New York City.
Mayor Brandon Johnson's The Protect Chicago Budget insists that working people and school children will not be made to carry the burden as past administrations have done. It protects gains in public mental health services, crisis response programs and affordable housing. It raises no property tax, water and garbage tax or tax on grocery's which will follow should the corporations and wealthy win the day with a massive misinformation campaign.
Speakers explain the tiny tax on the richest corporations and billionaires, how it would cover the revenue short fall, along with a surplus from the much abused TIF District tax which not long after it was established to support redevelopment in blighted communities, became a slush fund for downtown developers of high end projects.
The Protect Chicago Budget would see the wealthiest in Chicago pay their fare share. But a handful of self professed progressive Aldermen are opposing reinstating the employee “head tax” which applies to only the largest of corporations . Corporations like Amazon, Google and McDonalds who profit from the city, its people and its commons, add to the operational costs, but pay little to their maintenance. Raising taxes on working people and cutting service to constituents appears their leaning. Educating them to support the interests of working families with their vote is the goal of the rally.
Pastor Troy Venning , Quinn Chapel AME Church, the first black congregation in the city of Chicago provides a welcome, reminding the assembled of the historic role the church and members undertook in the turbulent 1850's, one that continues through today, and its parallel in their mission in today's turbulent times.
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United Working Families https://www.unitedworkingfamilies.org
Quinn Chapel AME Church https://quinnchicago.org
Mayor Brandon Johnson Presents The Protecting Chicago Budget https://www.chicago.gov/city/en/depts/mayor/press_room/press_releases/2025/october/budget-proposal-2025.html
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