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Funding the Transit We Need and Deserve with the NITA Act
On Friday, October 31, the Illinois General Assembly passed a bill that will transform the future of transit in the Chicago region. The Northern Illinois Transit Authority (NITA) Act raises $1.5 billion in new revenue, which is enough both to prevent the 40% cuts in transit service that had threatened the system as federal COVID…
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Expanding Coverage for Mental Health Care with HB1085
On October 31, in the closing hours of this year’s Illinois legislative session, the Illinois General Assembly passed a bill – House Bill 1085 – that will expand access to mental health care for millions of people in our state. Part of what we were finding in our health care organizing is that health insurance…
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Funding the Transit We Need and Deserve with the NITA Act
On Friday, October 31, the Illinois General Assembly passed a bill that will transform the future of transit in the Chicago region. The Northern Illinois Transit Authority (NITA) Act raises $1.5 billion in new revenue, which is enough both to prevent the 40% cuts in transit service that had threatened the system as federal COVID money ran out AND to…
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Expanding Coverage for Mental Health Care with HB1085
On October 31, in the closing hours of this year’s Illinois legislative session, the Illinois General Assembly passed a bill – House Bill 1085 – that will expand access to mental health care for millions of people in our state. Part of what we were finding in our health care organizing is that health insurance companies often reimburse therapists a…
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Illinois Legislature Passes Bill Creating Statewide Office of Public Defense
After more than a year of organizing, the Funded Advocacy and Independent Representation (FAIR) Act has passed the state legislature and is heading to the Governor’s desk! This legislation addresses the serious civil rights crisis caused by the state’s underfunding of public defense, leaving people who have been accused of crimes (especially rural, Black, and Brown folks) without quality legal…
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UC Berkeley Labor Center confirms: “Gig drivers are getting a raw deal”
A first-of-its-kind analysis of the wages of app-based passenger and delivery drivers in Chicago reveals that gig drivers struggle to make ends meet, earning less than the city’s minimum wage. The report by the UC Berkeley Labor Center comes as rideshare drivers are increasing their demands for the City Council to urgently pass the Chicago Rideshare Living Wage Ordinance, sponsored…
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Chicago rideshare drivers win $250k outreach fund in 2025 city budget
When the City Council approved Mayor Brandon Johnson’s 2025 budget on Monday, the 85,000 people who drive for Uber and Lyft in Chicago got something they’ve been fighting for for years: funding to start a worker outreach program. This $250,000 will fund multilingual, multimodal workers’ rights education outreach to rideshare drivers and other gig workers. The program will include information…
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Illinois continues to close corporate tax loopholes
Illinois’ 2024 budget includes hundreds of millions of dollars in corporate tax loophole closures, including the retailer’s sales tax discount. Our work over the course of many years laid the groundwork for this win, and our allies in the Fund Our Futures coalition pushed it over the finish line in 2024. This will lead to hundreds of millions of dollars…
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Environmental Justice Town Halls
Our Environmental Justice team has launched a series of town halls with members and elected officials across Chicago and the suburbs in order to not just get our public transportation back to where it was before COVID caused cuts and disruptions but to win the progressive funding our state needs to build the world-class public transportation we deserve. The first…
Our Initiatives
We choose our fights by determining which issues matter most to our members and conducting strategic analyses to determine the power we need to build to win on those issues.
UPDATES
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The People’s Lobby
Will AT&T Choose Profits Over People? New Petition Demands Corporation Cut Ties With ICE
The People’s Lobby and People’s Action have introduced a petition calling on AT&T to end its contract with ICE.