make polluters pay
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2025 Victory Snapshot
As we close out 2025, The People’s Lobby has so much to celebrate. This year proved once again that when we fight together, we win—and we’re building the lasting change our communities deserve.
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Funding the Transit We Need and Deserve with the NITA Act
The Northern Illinois Transit Authority will transform the future of transit in the Chicago region. Learn how our organizing helped make it happen.
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Expanding Coverage for Mental Health Care with HB1085
House Bill 1085 will expand access to mental health care for millions of people in our state. Learn how our organizing helped make it happen.
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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…
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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…
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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.…
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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…
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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…
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TPL helps pass the Healthcare Protection Act
With significant work from TPL as part of the Protect Our Care coalition, Illinois passed the Healthcare Protection Act! This win is an important step toward regulating health insurance corporations: it prevents them from requiring prior authorizations in an important set of mental health crises, it ends the use of “ghost networks” where insurers claim…
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Pretrial Success Act passes in Illinois
The 2024 Illinois state budget includes the Pretrial Success Act, which will dramatically increase access to health and human services for people awaiting trial. Our coalition pushed hard to pass this, and it would never have succeeded if we hadn’t won our eight-year fight to pass the Pretrial Fairness Act in 2020.
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Pretrial Fairness Act passes, ending money bond in Illinois
In 2021, after eight years of work by organizers, legal experts, people who have been personally impacted by our racist criminal legal system, and many more, the Illinois Legislature passed the Pretrial Fairness Act. This legislation made Illinois the first state to abolish the practice of keeping people who have been accused of a crime…
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Climate & Equitable Jobs Act
In 2021, our years of organizing in partnership with the Illinois Clean Jobs Coalition paid off when we finally passed the Climate and Equitable Jobs Act (CEJA). This historic climate and energy legislation centers communities most impacted by the climate crisis and makes Illinois a national leader on climate action. CEJA will put Illinois on…
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Winning for workers in Cook County
In 2016, after a 3-year campaign, The People’s Lobby moved the Cook County Board to pass an increase in the minimum wage in suburban Cook County that raised pay for tens of thousands of low-wage workers from $8.25 up to $13 per hour.
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Bringing back the 31st Street bus
In 1996, the Chicago Transit Authority canceled bus service on 31st Street to address a funding crisis. This left a huge gap in bus service, which meant thousands of people people unable to access grocery stores, a food bank and clothing pantry, a hospital, the lake, and jobs in other areas of the city. After…