PLATFORM

We are in a housing crisis. Rising costs are displacing long-time residents and making it harder for immigrants, people of color, and LGBTQ+ people seeking refuge to live in our community, threatening its longstanding diversity. I hear every day from constituents who have had their rents increase hundreds of dollars over the past couple years. In the two zip codes that make up the majority of our district (60625 and 60640), median rents have increased by over 40% since 2022*. Our district has a high share of rent-burdened households: 42.5% of renter households pay more than 30% of their income in rent, and another 20.5%, pay more than half of their income**. 

As a community organizer, I have been fighting for affordable housing in our district for years, standing up against NIMBYs to expand shelter capacity for our unhoused neighbors, and standing up to developers to protect SROs.

The scale of our housing crisis demands an all-of-the-above strategy to help our neighborhoods grow without displacement and ensure that housing is a human right. As your State Representative, I will fight for greater public investment in affordable and subsidized housing, regulatory reforms to build more housing of all types, and stronger protections for renters.

I will fight for public investments to make housing more affordable for all, including:

• Increased funding for HOME Illinois, which funds emergency and supportive housing

• Increased funding for the Illinois Housing Development Authority to directly build deeply affordable housing

• Piloting innovative new programs for providing housing, looking at models like Chicago’s Green Social Housing program as possible candidates for state investment

• Lowering barriers to access for alternative housing models, such as cooperative housing and community land trusts

I will address the statewide housing shortage by pushing for regulatory reforms to enable building more housing, including:

• Eliminating exclusionary zoning, starting with changes to allow building "Missing Middle" housing (HB1814)

• Eliminating parking minimums (expanding on the People over Parking Act, which passed as part of the transit bill - SB2111)

• Legalizing accessory dwelling units such as coach houses (HB1813)

• Modernizing building codes (including allowing for single-stair configurations)

• Allowing emergency and affordable housing construction by right

I will fight to protect the rights of renters by:

• Lifting the state’s ban on rent regulation by local governments (HB 3687)

• Prohibiting racist “Crime-Free Housing” restrictions (SB 2264/HB3110)

• Passing a bill of rights for our unhoused neighbors (HB1429)

• Limiting move-in fees and other junk fees, building on the recently-passed HB3564

• Supporting protections for tenants to organize tenant unions and statewide just-cause eviction protections

*This was calculated for 2-bedroom apartments using HUD data - 60640 has median rents for 2-bedrooms go up 41%, and 60625 has median rents for 2-bedrooms go up 42%. 60613 (which includes the part of the district east of Damen and south of Montrose) has also seen a double-digit increase of 23%.

** American Community Survey (ACS) 2019--2023 (5-Year-Estimates).

Public transit is essential for our district and city to thrive. We need a transit system that is reliable, safe, and accessible to all. This requires robust funding, collaborative governance, and rider-centered policies. My goal is for our service to be so good that Chicagoans who own cars still prefer to take public transit because of how much more convenient and cost-effective it becomes. A thriving transit system also enables denser housing, lower daily expenses, climate resilience, and improved health outcomes.

Illinois took a massive step toward these goals with the passage of the Northern Illinois Transit Authority Act (SB2111), which created and funded the new Northern Illinois Transit Authority (NITA) to oversee CTA, Metra, and Pace alongside many sorely needed reforms. As your State Representative, I will:

• Ensure NITA is developing and delivering on ambitious goals to deliver service reliability, fare integration, and safety throughout the system

• Advocate for DuSable Lake Shore Drive to be converted to a boulevard system, including bus only lanes, safe pedestrian and bike infrastructure, and reduced traffic speeds

• Fight to fund free public transit for public school students (HB4918)

• Invest in regional and intercity rail, including high-speed intercity rail

Every traffic death is a policy failure. Our transportation system must be improved with safety as the top priority. As an organizer, I have supported campaigns for safer streets, including by marshalling for the Bike Grid Now campaign. As your State Representative, I will:

• Work with Illinois Department of Transportation to prioritize safe, accessible, and green street designs

• Advocate for safer street block grants to ensure that communities across the state have the resources they need to invest in safe-street infrastructure

• Support existing efforts to improve bike and pedestrian safety through regulatory changes, including legalizing the Idaho Stop

I am a proud public school graduate, former CPS paraprofessional, and adult education professional. I have heard from parents and teachers across the district feeling the pain of budget cuts, particularly around special education support. 

As an organizer, I organized around passing the Teaching Asian American Community History Act and won $2 million for teacher training and support for Asian American, LGBTQ+, Muslim, and Native American inclusive history curriculum. 

As your State Representative I will build on that work to support K-12 students, parents, and teachers. I will:

• Work to fully fund Illinois' public schools according to the Evidence-Based Funding formula, supported by progressive revenue solutions (see Progressive Revenue)

• Advocate for equitable state funding for special education, including for Special Education Classroom Assistants (SECAs) and "mandated categoricals" to fund other special education services such as transportation

• Strengthen and diversify our educator workforce through programs like Grow Your Own Teachers and expanding funding for scholarships for young people training to be teachers

• Address the school-to-prison pipeline by supporting restorative justice practices in schools 

• Invest in the mental health of our young people by advocating for mental health counselors in schools, funding proven social-emotional learning programs, and connecting students to local after school and community programming

• Strengthen accountability and oversight for charter schools, including requiring full financial transparency and 12-month public notice for school closures

• Support the implementation of inclusive history curriculum

Young people in Illinois deserve quality public education, from cradle to career. With the skyrocketing costs of both early childhood learning and post-secondary education, we need strong state action to invest in the future of Illinois. As your State Representative, I will:

• Support expanding the Chicago Early Learning Program and Smart Start Illinois with the goal of establishing universal childcare in Illinois

• Push for increased funding for public higher education, particularly passing and implementing the proposed Evidence-Based Funding Formula for higher education (SB3965)

• Make college more accessible by increasing funding for the Monetary Award Program that provides scholarships for low-income students

All Illinoisans deserve to live free of violence. Public safety for all requires addressing the root causes of violence. I support evidence-based strategies that address those root causes, including:

• Investing in youth jobs

• Funding community violence intervention 

• Mental health care for all who need it, including free trauma-informed care and substance abuse services

• Housing as a human right (see above)

• Addressing access to firearms through gun control legislation, including the RIFL Act (HB3320)

• Support an end to traffic violence (see Public Transit)

Public safety for all includes an end to mass incarceration. The number of people incarcerated in Illinois, after massively increasing for several decades, has finally begun to trend downward. Building new prison and jail facilities is costly and unnecessary. On top of that, the MAGA fascist federal government is using the infrastructure of mass incarceration to detain and incarcerate our immigrant neighbors. 

As an organizer, I have been fighting against state violence and to address the harms of the criminal-legal system for over a decade. I have organized for police accountability, to end Chicago’s racist gang databases, and abolish cash bail in Illinois. In my day job, I have worked to provide incarcerated people across the country access to education, including job training, social and emotional learning, and access to GEDs. 

As your State Representative, I will: 

• Defend and strengthen the TRUST and Illinois Way Forward Acts, which forbid county and municipal governments from collaborating with ICE

• Refuse any attempts from Trump and the MAGA movement to rollback our hard-won reforms

• Oppose rollbacks to SAFE-T Act, which ended the practice of incarcerating people simply because they could not afford to buy their freedom

• Ensure successful implementation of the FAIR Act, which will create a statewide public defense office in 2027

• Champion funding for the Pretrial Success Act to provide voluntary mental health resources, substance abuse treatment, childcare, and transportation for people awaiting trial

• Advocate to increase funding for Access to Justice grants to provide legal support to people who have been involved in the criminal-legal system

• Support and expand compassionate release programs

• Oppose funding for building new prisons and jails, and support demolishing and consolidating empty and under-capacity prisons and jails

• Protect the rights of people subjected to electronic monitoring, ensuring this technology is not used to lock people in their homes who could safely return to the community while awaiting trial

• Propose and pass legislation ensuring the right to family visitation and to mail delivery free of censorship

The climate crisis is the single greatest threat to the future of humanity and the planet. As the federal government retreats from responsibility, it is more important than ever for Illinois to take action to move off of fossil fuels and build a climate resilient future.

As your State Representative, I will: 

• Sponsor legislation to Make Polluters Pay for damages to the climate and people’s health

• Advocate for changes to our transportation system to prioritize safe, accessible, carbon-free transportation (see Public Transportation and Public Safety for All)

• Support the implementation of the Climate and Equitable Jobs Act, including opposing proposals that would delay phasing out fossil fuel power plants

• Sign on as cosponsor to the Clean and Healthy Buildings Act (SB2269/HB3525) to electrify residential and commercial buildings

• Pass legislation requiring new data centers to provide new clean energy for their power needs

On a local level, we have a lot of work to do to build a climate resilient future. A big piece of that is environmental justice. Air, water, and soil pollution lead to higher rates of cardiovascular and respiratory illness. 

 As your State Representative I will:

• Sign on as cosponsor to the Illinois Environmental Justice Act (HB2521), which requires the Illinois Environmental Protection Agency to identify and protect communities that are experiencing environmental harms

• Advocate for zoning changes to make it easier to build housing and to restrict building warehouses, data centers and other polluting industries in residential neighborhoods, especially Black and brown neighborhoods

• Address air pollution from vehicular emissions by improving low and no-carbon transportation options (see Public Transit)

• Work with stakeholders at the city and county levels to monitor lead levels in water and ensure all of our neighbors have access to clean drinking water 

• Push for funding to address local environmental issues in the district, including addressing flooding in residential areas and encouraging native plant pollinator highways

• Expand funding for the Illinois Department of Natural Resources to support conservation work, including wetlands conservation along the lake and the Montrose bird sanctuary

To build an Illinois that is affordable and safe for all of us, we must tax billionaires and big corporations. This is all the more crucial in this moment, as MAGA Republican policies are giving the wealthy massive federal tax cuts while decimating critical federal programs.

We can take immediate action by adopting revenue proposals on the table right now for “progressive revenue”: taxes that ask more from the rich and less from working people. As your State Representative, I will make it my number one priority to adopt the proposals of the Illinois Revenue Alliance, including: 

• Taxing the wealthiest individuals through billionaire wealth taxes and excise taxes on capital gains

• Taxing the wealthiest corporations through closing loopholes, worldwide combined reporting requirements, and more

• Taxing big tech companies through a digital ad tax

Beyond these proposals, Illinois needs to adopt a graduated income tax, where higher incomes are taxed at higher rates. This is the only way to fund critical programs without overburdening middle- and working-class families. As your State Representative, I will: 

• Build support in the state legislature to pursue a referendum to change the state constitution to allow for a graduated income tax

• Work with advocacy groups to build the capacity to win that referendum

• Build relationships with other legislators in states like Massachusetts who have successfully adopted graduated income taxes through referenda

Finally, the state can do more to help municipal governments such as Chicago adopt their own progressive revenue solutions. As your State Representative, I will work with local officials in Chicago and prioritize legislation that authorizes the city to adopt new sources of revenue, such as: 

• Taxes on tickets resold on Ticketmaster and other secondary markets

• Taxes on businesses with high-income payrolls, modeled after the Seattle JumpStart tax, which could raise hundreds of millions of new revenue for Chicago (source: Institute for Public Good)

These solutions would make Illinois’ tax burden fairer (we currently rank 8th worst!). They can also help us shift away from property taxes, which Illinois relies on much more than other peer states.