What Chicago needs and deserves
Indivisible Chicago’s Guidelines for evaluating the 2023 candidates
How do we want our elected officials to make our city work for each of us? The Indivisible Chicago Alliance adopted these progressive guidelines as a standard to assist voters evaluating the platforms of all candidates for public office, both citywide and at the ward level. We look forward to working with partner organizations throughout the year to enact these progressive policies.
Invest in all neighborhoods to give all residents the opportunity to thrive.
Make equity Chicago’s guiding strategy with creative and equitable programs, projects, and services that open opportunities for all residents to support themselves and their families.
Use Community Benefit Agreements and other tools to facilitate meaningful, ongoing input from residents of impacted communities.
Reform the City’s revenue structure to reduce reliance on regressive taxes and policies.
Address current food, healthcare, pharmacy, and green space deserts wherever they exist.
Guarantee access to high-quality public education for every student at every level, including early education and the City Colleges.
Embrace an elected school board and seek future opportunities to expand community input and ownership of schools.
Expand support of non-teaching staff, including nurses, social workers, clerical and janitorial workers.
Move toward ending the privatization of public education through charters by limiting their access to public funds.
Expand affordable and accessible housing with projects and policies that foster economic, racial, and ethnic integration.
Commit to managed growth with safeguards to ensure residents are not displaced.
Pair housing projects with investment in community services.
Expand housing and other necessary services for the unhoused population.
Make Chicago an environmental and climate justice leader by adopting and implementing innovative energy, transportation, sustainability, and recycling practices.
Ensure every resident has access to safe water and a healthy environment.
Invest in a high-functioning Department of Environment.
Remedy past environmental injustices targeting Chicago’s Black and Brown communities.
Ensure an adequate and equitable public transportation system citywide with the necessary investment to make public transit accessible, affordable, and safe for all.
Establish a public safety system that serves and protects all communities
End policies that militarize police. Publicly identify and disband so-called “elite units.” Embrace meaningful civilian and community oversight. Adopt policies that reduce police violence against all residents. Eliminate the CPD gang database.
Center resident input, especially in communities most impacted.
Develop innovative, evidence-based solutions such as economic and social investments, sensible gun control measures, expanded civilian oversight, and accountability to all communities.
Prioritize treatment not trauma approaches to mental health and emotional crises.
Embrace and protect First Amendment rights to protest and to assemble. End police violence toward protestors and the raising of bridges and other tactics that undermine our rights.
Embrace and support all residents; facilitate safe, affordable communities
Support immigrants as valued residents, irrespective of their immigration status, by prioritizing fair and equitable policies and services to protect everyone who makes Chicago home.
Ensure adequate, affordable housing.
Facilitate access to comprehensive legal and medical services, jobs, and job training.
Guarantee access to high-quality public education and public transportation.
Enforce workplace policies that enable each of us to support ourselves and our families.
Increase the minimum wage and ensure fair hours and paid sick leave.
Expand the Universal Basic Income program.
Bring well-paying jobs to communities that lack opportunities.
Ensure affordable childcare for all neighborhoods.
Make an ironclad commitment that Chicago will protect bodily autonomy.
Guarantee equitable access to abortion and gender affirming care.
Welcome those who are denied abortion and LGBTQ+ rights elsewhere.
Support affordable, comprehensive health care for all, including mental health services.
Act with transparency and inclusivity
Establish and enforce policies to improve transparency, honesty, and accountability throughout government. Stop elected officials from profiting from public service. Promote fair financing of elections, exploring options that include public financing and small donor matching.
Reform the economic development approval process to ensure meaningful community input and transparency, equity and accountability as development decisions are made, projects prioritized and approved, and funds are managed.
Return the TIF program to its purpose of supporting economic development in communities where it is needed most.
Provide accurate, honest information about how every TIF raises property taxes citywide.
Act with inclusivity and respect toward Chicago residents and communities. End the history of pitting communities against each other through divisive policies and rhetoric and build a progressive tent that can support transformative change in Chicago.