Current Work

Reforming the Carceral System

On September 18, 2023, Illinois became the first state to completely abolish the practice of money bond, in which a person who had not been convicted of a crime could be held in jail pretrial for an indefinite period of time, solely because they were unable to afford to bail themselves out. Wealth-based incarceration is an inhumane and racist practice that subverted the presumption of innocence and destabilized families and communities, especially Brown, Black, and poor ones. 

As an anchor organization in the Illinois Network for Pretrial Justice that passed the Pretrial Fairness Act, The People’s Lobby was instrumental in winning this seven-year fight in partnership with the bill’s champion in the legislature (and former TPL Political Director) Senator Robert Peters. 

Now that this transformative law is officially in effect, our focus has shifted toward the following:

1. Making sure the courts fully implement this new legislation in a way that leads to significantly more people being released before trial rather than abusing the option of pretrial incarceration and electronic home confinement
   
2. Educating the public on the positive outcomes resulting from pretrial freedom and fighting the misinformation we expect to continue to come from law enforcement and other opponents of the Pretrial Fairness Act

The fight is never over, but we’re proud to have been a part of ending the use of money bond in Illinois for good. 

Protecting People and the Planet

Public transportation in the Chicago region has long been inadequate, especially for low-income communities and communities of color. The COVID pandemic created a more acute crisis in transit ridership and funding, which has been temporarily eased by the influx of federal funding from the CARES Act and ARPA. However, ARPA funding will soon run out, which will cause major cuts to transit service and cause a longer-term downward spiral that will have a terrible impact on the opportunities for low-income communities and communities of color where car ownership is low as well as significant negative climate and pollution consequences. This crisis creates both a dire need for action to prevent disaster and an opportunity for transit improvements: legislators will need to revisit transit needs and revenue sources, so there is the possibility of creating improvements and expansions instead of just preserving an inadequate status quo.

We are pushing our state legislators and transit officials to increase revenue for public transit so that A) cuts can be avoided, and B) transit agencies can improve and expand public transportation. This will improve quality of life and economic opportunities while significantly decreasing pollution and carbon emissions in our region.

We are also working to ensure that our city, county, and state follow through on the promises of the Climate & Equitable Jobs Act and the Inflation Reduction Act, and take advantage of the opportunity to create good, living wage jobs in the green economy that are accessible to low-income communities and communities of color.

Fighting for Workers’ Rights in the Gig Economy

In 2019, The People’s Lobby launched Chicago Gig Alliance, a campaign to win Chicago’s rideshare drivers the fair wages, safety protections, and transparency that all workers deserve. Since then, we’ve spoken to thousands of drivers about their issues, trained hundreds of them to organize their fellow drivers, tell their stories in the media, and hold substantive meetings with their alders, held dozens of public actions, drafted the Rideshare Living Wage and Safety Ordinance to address their most pressing issues, and won significant support for that ordinance in Chicago’s city council. 

After our ordinance passes, we’ll work to make sure that big gig corporations like Uber and Lyft are held accountable to obeying the new law, and expand our organizing into other sections of the app-based economy. 

Fighting for Health Care as a Human Right

Every year, hundreds of millions of people who pay for health insurance are denied the health care they need, causing them to stay sick and injured, lose their jobs and homes, and sometimes die. But the private health insurance system thrives on refusing to pay for the health care people need. Instead of being able to make our own healthcare choices in partnership with our doctors, these decisions are being made by corporations like Blue Cross Blue Shield, which prioritize corporate profit over our lives and livelihoods. 

As a member organization of People’s Action, we’re working to force insurers to do what they’re supposed to do: pay for our health care. Alongside our comrades from Maine to Colorado, we’re organizing people to fight back against claim denials, putting care over cost and people over profit.

Building the Future

The People’s Lobby Education Institute (TPLEI) uses classic nuts-and-bolts organizing to support people in low-income and working-class communities and communities of color in getting involved in local grassroots action. One of our key priorities is training and leadership development to help low-income people see themselves as capable and deserving of power in the public arena, and to create opportunities for them to develop the skills needed to build power in their communities.

At The People’s Lobby, we believe that the way to realize our vision of a radically different economy that prioritizes people and the planet is to reclaim our democracy and government by running robust, movement-centered election campaigns that elect leaders from the communities where we organize. We organize movement candidates who are accountable to our shared vision, train them to run successful campaigns that will move our progressive agenda forward, and help them build up the people power they need to win. Each candidate we endorse is carefully vetted and interviewed by our member-led endorsement committee.

The People’s Lobby’s Accomplishments

• We have been a leader in the campaign to end cash bail – TPL has been one of the anchor organizations in the Coalition to End Money Bond campaign that passed the Pretrial Fairness Act and ended the racist practice of jailing thousands of people (mostly Black and Brown) who are presumed innocent before trial just because they could not afford bail.
  
• We helped pass the Climate and Equitable Jobs Act (CEJA), which puts Illinois on a path to 100% renewable energy, closes all coal and natural gas plants in Illinois by 2045 (with many closing much sooner), holds utilities accountable, and creates good green jobs equitably across the state. 
  
• We closed $655 million annually in Illinois corporate tax loopholes in 2021 as a result of years of direct actions and legislative work in partnership with ONE Northside, the Grassroots Collaborative, and others aimed at securing the money our state needs to fund public services.
  
• We led a successful multi-year campaign to raise the minimum wage in suburban Cook County by $4.75, which secured raises of up to $10,000 per year for tens of thousands of low-wage workers.
  
• We fought to change how prosecution happens in Cook County and have helped make and defend changes that have led to thousands fewer people being charged with felonies and sentenced to incarceration.
  
• We have fought for progressive sources of revenue at the state and federal levels since 2012. In 2017, we closed $125 million in corporate tax loopholes, and worked with allies to close another $655 million in 2021. 
  
• We played a key role in electing and re-electing progressive leaders who are making a real difference at multiple levels of government, including:
  • Mayor Brandon Johnson, who we helped elect when he ran for Cook County Board in 2018 and then helped elect as Chicago Mayor in 2023 as one of the most progressive mayors of a major city in U.S. history.
  • State’s Attorney Kim Foxx, who has played a significant leadership role since winning her first election in decreasing incarceration in Cook County.
  • Illinois Senator Robert Peters, served as TPL’s Political Director prior to his time in office and then served as a key champion in passing the Pretrial Fairness Act.
  • Two TPL members, Aldermen Daniel La Spata and Andre Vasquez, who were elected in 2019 to the Chicago City Council in races against incumbents who outspent them 10-1 and 7-1 respectively. We also helped elect Aldermen Maria Hadden, Rossana Rodriguez, Carlos Ramirez-Rosa, and Jeanette Taylor.
  • Illinois State Representatives Will Guzzardi, Theresa Mah, Lindsey LaPointe, and Kevin Olickal, and Illinois Senators Ram Villivalam, Omar Aquino and Robert Martwick.
    
• We defeated a bill in the Illinois legislature in 2019 that would have criminalized protests of a variety of pieces of “critical infrastructure” such as oil and gas pipelines and military bases.
  
• We successfully pushed the Chicago Transit Authority to restore bus service on 31^st Street, which now serves thousands of low-income residents.
  
• We protected Medicare and Social Security from cuts that both Democrats and Republicans seriously proposed and supported during the “fiscal cliff” negotiations in 2012 by organizing large-scale action involving civil disobedience.
  
• We prevented a coal bailout and played a key role in the statewide coalition that won the Future Energy Jobs Act in 2017, which served as a precursor to the Climate and Equitable Jobs Act.