Kyler Winfrey Digital Media Specialist/Good Neighbor Campaign liaison
Paul Goyette Photographer
EDITORIAL BOARD
Morris Reed Westside Health Authority/CEO
Karl Brinson Westside Branch NAACP/President
Bernard Clay Introspect Youth Services/Executive Director
Michael Romain Village Free Press/Publisher
CONTACT US at stories@ourculture.us
VISIT US ONLINE at ourculture.us
On The Cover
Community members participate in a protest march on Aug. 21. They demanded that President Joe Biden create a commission to study reparations for the descendants of enslaved people. |
A Note About This Issue
By Michael Romain Editor
The Democratic National Convention (DNC), which took place from Aug. 19 through Aug. 22 in Chicago, was a historic moment.
The convention’s culminating event — the nomination of Vice President Kamala Harris, the first Black and South Asian woman to lead a major party ticket — represented the Democratic Party’s incredible racial and cultural diversity. But if you traveled a few miles outside the heavily secured perimeter around the United Center in Austin, North Lawndale, and West Garfield Park, a different narrative emerged — one of cynicism with a political system that doesn’t seem responsive enough to the material needs of economically marginalized communities. We wanted to document this contradiction in a commemorative issue that shows how the DNC may or may not have affected the Westside, and that gives Westsiders who may not have been inside the convention an insider’s perspective of some of the DNC conversations they may have missed by merely watching the
speeches on the main stage.
We also want to delve into the Black political power that Westsiders may have seen at the DNC. What are some historical forces that brought Blacks into the Democratic Party? And who are some of the personalities responsible for making the Democratic Party more diverse and reflective of America? This issue offers that historical perspective.
The issue also highlights the voices, issues, and movements that weren’t featured on the DNC’s main stage or prominent in the many separate policy conversations across the city over those four days — but that nonetheless may be pivotal to future national conversations about urban America.
For instance, we highlighted what may be an economic renaissance happening on the Westside that organizers say started with everyday people and not politicians. This renaissance is reflected in three major but historically unique development projects happening simultaneously in Austin, North Lawndale, and West Garfield Park: the Aspire Center, the Fillmore Linen Service, and the Sankofa Village Wellness Center.
It was important to tell this story without official DNC media credentials and through the lens of everyday people. So, instead of roving the halls of an arena or convention center, I roamed around the Westside, reporting on DNC-related events happening just outside the convention’s security perimeter and interviewing everyday people who may or may not have known the convention was happening.
I relied on independent media outlets like Roland Martin’s Black Star Network to watch political dialogues beyond the DNC’s main stage. I relied on Capitol News Illinois for credentialed stories and photos from inside the convention. Capitol News Illinois is a nonprofit news service operated by the Illinois Press Foundation that provides state government news to newspapers and other media outlets in Illinois.
Support Roland Martin’s Black Star Network by visiting blackstarnetwork.com. Please consider donating. You can follow and support Capitol News Illinois at capitolnewsillinois.com.
We hope you keep this special issue for generations to come — not just to read as a keepsake but also to use as a tool for your political and social empowerment.
PHOTO BY MICHAEL ROMAIN
Dream Johnson, 10, walks with DNC campaign signs she and her cousin, Kahamar Means, 13, found in North Lawndale on Aug. 21. | SHANEL ROMAIN
Two days after the Democratic National Convention (DNC) in Chicago ended, a well-known Westside social justice leader lamented the lack of attention paid to police reform.
On July 25, activists and community leaders gathered at the New Mt. Pilgrim Missionary Baptist Church, 4301 W. Washington Blvd., to demand justice for Sonya Massey, the Black woman murdered near Springfield on July 6 by Cook County Sheriff’s Deputy Shawn Grayson. They also demanded that the Democratic Party focus on police reform at the DNC, particularly by centering legislation like the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act.
“If you think you’re going to come to Chicago and hold a Democratic National Convention and not talk about Sonya Massey, I come to tell you that whatever goes down in this town, we have to talk about what happened to an innocent Black mama who should be alive today,” Rev. Al Sharpton, an MSNBC personality and founder of the National Action Network, said at the July 25 rally.
On Aug. 18, the National Action Network partnered with Leaders Network, a Westside faith-based social justice organization, to host a Gospel Musical Kickoff for the DNC at New Mt. Pilgrim to reinforce the demand they made in July. This time, presidential candidate, activist, and scholar Dr. Cornel West joined the ac tivists in their push to be heard.
“Anytime I come to Chicago, I know that the New Mt. Pilgrim is where my soul and body belong — on the Westside of Chicago,” said West, who is running for president as a People’s Party candidate. Melina Abdullah, a professor and activist, is the party’s candidate for vice-president. West won’t be on the ballot in Illinois, but voters can write him in.
West discussed his close relationship with Rev. Marshall Hatch, Sr., New Mt. Pilgrim’s pastor and Leaders Network co-founder.
“I’ll take a bullet for this brother because I love and respect him,” West said of Hatch. “We’ve been in foxholes together and many to come. But I come to the church to get spiritually empowered.”
Rev. Ira Acree, a Leaders Network co-founder and pastor of the Greater St. John Bible Church in Austin, said the organizations hosted the Aug. 18 concert to highlight critical issues facing the Westside and inner cities nationwide.
“We are here today celebrating the kickoff of the Democratic National Convention being hosted here in our town,” Acree said. “We wanted to put a little spirit in the air as we initiate this moment. We’ve taken ownership of this day as the official kickoff of this convention. We wanted to highlight some of the issues we’re facing in our communities.”
Before DNC, Westside Activists Demanded Democrats Spotlight Police Reform — They Ended Up Disappointed
The Westside-based Leaders Network welcomed Cornel West and held a DNC kickoff concert on Aug. 18, hoping their issues would get attention on a national stage
By Michael Romain | Editor
Acree pointed to redlining, or the practice of denying loans and other financial services to areas based on their racial profile, and police reform as issues he hoped the DNC would highlight.
“We are here today in the aftermath of a Sonya Massey Justice Rally held here just a few weeks ago, and our community stood here in partnership with Rev. Al Sharpton and [attorney] Ben Crump, and we made the case that Sonya Massey should not be dead because the person who killed her should not have been on the police force in the first place,” Acree said on Aug. 18.
enforcement-friendly rhetoric and quietly cut from the party platform.”
Multiple speakers at the DNC emphasized Vice President Kamala Harris’s career as a prosecutor. Chris Swanson, a Michigan county sheriff, said that Harris “is exactly the tough prosecutor that I’d want to see.”
Reason Magazine reported that Swanson’s “inclusion was indicative of how much or little thought the DNC organizers gave to criminal justice issues. Swanson was one of two Michigan sheriffs named in a class-action lawsuit filed earlier this year accusing county officials of colluding with large prison telecom companies to end face-to-face jail visitations and then price-gouge families who are forced to rely on phone calls and video chat services in return for major kickbacks.”
Reason pointed to Rev. Sharpton’s appearance with “four of the five members of the Central Park Five—a group of black and Hispanic teenagers who were convicted of raping a jogger in Central Park in 1989 but who were cleared in 2002 by DNA evidence and the confession of another man” — as “one of the only major acknowledgments of criminal justice issues” at the 2024 DNC.
Reason also compared Harris’s 2020 DNC speech accepting the nomination for vice president with her 2024 speech accepting the nomination for president.
“In her 2020 DNC speech accepting the nomination for vice president, Harris noted ‘the excessive use of force by police’ and broader inequities in the criminal justice system. She name-dropped George Floyd and Breonna Taylor. Harris’s speech last night didn’t mention the police, except in passing references to the January 6 riot.”
When contacted on Aug. 24, Acree said he was disappointed that police reform and criminal justice issues weren’t centered during this year’s DNC.
“We are hoping, and we expect our nominee to bring up police reform,” he added. “It did not come up in the Republican Convention, but we want it to come up in our convention, and we are advocating for the George Floyd Act. If we had the George Floyd Act, Ms. Massey would be alive today because the Act mandates a national law enforcement registry for bad [police officers].”
However, as Reason Magazine pointed out, four years after criminal justice reform and police accountability were center-stage in Democratic politics, they were conspicuously absent at the 2024 DNC, “replaced by more law
“It was a noble request on our behalf, but the truth is no particular issue was front and center,” he said. “I think the Democratic Party pivoted and tried to be more inclusive and broaden the tent. They went to the center. So, I can’t say that I was satisfied with that. We’ll just keep pushing, but we were disappointed that it was not mentioned.
“There was not a lot of policy discussed at the Democratic National Convention,” Acree said. “It was more or less trying to push patriotism and extend the olive branch so that independents can find a place to belong. I’m a person who is totally against the MAGA vision for America, so I was able to process that pivot to the center this year at this convection better than I would have been able to in the past.”
Presidential Candidate Cornel West speaks at a Gospel Musical Kickoff for the DNC at the New Mt. Pilgrim Missionary Baptist Church on Aug. 18. | KENN COOK JR.
HERE'S THE DATA [ [
Some Enduring Insights From the 2024 Democratic National Convention
By Michael Romain | Editor
The four days of the Democratic National Convention weren’t contained within the United Center and McCormick Place. Hundreds of organizations convened political conversations at locations across the city—from legislative breakfasts to advocacy brunches. I watched some conversations live-streamed thanks to journalist Roland Martin’s Black Star Network. Below, I delved into some interesting data points mentioned during those discussions.
BLACK UNEMPLOYMENT, HEALTH COVERAGE, AND ENTREPRENEURSHIP
At a Congressional Black Caucus meeting at McCormick Place on the morning of Aug. 19, New Jersey Sen. Corey Booker touted “all the things we’ve gotten” under President Joe Biden and Kamala Harris, including the “lowest Black unemployment rate in the history of America,” the most Blacks covered by health insurance and the most small business starts for Black people” in a two-year period.
According to Politifact, the “record low for Black unemployment was reached in April 2023,” when it was 4.8%. Politifact added that Black child poverty hit a record low of 22.3% in 2022. Census data backs Sen. Booker’s claim about health insurance coverage among Blacks. Since President Obama’s Affordable Care Act was signed into law in 2010, the “uninsured rate among nonelderly Black Americans decreased by 10 percentage points, from 20.9 percent in 2010 to 10.8 percent in 2022,” concludes a U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) report.
“Most of this decrease took place between 2010 and 2015, with smaller but still statistically significant decreases between 2015 and 2020 and between 2020 and 2022,” the report shows. Finally, Politifact rates Sen. Booker’s claim about small business starts as “mostly true,” noting that a Brookings Institution analysis of the U.S. Census Bureau’s Annual Business Survey shows that “the number of Black-owned businesses with more than one employee has increased every year since 2017. The biggest increase came between 2020 and 2021 when the num-
ber rose from about 140,000 to a little over 161,000. 2021 is the most recent year for which final data from this survey is available. The growth from 2020 to 2021 represented the largest percentage increase — 14.3% — of any year since 2017.”
Politifact also referenced the Federal Reserve’s 2022 Survey of Consumer Finances (taken every three years), which “found that 11% of Black households held equity in a business, far higher than the previous record of 6.6% in 2016.”
Politifact said one factor contributing to this progress involved the Biden administration making changes to the Paycheck Protection Program, implemented during the pandemic under former President Donald Trump and passed with bipartisan support. When the program began under Trump, minority-owned businesses had trouble securing loans.
After Biden made several tweaks, such as expanding loans to self-employed people and proactively identifying minority businesses for lending, the Government Accountability Office found that “lending in traditionally underserved counties was proportional to their representation in the overall small-business community.”
RECONSIDERING THE POOR
Speaking at a conversation held at theWit Chicago on Aug. 21, social justice activist Rev. William Barber emphasized the voting power of poor and low-income people.
“There are 140 million poor and low-wage people in this country–before COVID. COVID did not produce poverty; it exposed it. And you cannot just say poor and not say low-wage because the way the government measures poverty, they say if you make
about $14,000 a year, you’re not poor; you’re in the lower-lower middle class. And they use a measurement that was outdated when it was first put into place in the 1960s. So, the way we measure poverty is a lie!”
Rev. Barber cited a 2019 study by researchers with the Kairos Center for Religions, Rights, and Social Justice. The organization examines U.S. Census Data on poverty. According to their findings, 43% of people and 52% of children in the United States are poor or low-income. Around 4.8 million of the 12.6 million residents of Illinois are poor or low-income.
CRIMINAL JUSTICE REFORM
The Collective PAC (Political Action Committee) held a brunch at the Swissotel in Chicago on Aug. 20. Elissa Johnson, the vice president of criminal justice campaigns at FWD.us, a political advocacy organization working to advance common-sense criminal justice and immigration reforms, talked about the surprising reduction in imprisonment rates over the last 15 years.
“Overall, the prison population is down nearly 25%. That means the Black imprisonment rate has fallen nearly 50%. Black men are now more likely to go to college than prison, and that is a huge reversal. Absent the reforms that many of you have led and fought for in state houses and signed into law, 40 million more people would have gone to prison or jail.”
Johnson cited data from the Bureau of Justice Statistics. Her organization attributes the drop to declining crime rates and a “collective awareness of the costs of mass incarceration” in both Republican and Democratic states, prompting reforms that include lower maximum prison terms and expanding parole.
Obama Legacy Continued With Harris Nomination, DNC Speech in Chicago
On second day of DNC, former president hailed successor to his successor
By Peter Hancock Capitol News Illinois
CHICAGO – Former President Barack Obama returned to his hometown on Aug. 20 to help launch the presidential campaign of Kamala Harris, and to mark the continuation of his own political legacy.
In a moment unique in American history, Obama stood at the podium of the Democratic National Convention to endorse the nomination of the woman who has served as vice president to the man who once served as vice president to him.
“It’s been 16 years since I had the honor of accepting this party’s nomination for president,” Obama said, sporting his now-gray hair while joking that he had “not aged a bit” since that time. “And looking back, I can say without question that my first big decision as your nominee turned out to be one of my best, and that was asking Joe Biden to serve by my side as vice president.”
Obama appeared 20 years after he emerged on the national stage by giving a keynote address at the Democratic convention in Boston. He was an Illinois state senator at the time, representing a district in Chicago, and had just won the Democratic primary to run for U.S. Senate.
That speech focused on a theme he often spoke of in his
career, “the politics of hope,” specifically “the hope of a skinny kid with a funny name who believes that America has a place for him, too.”
Biden spoke to the convention on the first night in a farewell address to the party and the nation after a political career spanning over 50 years.
Biden had been a candidate for reelection and was the party’s presumptive nominee after sweeping primary races in which he ran without significant opposition.
However, a poor debate performance in June led many party leaders – reportedly including Obama – to question whether the 81-year-old president was physically and mentally fit for another term or capable of winning the election.
Biden resisted that pressure for weeks but eventually
agreed in July to drop out of the race and endorsed Harris for the nomination.
“Her story represents the best American story,” Biden told the convention Monday, quipping that “like many of our best presidents, she was also vice president.”
On Tuesday night, Obama left no doubt that he had full confidence in Harris’s ability to lead the nation.
“Kamala Harris is ready for the job,” he said. “This is a person who has spent her life fighting on behalf of people who need a voice and a champion.”
The appearances of Biden and Obama at the convention and the scheduled appearance Wednesday of former President Bill Clinton stand in stark contrast to last month’s Republican National Convention. Neither former President George W. Bush nor former Sen. Mitt Romney – the only two living previous nominees – took part in the convention in Milwaukee.
Obama’s impact on Illinois politics was seen on the convention floor, where some people following in his footsteps now served as delegates. They included Attorney General Kwame Raoul, who succeeded Obama in the Illinois Senate after Obama was elected to the U.S. Senate, and U.S. Sen. Tammy Duckworth, who now holds the seat Obama occupied before being elected president.
Duckworth spoke briefly to the convention Tuesday night but confined her remarks to criticizing the Republican nominee, former President Donald Trump, for his record opposing abortion rights and appointing U.S. Supreme Court justices who voted to overturn Roe v. Wade.
An Army veteran who lost her legs when her helicopter was shot down during combat in Iraq, Duckworth said she struggled with infertility for 10 years before undergoing in vitro fertilization, or IVF, which enabled her to have two daughters.
“My struggle with infertility was more painful than any wound I earned on the battlefield,” she said. “So how dare a convicted felon like Donald Trump treat women seeking health care like they’re the ones breaking the law?”
Obama and his wife Michelle, who also spoke Tuesday, now make their home in the Washington, D.C., area, but they maintain strong ties to Chicago. The Obama Presidential Center – a planned museum, library, and education project currently under construction on Chicago’s south side, is scheduled to open in 2026.
President Barack Obama delivers the keynote address Tuesday night at the Democratic National Convention.
U.S. Sen. Tammy Duckworth delivers a speech at the Democratic National Convention. | CAPITOL NEWS ILLINOIS PHOTO BY ANDREW ADAMS
President Joe Biden wipes a tear from his eye after being introduced for his Monday night speech by his daughter Ashley. | CAPITOL NEWS ILLINOIS PHOTO BY ANDREW ADAMS
CAPITOL NEWS ILLINOIS PHOTO BY ANDREW ADAMS
How the Party Was Won
Since the 1930s, Black people have played central roles in the long effort to diversify and expand the base of the Democratic Party — often from the outside looking in
Black voters began overwhelmingly voting for the Democratic Party after Franklin D. Roosevelt implemented his New Deal policies.
The Democratic National Convention of 1932, held in Chicago, nominated New York Governor Franklin D. Roosevelt as the party’s presidential candidate. Roosevelt won that election but only received 21% of the African American vote—the last time Black voters would overwhelmingly vote Republican.
From “African Americans and the Democratic Party,” by Sue Pennington:
“In the Presidential election of 1936, African Americans voted overwhelmingly for the Democratic Party, and, in particular, for President Franklin D. Roosevelt. However, at the time, their vote was not necessarily seen as a vote for the Democrats but rather as a vote in support of Roosevelt himself and the policies of the New Deal.
Although Roosevelt did not move to reverse
the legal segregation at the time, he invited several African-American leaders to serve as advisors to the administration. He also ensured that African Americans had access to relief during the worst days of the Depression.
Because of Roosevelt’s willingness to engage African Americans as Americans, he won their votes for the Democratic Party for decades.
The movement of African-American voters away from the Republican Party was part of a nationwide shift that had arisen in the creation of the so-called Roosevelt Coalition. This national shift would make the Democrats the majority party for the next several decades.”
Mississippi freedom fighter Fannie Lou Hamer helped integrate the Democratic Party in 1964.
The 1968 Democratic National Convention in Chicago was four years after Mississippi activist Fannie Lou Hamer delivered her riveting televised testimony before the Credentials
Committee at the 1964 Democratic National Convention in Atlantic City, New Jersey. Many of the Vietnam War protestors whom Chicago Police officers infamously beat at the 1968 Convention were deeply inspired and influenced by Hamer and other Black Mississippi activists who were fighting for the right to vote.
From The American Yawp Reader:
“Civil rights activists struggled against the repressive violence of Mississippi’s racial regime. State NAACP head Medger Evers was murdered in 1963. Freedom Summer activists tried to register black voters in 1964. Three disappeared and were found murdered. The Mississippi Democratic Party continued to disfranchise the state’s African American voters. Civil rights activist Fannie Lou Hamer co-founded the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party (MFDP) and traveled to the Democratic National Convention in 1964 to demand that the MFDP’s delegates, rather than the all-white Mississippi Democratic Party delegates, be seated in the convention. Although unsuccessful, her moving testimony was broadcast on national television and drew further attention to the plight of African Americans in the South.”
An excerpt from Hamer’s moving 1964 DNC speech:
“The second Negro began to beat and I began to work my feet, and the State Highway Patrolman ordered the first Negro who had beat to set on my feet to keep me from working my feet. I began to scream and one white man got up and began to beat me my head and told me to hush. One white man—my dress had worked up high, he walked over and pulled my dress down—and he pulled my dress back, back up.
“I was in jail when Medgar Evers was murdered.
“All of this is on account we want to register, to become first-class citizens, and if the freedom Democratic Party is not seated now, I question America, is this America, the land of the free and the home of the brave where we have to sleep with our telephones off of the hooks because our lives be threatened daily because we want to live as decent human beings, in America?”
Shirley Chisholm was the first Black woman to be elected to the United States Congress, the first Black candidate for a major-party nomination for President of the United States, and the first woman to run for the Democratic Party’s presidential nomination. From a Chisholm biography by Debra Michals on the National Women’s History Museum website:
“In 1964, Chisholm ran for and became the second African American in the New York State Legislature. After court-ordered redistricting created a new, heavily Democratic, district in her neighborhood, in 1968 Chisholm sought—and won—a seat in Congress. There, “Fighting Shirley” introduced more than 50 pieces of legislation and championed racial and gender equality, the plight of the poor, and ending the Vietnam War. She was a co-founder of the National Women’s Political Caucus in 1971, and in 1977 became the first Black woman and second woman ever to serve on the powerful House Rules Committee. That year she married Arthur Hardwick Jr., a New York State legislator.
“Discrimination followed Chisholm’s quest for the 1972 Democratic Party presidential
Fannie Lou Hamer | PUBLIC DOMAIN
nomination. She was blocked from participating in televised primary debates, and after taking legal action, was permitted to make just one speech. Still, students, women, and minorities followed the “Chisholm Trail.” She entered 12 primaries and garnered 152 of the delegates’ votes (10% of the total)—despite an under-financed campaign and contentiousness from the predominantly male Congressional Black Caucus.”
Congresswoman Barbara Jordan was the first Black person elected to the Texas Senate after Reconstruction, the first Southern Black woman elected to the United States House of Representatives, and one of the first two Blacks elected to the U.S. House from the former Confederacy since 1901, alongside Andrew Young of Georgia. In 1976, she became the first Black and the first woman to deliver a keynote address at a Democratic National Convention.
An excerpt from Jordan’s 1974 DNC keynote address:
“We are a people in a quandary about the present. We are a people in search of our future. We are a people in search of a national community. We are a people trying not only to solve the problems of the present, unemployment, inflation, but we are attempting on a larger scale to fulfill the promise of America. We are attempting to fulfill our national purpose, to create and sustain a society in which all of us are equal.”
At the 2024 Democratic National Convention in Chicago, the party honored Rev. Jesse Jackson’s contributions by allowing him a place on the stage during the convention’s opening day. On Aug. 18, the Sunday before the DNC opened, The Nation magazine and Jackson’s Rainbow/PUSH Coalition partnered to host a celebration of the famous civil rights leader and his ambitious presidential campaigns in 1984 and 1988 during the Rainbow/PUSH National Convention, which opened on Aug. 15.
From “Remembering the Rainbow: How Jesse Jackson’s 1980s campaigns shaped today’s Democratic Party,” by Chauncey K. Robinson and C.J. Atkins for People’s World:
“Today’s Democratic Party is largely Jesse Jackson’s Democratic Party,” Rev. Al Sharpton told the crowd [at the Aug. 18 event], saying that the Reverend’s impact is still felt in both Democratic strategy and its election rules.
“Rather than relying on white Southerners,
political ‘moderates,’ and corporate donors, Jackson fought for the Rainbow Coalition strategy—building a party of workers, African Americans, Latinos, women, gays and lesbians, Arab and Asian Americans, Native Americans, students, environmentalists, and peace activists. He showed that it was a real path toward beating the far right and winning progress.
“The right-wing Dems who controlled the party at the time relied on their ‘superdelegates’ and winner-take-all primary voting systems to control the agenda of the party and prevent progressive insurgencies. Jackson and the Rainbow movement shattered their power.
“The delegates his campaign elected forced through changes that took effect in 1992 [— changes that] banned the winner-reward systems that had given bonus delegates to candidates who won a state. Instead, all delegates had to be allocated proportionally among candidates who got at least 15% support.
‘“When he ran in ’88, he changed the game,’ Sharpton said. “The Rainbow Coalition got rid of winner-take-all and won proportional representation.”
“John Nichols, the Nation magazine commentator and moderator of the event, said many don’t remember how important this was:
“‘Without Jesse Jackson’s rule changes, Hillary Clinton would have been the nominee in 2008,
not Barack Obama. Without Jesse’s rule changes, there would have been no Bernie Sanders campaign like we saw in 2016 and 2020. Without Jesse’s rule changes, Kamala Harris might not have been the vice-presidential candidate in 2020, and without those rules, she might not be the nominee right now.’”
Barbara Jordan. | PUBLIC DOMAIN
Jesse Jackson in 1983. | PUBLIC DOMAIN
A Jesse Jackson campaign button from his 1984 presidential campaign.| PUBLIC DOMAIN
Shirley Chisholm. | PUBLIC DOMAIN
Jesse Jackson's 1988 campaign "changed the game," said Rev. Al Sharpton. | PUBLIC DOMAIN
Vice-President Kamala Harris made history on Aug. 22 when she became the first Black woman and the first person of South Asian descent in the United States to accept a major party’s nomination for president. We’ve provided some excerpts from her historic acceptance speech.
She spoke about her parents and introduced viewers to her biracial, Indian, and Jamaican lineage.
“So my mother was 19 when she crossed the world alone, traveling from India to California with an unshakable dream to be the scientist who would cure breast cancer when she finished school, she was supposed to return home to a traditional arranged marriage, but as fate would have it, she met my father, Donald Harris, a student from Jamaica.”
She spoke about her record as a prosecutor in California.
“I will be a president who unites us around our highest aspirations, a president who leads and listens, who is realistic, practical, and has common sense and always fights for the American people — from the courthouse to the White House. That has been my life’s work as a young courtroom prosecutor in Oakland, California. I stood up for women and children against predators who abused them. As attorney general of California, I took on the big banks delivered $20 billion for middle-class families who faced foreclosure, and helped pass a homeowner bill of rights, one of the first of its kind in the nation.
“We are the heirs to the greatest democracy in the history of the world."
“I stood up for veterans and students being scammed by big for-profit colleges for workers who are being cheated out of their wages, the wages they were due for seniors facing elder abuse. I fought against the cartels who traffic in guns and drugs and human beings who threaten the security of our border and the safety of our communities. And I will tell you, these fights were not easy, and neither were the elections that put me in those offices. We were underestimated at practically every turn, but we never gave up because the future is al-
‘We Must Be Worthy of This Moment’
Excerpts
from Vice-President Kamala Harris’s historic DNC acceptance speech
ways worth fighting for, and that’s the fight we are in right now, a fight for America’s future.”
She spoke about the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025, authored by many people aligned with former President Donald Trump, and Trump’s record while in office.
“We are not going back to when Donald Trump tried to cut Social Security and Medicare. We are not going back to when he tried to get rid of the Affordable Care Act, when insurance companies could deny people with preexisting conditions. We are not going to let him eliminate the Department of Education that funds our public schools. We are not going to
clean air and drink clean water and live free from the pollution that fuels the climate crisis and the freedom that unlocks all the others, the freedom to vote.
“With this election, we finally have the opportunity to pass the John Lewis Voting Rights Act and the Freedom to Vote Act. And let me be clear: after decades in law enforcement, I know the importance of safety and security, especially at our border. Last year, Joe and I brought together Democrats and conservative Republicans to write the strongest border bill in decades. The Border Patrol endorsed it, but Donald Trump believes a border deal would hurt his campaign, so he ordered his allies in Congress to kill the deal. Will I refuse to play politics with our security? And here is my pledge to you as president: I will bring back the bipartisan border security bill that he killed, and I will sign it into law.”
She spoke about Israel, Gaza, and the Middle East.
“And let me be clear: I will always stand up for Israel’s right to defend itself, and I will always ensure Israel has the ability to defend itself, because the people of Israel must never again face the horror that a terrorist organization called Hamas caused on Oct. 7, including unspeakable sexual violence, and the massacre of young people at a music festival at the same time. What has happened in Gaza over the past 10 months is devastating. So many innocent lives lost, desperate, hungry people fleeing for safety, over and over again. The scale of suffering is heartbreaking. President Biden and I are working to end this war so that Israel is secure, the hostages are released, the suffering in Gaza ends, and the Palestinian people can realize their right to dignity, security, freedom, and self-determination. And know this, I will never hesitate to take whatever action is necessary to defend our forces and our interests against Iran and Iran-backed terrorists.
let him end programs like Head Start that provide preschool and child care for our children. America, we are not going back.”
She spoke about various freedoms and vowed to pass bills related to reproductive rights and the southern border.
“When Congress passes a bill to restore reproductive freedom, as president of the United States, I will proudly sign it into law. In this election, many other fundamental freedoms are at stake: the freedom to live safe from gun violence in our schools, communities, and places of worship, the freedom to love who you love openly and with pride, the freedom to breathe
She finished her historic speech by mentioning Americans’ responsibility as citizens of a democracy.
We are the heirs to the greatest democracy in the history of the world, and on behalf of our children, our grandchildren, and all those who sacrificed so dearly for our freedom and liberty, we must be worthy of this moment. It is now our turn to do what generations before us have done, guided by optimism and faith, to fight for this country we love, to fight for the ideals we cherish, and to uphold the awesome responsibility that comes with the greatest privilege on Earth — the privilege and pride of being an American.
Kamala Harris accepts the Democratic nomination for president of the United States. | CAPITOL NEWS
ILLINOIS PHOTO BY ANDREW ADAMS
IN PHOTOS
Beyond the Security Perimeter, Everyday Life Went On
Mary Sawyer serves a patron at her Sno-Bal stand near Madison and Kilpatrick on Aug. 21. When asked if the DNC would benefit the Westside, she said: "I hope so. It's messed up here. A lot of businesses have closed. Why?" She plans to vote for Vice President Kamala Harris in November.
"I'm definitely not voting for Trump."
Cousins Dream Johnson, 10, and Kahamar Means, 13, hold up discarded convention signs they found on the ground near the 4000 block of West Fillmore Street on Aug. 21. "A lot of people I know love Trump more than they love Joe, but I prefer Joe," Means said. When asked about Kamala Harris, Means said: "For a Black lady to be a president would be so beautiful. That would be nice." Johnson agreed.
Nation of Islam Min. Lionel Muhammad about a block away from his office at the Westside Justice Center, 601 S. California Ave., on Aug. 21. "When they say DNC, I think of the term: 'Devils Never Change.' It's the same game, but different people. The rules never change. In order to make something better, you gotta change the system. You can't go and fit into the system. It ain't worked in all these years, what makes you think it will work now?"
A woman walks her bike at Madison and Leavitt on Aug. 16, as the city quietly prepares for the Democratic National Convention held a five-minutes' bike ride away at the United Center from Aug. 19 through Aug. 22.
PHOTOS BY SHANEL ROMAIN
A woman and a child wait for the bus at Madison and California on Aug. 21, the DNC's third day. Kamala Harris campaign posters can be seen on the walls of an abandoned building that used to be Wallace's Catfish Corner. Looking past the posters, the woman wondered about the empty building's future.
On the Westside, Leaders Tout a Model for ‘Inclusive Community Development’
Major economic development projects in Austin, North Lawndale, and West Garfield Park are being funded, in part, by decades-old Democratic tax credits but powered by a unique combination of grassroots collaboration and community ownership
By Michael Romain Editor
The last time the Democratic National Convention (DNC) was held in Chicago before this year was in 1996, when the Democratic Party’s platform touted the creation of the Community Development Financial Institutions (CDFI) Fund a few years earlier.
Through its New Markets Tax Credit program, the CDFI Fund provided tax credits to community development entities like nonprofits, helping them attract private capital for economic development projects in blighted areas.
This year, the Democratic Party is pledging to invest more in CDFI’s and make the New Markets Tax Credit permanent. “Together, these efforts are unleashing billions of dollars in new private sector lending and investment for housing and economic development in our inner cities and poorest rural areas,” the Democrats’ 2024 platform explains.
Nearly two decades after the CDFI Fund was established, millions of dollars in New Markets Tax Credits are going to major economic economic development projects across the Westside. Community leaders involved in the projects say parts of the Westside are experiencing the most development since the destructive riots that happened after the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King in 1968. However, the leaders spearheading this wave of new development don't point to reduced tax credits as its catalyst.
The real catalyst, they say, is deep and sustained community collaboration, particularly collaboration centered on grassroots community councils that have completed actionable roadmaps for social development in the form of quality-of-life plans.
“No significant economic development has happened in this riot-ridden area since 1968 — until now,” said Ayesha Jaco, the executive director of West Side United. “That was a pivotal Democratic National Convention year, and here we are 50 years later reactivating this space.”
Jaco referenced the $50 million Sankofa Wellness Village, a series of development projects along the Madison-Pulaski commercial corridor. The Village’s anchor development is the Sankofa Village Wellness Center, a $35 million, 50,000-square-foot facility that will be built on an empty lot at 4305 W. Madison St. in West Garfield Park.
The Sankofa Village Wellness Center and the surrounding Sankofa Wellness Village are the result of a partnership between The Leaders Network, New Mt. Pilgrim Missionary Baptist Church, the MAAFA Redemption Project, West Side United, the YMCA, the Institute for Nonviolence Chicago, Eerie Family Health Centers and Rush Medical Center.
In 2019, those organizations joined forces to form the Garfield Park Rite to Wellness Collaborative, an effort to improve Garfield Park residents’ health and quality of life. The Sankofa projects, in particular, are part of a joint effort among those community partners to elimi-
nate the roughly 13-year life expectancy gap between residents in areas like West Garfield Park, Austin and North Lawndale, and those in communities like the Loop.
“This is the community saying, ‘This is what we want,’” said Dr. David Ansell, the senior vice president for community health equity for Rush University Medical Center and associate provost for community affairs for Rush University.
Ansell, who helped shed light on Chicago’s life expectancy gap in his 2017 book, “The Death Gap: How Inequality Kills,” said the Sankofa Wellness Center is a community initiative built from the ground up.
“This isn’t occurring because someone found an opportunity to exploit a policy,” he said. “This is the community saying, ‘We need assets, we need medical care,’ and it all came out of the community’s desire to build themselves up.”
When it opens sometime in 2025, the Center will house a community health clinic, gym and exercise facility, a community-owned credit
union, and an early learning center, among other critical resources.
Community leaders plan to host a groundbreaking ceremony for the Sankofa Village Wellness Center on Monday, Sept. 16, 10 a.m., at 4305 W. Madison St.
Jaco and Ansell believe development projects like the Wellness Center are part of what could be a national model being built on the Westside that starts with local community councils that can gauge what everyday community members want in their neighborhoods and connect those neighbors with churches, nonprofits, and other civic and social entities. “Councils are integral because they are the heartbeat of the community,” she said. “They are the verified source.”
She pointed to groups like the North Lawndale Community Coordinating Council, Austin Coming Together, the Garfield Park Rite to Wellness Collaborative, the Garfield Park Community Council, and Enlace Chicago in South Lawndale.
“These places are often curators of the quality-of-life plan, which is the one-stop shop across education, workforce, public safety, housing, etc.,” she said. “The community plan is often generated by those different voices who accurately reflect what people feel they need.”
Ansell said large entities like Rush only come along later in the community-building process “to help support it.”
West Side United is also shaping the revitalization of the nearly 170,000-square-foot Fillmore Center at 4100 W. Fillmore St., a 111-year-old vacant building that once housed the Calumet Baking Powder Co.
Earlier this summer, West Side United, Rush, and other community partners gathered to mark the opening of the Fillmore Linen Service, a company that washes, dries, and presses laundry from local hospitals, including Rush and Lurie Children’s Hospital.
The company, which seeks to hire up to 175 staffers—with priority given to Westside residents—will be one of several tenants in the Fillmore Center once it’s fully renovated.
Construction workers on the site of the future Sankofa Village Wellness Center at 4301 W. Madison St. Community leaders will host a groundbreaking ceremony for the project at 10 a.m. on Sept. 16. | SHANEL ROMAIN
“Seven years after renovations are completed, the building will be placed into a community benefit trust that allows residents to share and manage profits from the building — making it one of the few examples in the country,” the Chicago Sun-Times reported in June.
Like the Fillmore Center, the Garfield Park Rite to Wellness Collaborative and MAAFA Redemption Project will co-own the Sankofa Wellness Village.
The same unique equation behind the Fillmore Center and the Wellness Village development—a mixture of public and private funds, a robust community council, a quality-of-lifeplan, and community ownership — is driving the $41 million Aspire Center for Workforce Innovation at 5500 W. Madison St.
Once built, the roughly 77,000-square-foot facility will house manufacturing skills training programs, a cafe, a community plaza, a BMO bank branch, offices, event space, and a rooftop terrace, among other features. Austin Coming Together and the nonprofit Westside Health Authority (WHA) are co-developing the project on the site of the former Robert Emmet Elementary School. The nonprofits will also co-own the completed development.
Aspire is also funded by New Market Tax Credits (within a mixture of other public and private funding sources), but the community powers it, said Darnell Shields, ACT’s executive director.
“No one person, no one organization, and no one entity can move this community forward alone,” Shields said at a groundbreaking cer-
emony for the project last year. “We have so much support on this project and let it represent what collaboration looks like.”
Last year, Morris Reed, WHA’s CEO, told Crain’s Chicago Business the city of Chicago should “be more aggressive in working with community leaders and community developers to repurpose” assets like shuttered school buildings.
In the days leading up to the Democratic National Convention, Jaco and Ansell looked beyond the city. They said what’s happening on the Westside should be a national model for urban development in blighted inner-city neighborhoods across the country.
“We think this is a national model for inclusive community development,” Ansell said. “The coalition is quite broad and highly representative, and this is very hopeful.”
Jaco said West Side United has had conversations with leaders from countries like England and Singapore seeking to learn about what’s happening in North Lawndale, West Garfield Park, and Austin.
During a DNC kickoff event at New Mt. Pilgrim on on Aug. 18, the church's pastor and Leaders Network co-chairman Rev. Marshall Hatch, Sr. said that national leaders should shine a light not just on what’s happening inside the convention but in the communities, too.
“We’re not just interested in what’s going on in the United Center, but what is happening in these neighborhoods,” Hatch said. “The issues important to us must be important to all those seeking our support.”
WESTSIDERS
& LOCAL LEADERS
AT THE DNC
Illinois House Speaker Emanuel "Chris" Welch, third from right, co-hosted the launch of the nonprofit Black Excellence in Bleu alongside the nation's six other Black statehouse speakers on Aug. 21 at Revel Motor Row, the former home of the Chicago Defender newspaper. | PHOTO PROVIDED
Marseil 'Action' Jackson (above), co-host of the Brunch Bunch on Inspiration 1390, works at the DNC. | COURTESY MARSEIL JACKSON/FACEBOOK
Ald. Jason Ervin and his wife, Chicago Treasurer Melissa Conyears-Ervin attend a welcome reception at the DNC hosted by the Congressional Black Caucus. | COURTESY MELISSA CONYEARS-ERVIN/ FACEBOOK
State Rep. La Shawn K. Ford, a DNC delegate, poses for a photo on the floor of the convention at the United Center. | COURTESY REP. FORD
The Aspire Center for Workforce Development at 5500 W. Madison St. in Austin. | SHANEL ROMAIN
Despite Protests, the 2024 DNC Wasn’t 1968
‘Clever’ policing, smaller crowds, fewer arrests, and reduced crime made this year nothing like ‘68 — even though issues like genocide and reparations went overlooked
By Michael Romain Editor
On Aug. 23, a day after the Democratic National Convention (DNC) ended, Chicago Police Supt. Larry Snelling told reporters that his officers made 74 arrests over the convention’s four days and estimated that no more than 4,000 people turned out to protest on any given night.
The Chicago Police Department (CPD) said shootings and homicides during the DNC’s four days, from Aug. 19 through Aug. 22, dropped by 26% and 31%, respectively, compared to that same timeframe last year.
“Our city was on display,” Snelling said. “And it was on display for the world to see, and I guarantee the world was watching. However, we showed again that this is not 1968.” By comparison, the Guardian newspaper estimated that
during the 1968 DNC in Chicago, police made nearly 700 arrests and over 1,000 people were injured—including almost 200 officers—in what government authorities would later call a “police riot.”
In his Substack newsletter on Aug. 25, journalist and bestselling author Jonathan Alter wrote after the convention, he learned from Chicago sources “how the city kept the lid on.”
“It wasn’t just that the numbers of protesters were smaller than expected; the authorities applied [highly effective] crowd control tactics,” Alter reported. “Instead of cars or horses, police used bicycles to block streets when violent outside activists tried to move beyond the designated protest areas. The bike approach mostly worked to quell disturbances [...].”
Alter said on the DNC’s last day, he covered a press conference just outside the United Center “in which pro-Palestinian protest leaders angrily complained that a Georgia state legislator — who had spent the night sleeping on a sidewalk near the
hall — was not allowed to speak to the convention. Imagine if they were objecting to the arrest of dozens or hundreds of protesters stripped of their constitutional rights and jailed in dank cells. Thanks to clever and humane planning, we didn’t hear a peep about that.”
That Georgia state legislator, Rep. Ruwa Romman, was one of around 30 delegates who earned spots at the DNC after hundreds of thousands of voters wrote “uncommitted” on their ballots to protest President Joe Biden’s support of Israel.
According to Reuters, Palestinian health authorities say, “Israel’s ground and air campaign in Gaza has killed more than 40,000 people, mostly civilians, and driven most of the enclave’s 2.3 million people from their homes.”
In 1968, Democratic Party officials let protests against the Vietnam War spiral out of control, possibly providing fuel to former Vice President Richard Nixon’s “law and order” campaign and helping him beat incumbent vice president and
Democratic
Protestors march along Madison Street on Aug. 21. They demanded the passage of HR 40, a bill that would establish a commission to study reparations. The march was organized by Equity and Transformation (E.A.T.), an organization founded by Westsider Richard Wallace. | MICHAEL ROMAIN
Keith Harvey and Lewis Webb, members of the American Friends, an organization founded by Quakers to promote peace and justice, hold anti-war protest signs as they walk toward Union Park in Chicago on Aug. 23. Harvey traveled to the DNC from Cambridge, Mass., while Webb traveled from Philadelphia, Pa. | SHANEL ROMAIN
Protestors hold signs calling for the passage of HR 40 during a march on Aug. 18. | MICHAEL ROMAIN
presidential candidate Hubert Humphrey. Nixon appealed to voters who thought the country was out of control.
This year, no Palestinian was allowed to take the main stage at the DNC, even though Vice President Kamala Harris mentioned Gaza in her acceptance speech on Aug. 22.
“The scale of suffering is heartbreaking,” Harris said. “President Biden and I are working to end this war such that Israel is secure, the hostages are released, the suffering in Gaza ends, and the Palestinian people can realize their right to dignity, security, freedom, and self-determination.”
The Democrats were much more successful at containing protests and controlling the narrative this year — potentially enhancing their chances of taking the presidency — but the containment and tight control may have come at the cost of silencing critics of war crimes and advocates arguing for deep solutions to problems like structural racism and wealth inequity.
THE PROTESTS WERE INTERRELATED
Hours before Harris took the stage on the DNC’s last day, a group of pro-Palestinian activists held a press conference at Union Park near the United Center. Organizers held a banner at the press conference with a message in large, bold letters — “Stand With Palestine! End U.S. Aid to Israel.” Underneath that message, read a series of demands in smaller fonts, including “Stop Police Crimes!” Throughout the park, colorful signs resting on trees read: “Money for jobs, school, healthcare, housing, and environment! Not for war!”
The banners and signs showed how demands at the DNC protests were interconnected, not just isolated to single issues. According to protestors, less money going to Israel to bomb Palestinians meant more potential funding for critical needs for education, healthcare, and housing in underdeveloped places like the Westside.
If Palestine as a single-issue campaign dominated the mainstream media’s narrative of the DNC protests, the march for reparations that occurred on the Westside on Aug. 21 went largely ignored by mainstream media outlets.
don’t want to cut us short. Reparations has five pillars. The first pillar is to rehabilitate our communities. Another pillar is restitution, or the commitment to restore a survivor of harm to their condition before the harm occurred. That means if you were incarcerated and came home with a record, we’re talking about expunging that record.
“Another very important piece we forget that needs to be highlighted is a guarantee of non-repetition,” Wallace said. “That means they have to commit to not continuing the harm. If you are formerly incarcerated, there’s the 13th Amendment, which preserves slavery in America. If you get locked up, they can pay you $0.17 an hour. We get state pay, because slavery is still legal in the United States of America — as long as you’re convicted of a crime. A guarantee of non-repetition means that that can’t be. That means we gotta amend the 13th Amendment. We gotta end that exception.”
“We are here because we demand reparations!” said Richard Wallace, the founder of Equity and Transformation (E.A.T.), who organized the march that started with a rally at 601 S. California Ave.
Wallace said E.A.T.’s mission is to build social and economic equity for Black informal workers who don’t have access to the formal economy “in a country that demands you have living wages to survive.”
He discussed the five pillars of reparations: restitution, compensation, rehabilitation, satisfaction, and guarantees of non-repetition.
“People say what are reparations,” Wallace said. “The bag [money] is extremely important. Yes, we want the bag. But other examples of reparations are so much more robust, so I
Wallace and other organizers demanded the passage of HR 40, a bill establishing the Commission to Study and Develop Reparation Proposals for African Americans.
According to Congress.gov, the commission would “compile documentary evidence of slavery in the United States, study the role of the federal and state governments in supporting the institution of slavery, analyze discriminatory laws and policies against freed African slaves and their descendants, and recommend ways the United States may recognize and remedy the effects of slavery and discrimination on African Americans, including through a formal apology and compensation (i.e., reparations).”
Kamm Howard, the co-chair of the National Coalition of Blacks for Reparations in America (N’COBRA) and one of the authors of HR 40, placed the demand for reparations in an international context.
“In 2001, in Durbin, South Africa, at the World Conference
Against Racism, the international community declared that the trans-Atlantic slave trade was a crime against humanity. They declared that enslavement was a crime against humanity. They declared that Apartheid was a crime against humanity. So, what does that mean? Crimes against humanity have no statute of limitations. If it happened 400 years ago and the entity still exists, they’re criminals today.
“What was apartheid in America called? Jim Crow. We had 246 years of enslavement, which was criminal. We had 90-plus years of apartheid, which was criminal. And we live in a neo-apartheid era right now. Apartheid is separation backed by state violence.” Howard said “neo-apartheid” exists when apartheid-era policies are still affecting people despite the relative absence of state violence.
“You cannot have mass disparities in education, wealth, health, and housing — in every aspect of life between Blacks and whites — unless there is separate development for these populations,” Howard said. “So, separate development is another name for neo-apartheid.”
Some members of E.A.T. and N’COBRA said they want President Biden to sign an executive order establishing a reparations commission before he leaves office.
After the rally, a few hundred people from different cultures and ethnicities marched and held four other rallies along a route that took them north on California Avenue to Madison Street, east on Madison Street to Western Avenue, south on Western Avenue to Harrison Street, and back toward their starting point on California Avenue.
During the march, they never got closer than roughly a halfmile from the tight security perimeter around the United Center. Despite being roughly two miles from Union Park, where the main Palestine-focused protests occurred, people wearing the colors of the Palestinian flag marched alongside E.A.T.S. and N’COBRA supporters dressed in orange shirts.
“When we talk about reparations, we are not talking about a gift, a charity, or handouts,” said Westside activist and former Chicago mayoral candidate Amara Enyia.
“When we talk about reparations, we are talking about what we demand and deserve … If we say we believe in justice, you cannot have justice without repair. You cannot have justice without accountability. You cannot have justice in this country or any other country without a commitment to reparations.”
Richard Wallace, the founder of E.A.T., speaks at a rally at 601 S. California to kickoff a march for reparations on Aug. 18. | MICHAEL ROMAIN
The march included protestors from different cultures and ethnicities. | MICHAEL ROMAIN
A masked protestor holds up a green smoke bomb during a protest march on Aug. 19 near the site of the DNC in Chicago. | ANDREW ADAMS/CAPITOL NEWS ILLINOISCREDIT
INSIDE THE 2024 DNC CONVENTION
CAPITOL NEWS ILLINOIS PHOTOS BY ANDREW ADAMS
Still introducing himself to a national audience, vice-presidential candidate and governor of Minnesota Tim Walz speaks on the second to last day of the DNC. Walz is pictured on the United Center’s jumbotron as people crowd a hallway to get a better view.
and social
The Chicago Bulls’ Pack Drumline performs on stage at the Democratic National Convention.
Former President Bill Clinton speaks at the DNC.
As balloons fall from the ceiling of the United Center and some began to leave, a volunteer waves an American flag.
Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson addresses the Illinois delegation at their daily breakfast during the Democratic National Convention.
Illinois Rep. Kam Buckner, D-Chicago, is pictured waiting for evening programming.
U.S. Sen. Rafael Warnock, of Georgia, who's election helped flip control of the Senate to Democrats, speaks to Illinois Democrats at a delegation breakfast.
Historian Shermann “Dilla” Thomas, known by his social media handle @6figga_dilla, speaks to Illinois Democrats. Through his tour company
media, he often deploys the phrase “everything dope about America comes from Chicago.”
U.S. Sen. Cory Booker, of New Jersey, hopped off the stage before speaking to Illinois Democrats so he could deliver the beginning of his remarks from a chair in the middle of the downtown Chicago ballroom hosting the Illinois delegation.
A Westsider’s Mission Possible
Janeicia Williams wants to register 1,000 voters before Nov. 5
By Michael Romain Editor
Agroup of Westsiders has an ambitious goal ahead of the Nov. 5 Presidential Election. They want to register 1,000 young voters in Chicago.
“Why 1,000? Because numbers matter,” said Janeicia Williams, 25. She’s leading the effort launched by Austin Coming Together’s Civic Engagement Task Force, one of seven issue area groups contributing to the Austin nonprofit’s Austin Forward. Together (AFT) quality-of-life plan.
“Each new voter is a new voice, a new perspective, and a new advocate for the issues in our communities,” Williams said.
Williams said the group will place particular emphasis on targeting the youngest eligible voters—members of Generation Z, who range in age from around 12 to 27. According to the Chicago Sun-Times, only 3% of registered voters ages 18 to 24 cast a ballot in the Feb. 28, 2023 election.
Generation Z is known as the first generation to grow up with social media and smartphones. This year, organizers of the Republi-
can National Convention (RNC) in Milwaukee and the Democratic National Convention (DNC) in Chicago laid out the red carpet for social media influencers (also known as content creators).
According to the New York Times, “some 200 content creators were given the special passes” to the DNC, and more than 70 influencers were given credentials at the RNC in July.
At the DNC, the Times reported, some influencers “got face time with Gwen Walz, the wife of the Minnesota governor Tim Walz, aboard a private boat on Lake Michigan; they were treated to tiki bar parties and catered rooftop luncheons; they had exclusive access to two private lounges and a penthouse suite in the United Center that were stocked with free food and alcohol; and many were offered one-on-one interviews with some of the Democratic Party’s biggest names. Some of the influencers [...] received free airfare and hotel rooms.”
Williams and her peers with the Civic Engagement Task Force have a different plan for luring young voters.
“We are strategizing around different ways to get more young people registered, such
as deploying more young people as volunteer deputy registrars who can sign people up to vote,” she said. “We’ll be putting out a one-pager soon to discuss ways to register. Volunteers can do things like host voter registration tables at school or church events and host presentations to teach young people the importance of voting.”
Williams said the Civic Engagement Task Force regularly does initiatives to register voters. Still, this year’s Presidential Election gave them even more fuel to focus on registering young voters, especially given the amount of attention the two major parties are placing on Generation Z.
Get Involved
If you’d like to volunteer with the Civic Engagement Task Force, email its chair, Deborah Williams, at Deborah.williams29th@ gmail.com.
You may also want to check out Chicago Votes, a non-partisan, nonprofit organization building a more inclusive democracy by putting power
in the hands of young Chicagoans. They’re engaging and developing a new generation of leaders by opening the doors of government and politics to young people from all corners of the city. We’re changing laws to make Chicago and Illinois a better place to be young, and in the process, we’re making democracy fun. Visit them at chicagovotes.com.
Some Questions About Voting and Working the Polls
There are many ways people of all ages can get involved in the electoral process
By Michael Romain | Editor
If you have questions about voting and registering to vote, visit chicagoelections.gov. To check your voter registration status (it’s recommended that everyone does this), visit ova. elections.il.gov/RegistrationLookup.aspx.
The following are frequently asked questions highlighted on the Chicago Board of Election Commissioners website.
Who will be eligible to vote in the November 5, 2024 Presidential General Election?
All eligible voters in Chicago, including those who need to: use Election Day registration to register for the first time, file a change of address, or file a name change. To register you must:
■ be a U.S. citizen, and
■ be born on or before November 5, 2006, and
■ live in your precinct at least 30 days before the election, and
■ not claim the right to vote elsewhere; and
■ not be in prison/jail serving time for a conviction. (Note: Ex-convicts who have been released from prison/jail and who meet all other requirements listed above are eligible to register and vote in Illinois. Ex-convicts who have been released and are on parole/probation ARE eligible to register and vote in Illinois.)
What offices will be on the ballot on November 5, 2024?
Voters will vote on the following offices: U.S. President; U.S. Representative; Illinois State
Senator; Illinois State Representative; Illinois Supreme Court Judge; Illinois Appellate Court Judge; Circuit Court Judge; Subcircuit Judge; Cook County State’s Attorney; Cook County Commissioner; Cook County Clerk of the Circuit Court; Water Reclamation District Commissioner; Board of Review Commissioner; and 10 members of the Chicago Elected School Board.
When do I have to show ID to vote?
You do not need ID if you are already registered to vote, your signature matches the one on file, and there are no questions about your registration. However, there are times when you do need identification, such as registering to vote or updating the name or address on your registration in person when you go to vote. Learn more about IDs here.
Did you know you can get paid to work the polls?
There’s always a need for citizens willing to work to ensure U.S. democracy runs smoothly and efficiently. Election Day positions include Judges, who can earn anywhere from $170 to $230, and Coordinators, who earn $450.
Election Judges are paid to assist voters and manage the precinct polling place on Election Day.
Election Coordinators are responsible for running the precinct’s set-up, operation, and closing on Election Day.
Visit chicagoelections.gov/poll-workers for more info.
Janeicia Williams speaks at New Mt. Pilgrim Missionary Baptist Church on Aug. 18.
