Police Brutality:
There is a very serious and ongoing history of police brutality against unarmed people in the minority community: Laquan McDonald, Sandra Bland, Michael Brown, Rekia Boyd, Eric Garner, Walter Scott, Freddie Gray, Jessica Hernandez, Tamir Rice, Jonathan Ferrell, Oscar Grant, Antonio Zambrano-Montes and others. People of color, killed by the police, who should be alive today. We know that African-Americans are twice as likely to be arrested, and almost four times as likely to experience physical force in an encounter with the police.

In Illinois, police files document thousands of uses of force over more than a decade. Nearly 90% of these were against people of color. Police are 14 times more likely to use force against a black person that a white person. This is an alarming trend. We see Police Brutality with an alarming amount of regularity throughout the country, and we need to start the process of repairing this relationship. We need to hold those police officers that break the law accountable. We need to protect our citizens of all colors from all violence, and this includes from Police. We must fully fund independent entities to investigate all accusations of police brutality, and excessive force.


Red-Lining:
Red-lining is the practice of refusing a loan or insurance to someone because they live in an area deemed to be a poor financial risk. Historically, banks and insurance companies will either not loan, or charge outrageous interest rates to people inside of a red-lined district. As you can imagine, many of these districts disproportionately effect people of color. I propose we hold credit companies, banks, and insurance companies accountable that currently practice, or are found to have practiced red lining that are affecting homeowners today. I believe these companies should be fined, and fix the rates of these citizens, and pay back the money that they have stolen from these people. This practice cannot, and will not continue.


Discriminatory Drug Laws:
The drug war has driven racial disparities in the criminal justice system. Research shows that prosecutors are twice as likely to pursue mandatory minimum sentences for black people as for white people charged with the same offense. Among people who received a mandatory minimum sentence in 2011, 38% were Latino and 31% were black. Nearly 80% of people in federal prison, and 60% of people in state prison for drug offenses are black or Latino. In Illinois, those numbers are as follows: 57% of drug-related incarcerations are Black, while 34% are White. The disparity shows that People of color are being incarcerated at higher rates than whites for the same offense. This is especially surprising when we look at the demographics of Illinois.


Unbalanced Prison Populations:
​There are 76,000 people from Illinois behind bars. 41,000 in state facilities, 23,000 in local jails, and about 12,000 in federal and other facilities. Per 100,000 people in Illinois, the number of incarcerated people by race are as follows: 258 people are White, 472 are Hispanic, 2,128 are Black, and 821 are Native American/Alaska Native. These numbers are disturbing. What is even worse is the percentage of Illinoisans by race that are incarcerated. While 64% of Illinoisans are white, 30% of the prison population is white. 15% of the population in Illinois is Black, while 56% of those incarcerated are Black. 16% of the population is Latino, and 14% of the prison population is, and Native people are around 1% in both areas.


We will bring the fight for justice of ALL of the citizens of Illinois, to our state capitol and will make sure that we correct the laws ripping apart our communities and our society. The only way we succeed is by bringing people together, and lifting up all citizens. Working together, we are going to end the international embarrassment of having more people in jail America than any other country on earth. Instead of spending billions every year on jails and incarceration, we are going to invest in jobs and education for our young people. No more "war on drugs." No more keeping people in jail because they're too poor to afford cash bail. Real police department reform.

We fight to end cash bail.

We fight to end all mandatory minimum sentencing. Mandatory minimums are minimum sentences that judges must impose for offenses without discretion, if a person is convicted. While, introduced to promote fairer, more uniform sentencing based on criminal activity rather than irrelevant factors such as race or a particular judge's strictness, the laws have created various unintended consequences. The laws make it easier for prosecutors to extract plea bargains from innocent suspects, and they take discretion away from judges, which can result in overly harsh penalties.

We must evaluate civil asset forfeiture in Illinois. In the summer of 2017, after protracted negotiations, the Illinois General Assembly passed a landmark bill to make Illinois’ forfeiture laws fairer and more transparent. However, the law still allows citizens to lose their property through forfeiture even if they’ve not been convicted of a crime. The scheme for allocating forfeited assets remains unchanged, meaning the same police department that seizes your money gets to keep it after the cash is forfeited. Additionally, “equitable sharing” arrangements with the federal government provide a loophole through which Illinois law enforcement agencies can avoid complying with the safeguards provided under state law.


Environmental Justice
The ills of pollution and climate change touch everyone, but tragically, they touch those in poverty more than others. Trump’s own EPA has shown that people living in poverty are exposed to more harmful particulate matter in the air, and that people of color are more likely to live near pollution and be exposed to pollutants. According to the EPA report, “results at national, state, and county scales all indicate that non-Whites tend to be burdened disproportionately to Whites.” This is unacceptable.

Together, we must enact a Green New Deal not just to save the planet, but to protect our most vulnerable communities. We must end the scourge of environmental racism, and at the same time create green jobs to support and rebuild the local economies of affected communities.

We must protect low-income and minority communities, who are hit first and worst by the causes and impacts of climate change, while also protecting existing energy-sector workers as they transition into clean energy and other jobs in Illinois.

We must address the inadequate environmental cleanup efforts of Superfund hazardous waste sites in communities of color in Illinois. Let’s stop the exposure of people of color to harmful chemicals, pesticides and other toxins in homes, schools, neighborhoods, and workplaces and challenge faulty assumptions in calculating, assessing, and managing risks, discriminatory zoning and land-use practices and exclusionary policies.


Resolve Healthcare Disparities
In 2014, Illinois ranked 36th out of 50 states and Washington D.C. in infant mortality. While our infant mortality rate in Illinois has decreased over time, major racial/ethnic disparities persist. The infant mortality rate for infants born to Non-Hispanic black women is consistently at least two to three times as high as the infant mortality rate of infants born to Non-Hispanic white women. Infants at higher risk for infant mortality include those born to: Non-Hispanic black women, younger mothers, unmarried women, women with a high school education or less, U.S.-born women (vs. foreign born), women covered by Medicaid, women with three or more previous births, residents of the city of Chicago, women with pregnancy-related hypertension (high blood pressure) or eclampsia, or women who did not receive any prenatal care.

We must end the racial disparities in our healthcare system—31% of African Americans and 32% of Hispanics struggle paying medical bills compared to 24% of white Americans. We must guarantee health care to all people of color as a right, not a privilege, through a Medicare-for-all, single-payer program and end this inequity.

Economic Justice
Black Americans currently have ten cents for every dollar white Americans have. Latinx Americans currently have thirteen cents for every dollar white Americans have. This is unacceptable: It’s time for us to treat the lives of our neighbors of color like they’re worth more than change on the dollar. More than 22% of black Americans and more than 21% of Hispanic Americans are living in poverty compared to 12% of white Americans.


Our campaign is fundamentally dedicated to ending the disparity of wealth, income and power in this country. It’s time to bring a systemic approach to systemic racism. Structural problems require structural solutions, and together we can meet that challenge. Systemic inequities have created innumerable disparities across racial groups from health outcomes, to health insurance rates, education outcomes, college debt rates, and police violence. We believe we’re obligated to do more than just acknowledge the problem. We believe in implementing policies that aim to achieve substantive equality now—while the generations alive today can benefit. In an Illinois that is genuinely free, neither one's zip code nor the color of their skin would determine a child’s life outcome. We believe Illinois is morally bound to close the racial wealth divide. In order to do that, we must ensure that people:

We must start treating the racial wealth divide like the crisis it is. We must end the especially pernicious racial wealth divide that exists today in Illinois within the gap between millionaires and the poor, working, and middle classes of all races.

We must guarantee a job to everyone in Illinois. A job guarantee will create good-paying jobs and will create work building much needed infrastructure and providing critical services to communities across the state.

We must ensure all of our children, regardless of race or class, receive a quality education.

We must end the affordable housing crisis and create a path to wealth building through home ownership.

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