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Chicagoans Call On Pritzker To Fund Transit, Other Public Services

July 16, 2025 Kobi Guillory, Fight Back! News. , , , ,
Chicago, IL – “We are here to demand that Governor JB Pritzker live up to his promise of standing up against the cuts and the cruelty of the Trump administration,” Chicago Teachers Union member Jesse Bostic said to the hundreds of people who rallied in Daley Plaza on Saturday afternoon, July 12. Better Streets Chicago organized the protest in response to the Illinois government’s failure to secure funding necessary to prevent 40% service cuts to public transportation. “This fight isn't just about buses and trains, it's about workers having dignity, it's about students being able to get to school. Let's build a system that shows up like we do,” said Jose Manuel Almanza, with Equicity Chicago.

No Ordinary Solidarity: Inside Chicago’s Hunger Strike For Gaza


July 11, 2025 Joseph Mogul, Waging Nonviolence. , , , ,
Ash Bohrer sat in a wheelchair outside of the Chicago Federal Plaza, where they had been arrested for refusing to leave Sen. Tammy Duckworth’s office hours earlier — and where six Jewish Voice for Peace-Chicago organizers had launched a hunger strike for Gaza 18 days prior. Reflecting on the highlights to that point, Bohrer, a JVP-Chicago organizer and Notre Dame peace studies professor, said it wasn’t the teach-ins, solidarity demonstrations or political wins that came to mind first, but a message they received from a mother in Gaza named Alaa.  “When someone in Chicago chooses to face hunger willingly that is not ordinary solidarity,” she wrote. “It is a profound act of pure humanity.”

Over 100 Mauser Teamsters Enter Fourth Week On Strike In Chicago

July 4, 2025 Eliza Schultz, Fight Back! News. , , , , ,
Chicago, IL – On Wednesday July 2, around 100 striking workers joined the picket line outside Mauser Packaging Solutions Steel Drum Reconditioning plant in Chicago. The facility has sat closed, with the operation halted and the gates locked, for almost a month as a result of the strike called by Teamsters Local 705 due to unfair labor practices committed by Mauser during the negotiations for a new contract. “We are on an Unfair Labor Practice strike against Industrial Container Services (aka Mauser Packaging Solutions) after the company illegally surveilled union members. Members are also fighting for a contract that includes respectable wages, benefits, immigration protection and workplace stability language,” according to a public statement by the union.

Chicago Jewish Activists Embark On Indefinite Hunger Strike Over Gaza

June 17, 2025 Shane Burley, In These Times. , , , , , , , ,
The risk of famine increases in Gaza as the Israeli government’s blockade of nearly all aid to Gaza approaches its third month. “I felt this almost sense of panic as every day went by without food let in,” Ash Bohrer, a Chicago-based Jewish activist in the Palestinian solidarity movement, told me as she outlined how high the stakes are as the genocide continues in Gaza. “When I first heard it, my initial thought was … if there is some way I can use my body,” Bohrer said, ​“I am ready and willing to do it, and I think about it as a personal, moral and religious obligation to do so.”

‘DOGE Already Happened In Chicago’: Resist Through Coalition Building

May 30, 2025 Michaela Brant, Progressive.org. , , , , , , ,
On April 14, members of the Chicago Teachers Union (CTU) ratified its new contract with 97 percent approval. The nearly year-long negotiation process was steered by union president Stacy Davis Gates, whose leadership of the CTU as a militant force for progressive politics has followed in the footsteps of former CTU president Karen Lewis. Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson, a former CTU organizer and Chicago Public Schools (CPS) middle school teacher, was also a key figure in the process. The CTU’s contract gains and movement building suggest a mode of successful resistance during a critical time for all advocates for public education to stand up to the budget cuts and draconian policies of President Donald Trump’s second administration.

Two Tenant Unions, One Rent Strike

May 17, 2025 Rebecca Burns, In These Times. , , ,
Most of the milestones of Anay Herrera’s adult life have taken place within walking distance of the apartment complex in Chicago’s Buena Park neighborhood where she’s lived for more than two decades. All five of her children were born at a nearby hospital and attended the elementary school down the street, where her two youngest, twins, are now in kindergarten. She took computer and GED classes at the local community college and now works part-time as a cashier at a restaurant a few blocks away. She’s come to know almost all of her neighbors, some of whose children have grown up with hers, and invites them over for homemade pozole and tinga.

South Side Neighbors Want Housing Protections Before City Oks ‘Luxury’ Hotel Near Obama Center

May 8, 2025 Maxwell Evans, Black Agenda Report. , , , ,
With a 26-story hotel planned blocks from the Obama Presidential Center site, housing activists are calling on city leaders to prioritize a long-delayed slate of housing protections for residents near the center before advancing any hotel plans. More than 50 members of the Obama CBA Coalition rallied Tuesday on the vacant lot at 6402-6420 S. Stony Island Ave. in Woodlawn, where developer Aquinnah Investment Trust is looking to build a 250-room hotel . CBA stands for community benefits agreement. The rezoning application for the hotel, which was submitted last month, comes as the South Shore Housing Preservation ordinance proposal remains stalled in the City Council’s housing committee 18 months after its introduction.

Chicago Teachers Win Greener Schools

April 17, 2025 Nick Limbeck and Lauren Bianchi, Labor Notes. , , ,
The Chicago Teachers Union won a tentative agreement in December that, for the first time, addresses climate and environmental justice demands—making healthy green schools a priority in our city. We achieved this breakthrough even while broader contract negotiations stalled. Finally, in April, we ratified the full agreement, which also includes big raises and lower class sizes. Our environmental justice victory stems from a collaboration between teachers and environmental activists to expose urgent problems facing us and our students—and link those problems to larger struggles.

DOJ Knew About and Used Notorious Homan Square ‘Black Site’

March 19, 2025 Iain Carlos and Sam Carlen, Black Agenda Report. , , , , ,
Scandals don’t get much more disturbing than that of Homan Square. In 2015, the Guardian revealed Chicago Police had allegedly employed torture and days-long unlawful detention at the secretive “black site”-like Homan Square facility, a nondescript warehouse located in Chicago’s west-side Garfield Park neighborhood. Outraged and alarmed by these revelations, politicians and activists clamored for the U.S. Department of Justice to investigate human rights abuses at the facility, which still operates today. Despite the pleading, the DOJ elected not to investigate Homan Square, and instead conducted a broad investigation of Chicago Police Department use of force practices.

Landlords Fined $80K For Threatening To Call ICE On Chicago Tenants

March 8, 2025 Zane McNeill, Truthout. , , , , , ,
An Illinois circuit court judge has ordered Chicago landlords to pay former tenants $80,000 after they threatened to report the tenants to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) in June 2020. The decision is the first under the state’s 2019 Immigrant Tenant Protection Act (ITPA), which prohibits landlords from using a tenant’s immigration status to harass or intimidate them. “This decision provides a measure of justice to a family facing a landlord willing to threaten to call federal immigration authorities in the belief that it would scare tenants,” Thomas A. Saenz, MALDEF president and general counsel, said in a statement.

UPS Cuts Back On Amazon Deliveries, Announces Building Closures

February 7, 2025 Eliza Schultz and Bill Aiman, Fight Back! News. , , , ,
Chicago, IL – On Thursday January 30, UPS announced a major cutback in Amazon package deliveries, with the goal of dropping over 50% of the volume from the company’s largest customer by June 2026. In conjunction, UPS is looking to permanently shutter 10% of buildings, shrink their fleet of vehicles and lay off workers. The plan to close more buildings comes on the heels of the hard fought 2023 Teamsters contract, which resulted in major wage gains for part-timers and the end of the 2-tier system among package car drivers. The credible threat of a strike forced UPS to concede to the union’s demands in contract negotiations and look elsewhere for cost savings.

Chicago Clinic Offers Free Legal Aid To Solidarity Economy Groups

February 6, 2025 Damon Orion, Resilience. , , ,
Chicago, Illinois, has a rich history of grassroots organizing. Notable examples are the Back of the Yards Neighborhood Council’s efforts to improve local economic and social conditions and the Black Panther Party’s establishment of housing cooperatives and free food, clothing, and medical services. The solidarity economy movement has continued to gain momentum in Chicago. In 2024, a map from the worker-owned ChiCommons Cooperative showed more than 800 solidarity enterprises, co-ops, and mutual aid groups in the city.

Thousands Take To The Streets In Defense Of Immigrants Rights

February 4, 2025 Jimena Vergara and Madeleine Freeman, Left Voice. , , , , , , , , ,
Immigrants and their communities are leading the fight against the Trump administration’s attacks on democratic rights. Since Trump unleashed a series of ICE raids in his first days in office — ordering ICE and the police to arrest over 1000 people per day — thousands of people in the cities most targeted by the anti-immigrant offensive are taking to the streets, walking out of their schools, and shuttering businesses to show that immigrants won’t be criminalized and made to live in constant fear of deportation. The raids come on top of a barrage of anti-immigrant attacks launched by Trump on his very first day in office.

How Chicago Is Frustrating ICE’s Campaign Of Fear

January 31, 2025 Sarah Lazare and Rebecca Burns, In These Times. , , , ,
“Tom Homan said Chicago is very organized,” Margarita Klein, director of member organizing for Arise Chicago, proclaimed gleefully in Spanish to a room of 80 people at an immigrant rights training, many of whom laughed and clapped in response. Klein was calling back to a CNN appearance two days earlier by Trump’s handpicked border czar. “Sanctuary cities are making it very difficult,” Homan told anchor Kaitlan Collins of the administration’s immigration sweeps. ​“For instance, Chicago … they’ve been educated on how to defy ICE, how to hide from ICE.”

Chicago: Ready For The Fight To Stop The Trump Agenda

January 16, 2025 Joe Iosbaker, Fight Back! News. , , ,
Chicago, IL – 300 activists, mostly from Latino communities, and many who are immigrants, packed into City Hall this morning to oppose an attack by city council members against Chicago’s Welcoming City Ordinance. Cook County Commissioner Anthony Quezada kicked off the rally with chants alternating between Spanish and English. “When Black people are under attack, what do you do?” “Stand up, fight back!” “When sanctuary is under attack, what do you do?” “Stand up, fight back!” Then in Spanish, “Pueblo, escucha! Estamos en la lucha!” Which roughly means, “People, listen! We’re in the struggle!”
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