Over the last several months, ONE Northside dedicated our organization to fighting for state funding to make sure our communities thrive. In the face of the Trump administration’s gutting of social services, a state budget deficit, and a proposed budget by our governor that made cuts to valuable programs, we joined with partners across Illinois to make sure our state stepped up to make sure our communities were protected.
While we recognize the importance of funding important programs, we also want to make sure that new funding for these programs doesn’t come on the backs of working and poor people. The rich are getting richer and corporations’ profits keep growing, but wages are flat, and things are getting more expensive. We will continue to fight for a government that funds an expansive social safety net by taxing the ultra-rich and large corporations. Therefore this session, we lobbied for taxes that target just those groups.
New revenue:
Community investments:
Revenue generating policies:
We won so much because we worked so hard through persistent and creative tactics. For the first time in the history of our organization, we won over $1 BILLION dollars in new revenue ANNUALLY for our state in a single year. This big win is from the digital ads tax and all of this is exclusively coming from big tech corporations. We should all feel tremendously proud. Here is a summary of all the ways we worked to make sure our legislature passed:
We did so much work to pull off transformational wins in this year’s budget! Thank you to the many people who helped pull these off and to the hundreds that took action from showing up downtown to writing to your legislators to taking risks and responsibility of the work. We couldn’t have won without everyone’s participation over the past few months.
And yet, as you can see, we didn’t win everything our organization was fighting for. And many of our partners didn’t see their bills and budget asks cross the finish line. Our legislature left nearly $3 billion on the table that could have been collected from big corporations and billionaires. Those $3 billion could have been spent to counterbalance federal cuts on SNAP, healthcare and education. They could have been spent to raise the wages of healthcare workers who face rising costs of living while still not making living wages. There’s so much our state could have chosen to take on, and instead many of our leaders still chose to do the bare minimum this year. The bar is low, and they barely crossed over it.
Everyone can now rest knowing that our fight resulted in major wins. We will need you again to continue to press to make sure our communities are funded, that our state is more affordable, safe, and healthy, and that billionaires and corporations are paying their fair share. We are excited to see you again soon!
