1. SAFEGUARD DEMOCRACY: ENSURE THE RIGHT TO VOTE, FREEDOM OF SPEECH, THE RIGHT TO GATHER AND PROTEST

Democracy is under attack. The right to vote, to free speech, to gather in public places, and to dissent are all in jeopardy. Laws that restrict the right to vote and undermine the election process itself are being passed in cities and states across the nation.

The fight for democracy is urgent. The only way we can achieve what we want for ourselves and our families is to have a government that we elect through free and fair elections.

We support methods that encourage and allow everyone to vote, from mail-in ballots to early voting, and accessible and available voting locations, including drop-boxes. We oppose voter suppression of any type and understand that it is specifically aimed at voters in Black and Brown communities.    

Potential Actions

• Oppose all efforts at voter suppression.

• Support and expand methods that facilitate voting for everyone.

• Abolish the electoral college.

• Abolish the filibuster rule.

• Protect the right for all to occupy and use public spaces for free speech, including physical and online protests.

• Protect access to the internet.

• Support full congressional representation for Washington D.C., Puerto Rico, and other “territories,” should they wish it.

2. END DISCRIMINATION AND ENSURE EQUAL RIGHTS FOR ALL

CWTA values all people and opposes discrimination of any kind. Discrimination sorts people to produce disparities in all facets of life. CWTA recognizes intersectionality of race, gender, age, sexual orientation, gender identity, ethnicity, national origin, religion, and disabilities (both mental and physical). We advocate for elimination of all discrimination as a path to a just and equitable society and support members of historically discriminated groups to hold positions of power in the public and private sectors.

Potential Actions

• Dismantle white supremacy and all forms of a caste system through diversity, equity, and inclusion-based programs in government, corporations (particularly financial institutions), education/academia, and media, to advance racial justice. 

• Support reinvestment in the people and communities decimated by racism and  anti-racist policies in every sector of society.  

• Support laws and a criminal justice system that prevent violence, hate crimes and police brutality.  Work to establish communities of equal opportunity where everyone can have a safe, peaceful, and meaningful life. 

• Define and shape the policies, structures, and decisions that affect the lives of women and gender non-conforming people, and society as a whole. Support gender justice as the systemic redistribution of power, opportunities, and access for people of all genders, and protection of women’s reproductive justice.

• Act to prevent all forms of violence, including sexual violence and sexual harassment.

• Recognize and support the need for health (both physical and mental) experts to address particular needs and the special circumstances of people who are LGBTG.

• Work to pass the Equality Act and to eliminate state laws and executive orders that exclude transgender people from housing, healthcare, use of bathroom of choice, and vitally needed services.

• Work to eliminate agism and age discrimination. 

3. ENSURE AFFORDABLE AND COMPREHENSIVE HEALTHCARE FOR ALL

Today health care is costly and inequitably available. We work for a healthcare system that asserts healthcare as a human right, that acknowledges the government’s role in achieving universal coverage and equitable care, and that specifically addresses the root causes of the unacceptably wide racial disparities in health outcomes—outcomes ranging from infant and maternal death to overall life expectancy. 

We strongly support public health as the anchor of the healthcare system. Public health is responsible for the health of all of us, monitoring health status and making recommendations to improve it. Public health has the authority to enforce health laws and to ensure equitable distribution of health services.

All people deserve a full array of physical and mental health services at each stage of life, and the array must include full reproductive justice. We also understand that food security, affordable housing and childcare, freedom from violence, high-quality education, and a healthy environment are foundational to good health, and these must also be addressed if we are to end racial and economic disparities in health outcomes and achieve good health care for all.

Potential Actions

• Support national legislation that assures universal coverage--healthcare for all--and lowers costs.

• Support legislation that assures access to comprehensive care, including reproductive, dental, mental health, vision, elder care services, and long term care in all communities, both urban and rural.

• Support programs that promote equity.

• Support increased funding for public health, research, and planning to address chronic, acute, and emerging infectious diseases.

• Work for passage of national legislation that codifies the right to abortion. Pass the Women's Health Protection Act or an equivalent.

4. ENSURE ACCESS TO QUALITY EDUCATION AT ALL LEVELS

Federal, state, and local funding formulas embed and obscure huge disparities in the quality of and access to education at every level of learning and between public and private systems. Where one lives is the greatest determinant to the quality of education that is available and affordable. Local funding systems, largely dependent on real estate taxes, are at the root of structural inequality. Poorer communities, many of which have predominantly Black and Brown residents, or are in rural communities, have a lower quality education. They provide few services geared to student needs; have inadequate access to digital technologies and skills to use them in learning, and have a lingering culture that directs women and girls into “female appropriate” occupations.  

It is imperative to restructure the systems that produce and perpetuate inequities to create systems that provide equitable education and support services to meet the needs and aspirations of all students’ abilities and incomes.  Curriculum needs to include civics, the histories of the different races and ethnicities of all students, and to teach them how to think and to master basic skills, including digital technology.  

Potential Actions

• Restructure educational funding systems and programs to achieve equity.

• Increase access to up to date digital technology particularly in underserved communities.

• Ensure STEM education for women and girls.

• Increase financial aid for post-secondary education and training, and student loan forgiveness. 

• Provide free tuition at community colleges and ensure affordable post-secondary education for all.

• Provide support that students need to succeed, directly and through partnerships, e.g. tutoring, mentoring, physical and mental health care, and internships.

• Ensure accessibility in education to persons with physical and mental disabilities. 

5. ADDRESS CLIMATE CHANGE AND ENSURE ENVIRONMENTAL JUSTICE

Greenhouse gasses, carbon dioxide, poisonous industrial waste, and disaster-creating practices continue to damage the environment and are major causes of the climate change that threatens our planet.  At the same time and more immediately, the impacts of pollution and climate change on health and well-being are unequal, disproportionately affecting economically disadvantaged communities, especially those of color.  

Local, state, and national policies that regulate pollution, waste, noise, and the location of hazardous land-uses have failed to protect these communities. Actions grounded in environmental justice and the creation of sustainable communities should be at the forefront of the environmental agenda. All actions should minimize and mitigate negative unintended consequences.

Potential Actions

• Support community-based efforts that initiate and review policies related to emissions and clean-up, such as the Healthy Trucks Coalition

• Support efforts to prevent the development of new land uses and activities that will increase pollution in impacted areas

• Monitor and provide input on Chicago’s climate action planning, with particular attention to the equitable expansion of access to clean energy and energy efficient infrastructure

• Keep the Illinois Climate and Equitable Jobs Act (CEJA) strong by monitoring legislation that would weaken its provisions and encouraging legislators to ensure the Act is fully funded

• Monitor federal efforts to fund public infrastructure, ensuring that it is appropriately spent in the most impacted communities first and supports reducing greenhouse gas emissions

• Work to assure that everyone has access to clean water within their homes.

• Support efforts to ensure that all disadvantaged communities can take advantage of innovative solutions to improving the environmental quality and the benefits of a green economy.

• Support creation, expansion, and monitoring of and community access to data systems that track environmental conditions and health in impacted communities.

6. ENSURE ECONOMIC JUSTICE

Economic justice is critical to empowerment and democracy. Capitalism has created economic injustice. Privatization and maximization of profit have devalued our public institutions and our human rights. Resistance to fair taxation, especially by the top 1% of wealth holders, has led to inequalities of tremendous proportions.

Black, Indigenous, and other people of color in America have been particularly exploited by private and government policies that have perpetuated structural racism and denied them land and homeownership and devalued their homes, businesses and communities through redlining. 

The pandemic has laid bare the uber-exploitation of working people including those in the gig economy, who are denied even the most meager of benefits. These are the people who kept us safe and our economy moving during the worst of COVID 19.  While the wealthy have gained more wealth during the pandemic many working people on the front lines are being denied increased compensation for their service. Women have been especially impacted.

Potential Actions

• Enact nationwide minimum wage laws that guarantee a living wage – one that ensures access to housing, education, good food, leisure, and only one job.

• Ensure that home, health, food, and agricultural workers get the same benefits as those who work in traditionally unionized industries.

• Mandate that anyone who works for a company that provides a service or product is treated as an employee and entitled to benefits, pensions, healthcare vacation and sick time, and all other entitlements.

• Guarantee  a minimum income that provides for basic economic security to individuals and families. 

• Decrease or end regressive taxes and increase the income tax at federal and state levels for those making over $250,000 - $400,000 per year. Reinstitute wealth taxes and close corporate loopholes.

• Commit national and local resources to rebuild communities and develop permanent affordable housing, both rental and home ownership, that is protected from speculation and market forces. 

• Develop policies to create an economic system that prevents class/economic disparity and provides a fair distribution of the wealth of this country.

7. ENACT COMPREHENSIVE IMMIGRATION REFORM

Current immigration policies harm both undocumented and their families – of the 1.8 million immigrants, an estimated 400,000 do not have legal status. The lack of legal status endangers the immigrants and their families and undermines fights for economic justice, too often dividing workers, intimidating those without papers, and lowering wages. 

Recent years have seen a dramatic increase in deportations, which continue to tear apart families and create fear and misery among those left behind. To end the exploitation and suffering we must work for comprehensive reform that reunites families, protects asylum seekers, and provides a pathway to citizenship for undocumented individuals.  

Potential Actions

• Pass comprehensive immigration reform, including provisions for asylum for refugees.

• Ensure protection for undocumented people and create a pathway to citizenship in the US. 

• End family separation and the incarceration of children. 

• Increase visas for nations of non-European origin. 

• Prohibit discrimination based on sexual orientation or gender identity.

• End the use of private prisons and  private detention centers. 

8. RETHINK AND REFORM THE CRIMINAL JUSTICE SYSTEM

The history of ‘criminal justice’ has always been one that prioritized the protection of private property and owners. In America, criminal laws grew up around the suppression of enslaved people, native peoples, and unions, with Chicago and Illinois particularly infamous for their use of police to quell the early labor movement. America has more people imprisoned than any other nation in the world, with Black men incarcerated at a disproportionate rate. Indigenous Americans, Black and Latin people are too often both the victims of police violence and the victims of violent crimes that the police never solve (out of disinterest or incompetence). The criminal justice system perpetuates and deepens the structure of racism from police violence on the streets to prosecution, courts, prisons, and restrictions on those who have served their prison sentences making this one of the most important issues of our time.  Police union contracts protect police officers from prosecution and accountability for their wrongful and criminal conduct, thus perpetuating and exacerbating the harm incurred by innocent victims of police misconduct.

 Potential Actions

• Engage, participate in and ensure effective civilian oversight and accountability of the Chicago Police Department through the complete implementation of the Empowering Communities and Public Safety Act of 2021 and the enforcement of  the Federal Consent Decree for Police Accountability according to all mandated timelines and milestones. 

• Ensure implementation of the Illinois 2021 Criminal Justice Reform Act and subsequent state laws signed in 2021 that eliminate cash bail, provide for re-sentencing, amend the felony murder rule, provide for de-certification of police officers who engage in misconduct, ban chokeholds, mandate use of body cameras, allow anonymous complaints regarding police misconduct, provide rights for pregnant prisoners, allow by-pass of mandatory minimums by the courts, prohibit use of deceptive practices while interrogating minors and encourage use of restorative justice. 

• Streamline the disciplinary process for police misconduct and demand that all necessary changes are incorporated within the Fraternal Order of Police union contract, consistent with the streamlined process. 

• End police in schools as each school determines.

• End the federal death penalty.

• Eliminate mandatory sentencing rules and elect progressive prosecutors and unbiased judges to create alternatives to incarceration and specialty courts to offer services instead of punishment.

• Make prisons places of restitution and renewal including allowing  incarcerated and formerly incarcerated people to vote, and increasing access to housing, employment, healthcare, and other supports to assist in the transition to a productive life in the community.   

9. GUN VIOLENCE - PROTECT WOMEN AND THEIR FAMILIES

There are over 20,000 homicides and 40,000 suicides annually in the U.S, and in 2021 there were over 4,543 shootings in Chicago. Now is the time to enact gun safety laws that outlaw assault weapons and make guns of all types less accessible. 

Potential Actions

• Pass gun safety legislation at federal, state, and local levels, including outlawing assault weapons and making guns and ammunition less accessible.

• Increase funding for mental health services.

• Support community-led, anti-violence strategies and efforts to create safe neighborhoods, and increase private and public investment for services, education, and   employment in disadvantaged communities.

•  Expand educational and rehabilitative programs in the criminal justice system.

• Boycott stores that sell guns.

10. PROTECT AND ENHANCE PUBLIC INSTITUTIONS AND RESOURCES

Women and their families thrive and have opportunities when the public sphere is strong. Much of America’s social mobility derives from creating and protecting public assets – education, public lands, public health, water systems, public transportation, roads/sidewalks, and other infrastructure that benefit us all.  

Yet the public sphere has been under relentless attack for the past forty years. The privatization of schools, deregulation of environmental protections, dependence on private health insurance, the reduction of essential government services, including the weakening of the U.S. Post office, deprive us of the common foundation for building our lives and communities. To ensure a society that promotes social justice, we must prioritize and provide full funding and create accessibility for all persons, including those with disabilities, to our public institutions and buildings, transportation, sidewalks, and other public ways.  

Potential Actions

• Support tax reform that reduces the wealth gap by eliminating loopholes and taxing wealth and not just income put this first.

• Support the equitable implementation of the recently passed Infrastructure legislation, including ensuring the availability of broadband nationwide.

• Sustain and enhance the American Rescue Plan.

• Promote adequate and equitable funding for public services, including public transportation, public health, public education, and other social safety net services.