From the UWF Executive Committee (10/16/2025):
President Trump is invading our city. While his masked troops unleash violence on Black and Brown neighborhoods with impunity–kidnapping parents, zip-tying children, and tear-gassing people trying to protect their neighbors–his billionaire buddies grow rich from massive tax breaks paid for by Trump’s cuts to life-saving programs and services for working families. Chicagoans want an end to this billionaire-backed invasion. We demand that our local leaders take bold action to protect our people, invest in what works to keep our people safe, and fight back against out-of-control corporate greed here in Chicago–this is what Mayor Brandon Johnson’s “Protecting Chicago Budget” does.
United Working Families celebrates this historic budget proposal that secures and increases the hard-won investments in mental healthcare, schools, and youth jobs that build our communities up. We celebrate that this budget does not propose an increase to property taxes, which is welcome news to working families who are disproportionately impacted by any such increases.
Fund Community Safety by Taxing Large Corporations not Working Families
We celebrate the introduction of the Community Safety Surcharge, a tax on the richest 3% of corporations to directly fund community violence prevention and safety programs. Corporations like Google and Amazon should pay us what they owe us since they benefited from the largest transfer of wealth in history from Trump’s Big Ugly Bill. We know the solution to our city’s budget woes–inherited from past mayors who irresponsibly sold off revenue-generating public infrastructure like the parking meters and the Skyway, and compounded by Trump’s cuts–is to tax the rich.
Chicagoans cannot afford to be nickel-and-dimed on their trash cans and grocery bills while billionaires loot our federal programs and cut off access to food and healthcare. We are owed a city budget that prioritizes moms and dads–not Musk and Meta.
Investments to Create Safety and Fight Trump’s Cuts
After the safest summer in 60 years, Chicago has seen the proven success of investing in root-cause solutions like violence prevention, youth peacekeeping jobs, and mental healthcare. We celebrate the proposal’s reduction of chronic, unfillable vacancies in the Chicago Police Department as well as the interventions on curbing overtime abuse. We commend the Mayor’s declaration of the largest TIF surplus in Chicago’s history, to counter Trump’s cuts to education and Springfield’s refusal to fully fund our schools. This is alongside investment in our young people by expanding early childhood education and funding more youth jobs. We applaud the permanent funding of the Department of Public Health and our non-police crisis response (CARE) teams–because our neighbors deserve treatment, not trauma.
All Eyes on the Council, then Next Stop: Springfield
We call on the City Council to unite against Trump’s billionaire agenda by supporting the Protecting Chicago Budget and refusing to balance the city’s books on the backs of Black, Brown, and working class Chicagoans.
We also deserve so much more. We call on our state level elected officials to untie Chicago’s hands to allow for more meaningful progressive revenue so we can have fully resourced communities, where housing, childcare, education, and public health services are guaranteed.
