Give Our Young People Some Hope
When teenagers flood Millennium Park and neighborhoods across Chicago, including parts of this ward, the disruption is real and residents have every right to be frustrated.
But Chicago's response is always the same: shut it down with curfews, dispersal orders, and more restrictions. The conversation that follows is entirely about how to stop it from happening again and not about why it keeps happening in the first place. That instinct - to manage, contain, and restrict young people rather than invest in them - runs deep in how this city thinks about youth. And it isn't working.
I've spent the last six years trying to be part of an alternative. Since 2020, I've been involved with Breakthrough, a non-profit in East Garfield Park, coaching youth basketball and soccer, and spending the past year mentoring high school juniors and seniors. These are sharp, motivated kids with real ambitions - play ball in the NBA, start their own brand, or drop a hit record. I don't tell them to give up on those dreams. I tell them to expand them. We took a group of them to Wilson Sporting Goods to show them the business side of what they love. The look on their faces said everything.
Every kid in this ward deserves that moment and right now, most of them never get it. That's especially true in a ward like ours, where some of our young people grow up a short bus ride from world-class museums, restaurants, corporate headquarters, and cultural institutions and have no real pathway into any of it. Not because they aren't capable. Because nobody built the bridge. An Alderman exists to build that bridge.
- Open a Ward Youth Office, a real front door, not a website.Right now, if a family in this ward wants to find a summer job, after-school program, or mentorship opportunity for their kid, the information is scattered across ward newsletters, city departments, Chicago Public Schools (CPS), the Park District, and dozens of nonprofits, each with their own application process and deadlines. I'll staff a dedicated ward office function focused on helping families find what's available and actually get their kids enrolled.
- Connect every ward kid to a real job opportunity.Chicago Youth Works placed nearly 29,000 young people in paid summer positions in 2025 through partnerships that explicitly include aldermanic offices. That means this isn't a program I'd have to lobby my way into, it's one this office can directly help operate. My commitment: every young person in the 27th Ward who wants a summer job gets help finding and applying for one. But summer jobs aren't enough. This ward is home to one of the largest active development projects in the city and some of Chicago's most sought-after corporate employers. I'll negotiate pre-apprenticeship programs, summer placements, and pathways into the building trades as part of community benefits agreements on major developments, and build direct relationships with employers so that when they hire, they think of this ward first.
- Honor the legacy of community care, starting with breakfast.The Illinois Black Panther Party fed children free breakfast on these blocks before anyone else would. Today, CPS provides free breakfast to every student during the school year, which is a victory worth acknowledging. But summers, weekends, and the gaps between institutions are still real. I'll launch a ward-level community breakfast program, run out of neighborhood spaces and supported by local partners, that fills those gaps and continues the tradition of showing up for kids in this community unconditionally, not only because no kid in this ward should start their day hungry, but because it is the right thing to do.