Chicago Christian leaders put faith front and center in upcoming mayoral election forum

Join And Campaign Chicago and Chicago Partnership at Progressive Baptist for mayoral forum this Sunday.

Feb 17, 2023

This weekend, Chicago will have another in a long line of mayoral forums. We’ve had a forum focused on issues impacting the African American community. We’ve had a forum focused on Chicagoans with disabilities. Many major media outlets have hosted forums.

But this latest forum will be unique, in that it will be hosted by our own And Campaign Chicago, as well as the Chicago Partnership and Progressive Baptist Church. To that end, as you might expect, the forum will feature a frank conversation about the intersection between faith and politics. Indeed, that is the name of the forum itself, the Faith & Politics 2023 Chicago Mayoral Forum.

To whet your appetite for the upcoming forum, you can take a look at the previous forum from 2019, which just so happens to feature two of the 2023 forum participants, now-Mayor Lori Lightfoot and Willie Wilson.

Invited candidates this year include Lightfoot, Wilson, Chuy Garcia, Paul Vallas and Brandon Johnson.

According to the latest Religious Landscape Study from Pew Research Center, more than seven in ten people in the Chicago metro area self-identify as Christians.

Roughly half of all respondents said faith was very important in their lives. Around the same number said they pray at least daily.

We believe that those Chicagoans deserve a place at the table and should have their voices heard this election season.

If you agree, we hope you’ll join us at the forum this Sunday, February 19 at 4 p.m. at Progressive Baptist Church, at 3658 South Wentworth Ave. in Chicago.

For more information, check out the Chicago Partnership’s page.

The Round Up

Here are the stories that caught our eyes this week and what they mean for the weeks ahead.

State planning to move 658 migrants to vacant Kmart on Chicago’s Southwest Side

The Illinois Department of Human Services plans to relocate 658 recent migrants to a former Kmart in Chicago for temporary shelter.

The 100,000-square-foot store at the corner of 71st Street and Pulaski Road has been vacant since 2016.

The migrants, mostly asylum seekers, will be relocated from the suburbs, where they are staying at hotels.

The site was reportedly chosen because of nearby resources and because it is in a welcoming neighborhood.

$500 a month, no strings: Chicago experiments with a guaranteed income

Chicago and the surrounding suburbs of Cook County are conducting the largest experiment of its kind in the nation, providing $500 a month to several thousand residents.

Mayor Lori Lightfoot’s $31.5 million Resilient Communities Pilot selected 5,000 city residents in August to receive a guaranteed cash income for a year. The first $500 checks from a separate program, a $42 million county pilot, went out in December to 3,250 residents concentrated in the Chicago suburbs.

At a conference in Washington, county executives will announce a network of county-level basic income programs to match the mayoral initiatives in 50 cities.

Pritzker to propose universal preschool and expanded day care in State of the State, budget address

Illinois’ Gov. J.B. Pritzker has proposed universal preschool for 3- and 4-year-olds, starting with $440 million to finance 5,000 additional seats this fall, more childcare opportunities and facility construction.