Chicago’s Amazon Bid: More at Stake Than Just Tax Dollars
Amazon’s logistics footprint expands with the help of billions in tax dollars, but scholars find their promise of job growth empty.

Guest Post: Chicago As Sanctuary For All Communities
Ed. Note: Today’s post comes to us from our allies at Asian Americans Advancing Justice. We deeply appreciate their work and contribution to A Just Chicago. Special thanks to Tania Unzueta at Mijente for contributing to this report By: Vân Huynh, Asian Americans...
Stop Criminalizing CPS Students
The City of Chicago and the Chicago Public Schools are targeting certain neighborhoods with police state tactics. Last year, the Chicago Reader and the Shriver Center began investigating police assigned to work inside Chicago Public Schools. The news article and the...
Incarcerated parents have big impacts on students of color
Here’s an education reform you won’t hear about from DeVos or Duncan: stop locking up so many Black and Brown parents! A recent Economic Policy Institute study confirmed something that may seem obvious: students with a parent in jail are likely to have...
Criminalizing Mental Illness
New research is emerging that further emphasizes how important public resources and social services are to our Chicago neighborhoods. A study published in the Journal of Racial and Ethnic Health Disparities highlights the prevalence of post-traumatic stress disorder...
Just how much sanctuary does Chicago provide for undocumented students?
The US Department of Justice has confirmed what we’ve known to be true in Chicago: the Chicago Police Department consistently uses unreasonable and deadly force against communities of color with little accountability. These findings come from a DOJ report that states,...
The Continuing Legacy of Segregation
One thing is certain, however, that when mourners gathered around the family’s home shortly after the tragic shooting, they were greeted by an angry group of flag waving white men who shouted racial obscenities and told the mourners to get out of “their” community.

Students with Incarcerated Parents
The Illinois prison population has doubled in the last twenty-five years, mostly due to the “war on drugs,” and incarceration rates tend to be concentrated in high-poverty communities. CPS does not have enough social workers or counselors to help students…

EdWeek praises state-led school assessment. In Illinois, that might be a problem.
This month, Education Week published an article praising the language of the new Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) for presenting student poverty as a barrier to success for American kids. Ed Week is very optimistic about…