Good afternoon. Everyone. Good afternoon. Everyone. Greetings. Thank you for joining us today at iobc Id state senators, Alicia Allen of the fifth Senate District representing the west side, new website.
But no, seriously, this is an honor and a pleasure to have you all down here with us. I think this is the first time since I've been here, since I've seen a strong presence from our community here.
So what we just heard the governor's state of state address, and our governor laid out what we call a proposal. It's not in stone, but it is a guy, but it's not final, but what we thought was going to be something that was going to hit, that was going to hit our communities very hard, it looks like we're going to figure out a little bit better than what we expected. No, we don't spoke about that we have someone in the highest office. We have someone who is the leader of the three year old who can make some changes that will impact our station. So I just want to be clear today, that's what we do when you have someone who says they want to downsize government, that is not a good thing. That means that they want to shift the cost onto the states, which is a burden on us, but we, as the iobc, we have done some great work, and the governor has been an ally when it comes to our four pillars, which we'll hear in more detail today. And those four pillars are addressing every single systemic thing that happens to us in our communities, and it could not be done without the leadership of the 34 members that I have standing with me
today. Leadership, our new leadership of the joint Black Caucus. Here to my right, I have our city chair, Willie Preston Justin,
my co chair, woman Rita Mayfield. We have Kimberly. Have.
And then we also have our sister from the Senate, Adrian Johnson, who serves as our treasure. She could not be here with us today to keep her lifted in prayers. And then we also have our Sergeant at Arms, Mister House Rep Bill Davis for serving on and then we have the house co chair Maurice West, and then representative Canty. So our mission is clear. It is to build a more just and equitable Illinois. This means expanding economic opportunities and improving access to quality education, advocating for healthcare equity and ensuring fairness in our criminal justice system. We know that when black communities prosper, our entire state prospers, we need equity in education, and it's not just a goal, but it is a necessity. We will continue to work to break these barriers. Economic Justice is central to our work, and we want to ensure that we have an environment where black businesses can flourish, so our families can build the generational wealth that they deserve. To push for reforms that address systemic inequalities, protect our civil rights and create opportunities for those who have been historically marginalized. Our community deserves fairness, deserves dignity and respect and a government that works for them. And we can achieve this if we do this together. And so when we hear about these attacks, whether it be a tax on dei whether it be a tax on the department of education, infrastructure, you name it, oversight, the Department of unemployment, of late work. You gotta think about that. These are rights that have been fought by our ancestors, our elders. There was a time where black folks could not even walk into these buildings or sleep in a hotel or get at the rest of our kids Springfield. So our elders have paid. Away for all of us, and you have to continue to build on that foundation and move and recharge and energize our community and get the word involved in a political process that you go in that process, we have to make sure that we're walking lock and step with one another, because we're more powerful than numbers. We have to continue to build with our allies, those who are serious about the liberation of black people, because they understand that if we can fly everybody else lies, everybody else benefits, everybody else can contribute to the economic engine here in our state. And so I'm going to yield my time, and I'm going to pass it on to my partner In the Senate, my co chair here, Senator Willie pres
Willie Preston.
I proudly
represent the South Side of Chicago.
I and
I would be remiss if I didn't thank all of my colleagues standing with me, the Legislative Black Caucus, my brothers and sisters, my soul of the people that I trust to come down to this Capitol and do battle and I have the communities that we serve. You are why I'm in the state capitol. You are why we are here. And let me be perfectly clear that if you all continue to come down to this capital, you will shape the words that are coming out of our mouth, the bills that we push and the money that we appropriate to the communities that we live one to five and play in so I don't want this to be a one time event. I want to see you, and I want to see your cousins, and I want to see your masters. I got my pastor, Pastor John, I'm going to share a senior mark and not
be long here. Okay,
listen, while I am grateful and I am grateful that the governor and the staff have worked to find ways to go
the previously rejected
budget deficit, let me be clear, our work is not done. This is an opening proposal. This is not a time for celebration. Budgets reveal the morals and the value of our state. In Illinois, black communities contribute significantly to the economy that when the budget is finalized, those contributions are not flowing back into our community. We don't need a study. We don't need to commission a group. All we need to do is go to Rockville, East St Louis, right the South Side of Chicago, the west side of Chicago, Illinois, to learn that we are not getting our fair cut. I want to say something that I did not hear from the governor today. I did not hear enough about what needs to be done to change the trajectory of a black community across Illinois Governor britzker, and while I applaud you for the work that you continue to do, this proposal does not reflect what I hope we pass in a budget in the spring, because it did not speak about the building trade, bringing back trade schools, back to our community.
We rebuild our community by doing what, rebuilding the black community, rebuilding people. So I let you all to understand that come back down. We want to ensure yes, that we take care of our education, yes, that we make sure that we bring businesses, particularly support black businesses and the business for the doors throughout our communities. But if we do not come together around the agenda of building our next generation of builders, and I fear that we will make the same mistake from the past. It is time for a new breed of leadership, and I'm grateful to be here with you all. Thank you so much, Mary.
You will hear from our chairman of the House, my brother, Chairman, Justin saber. I everyone.
Thank you for being here with us
today. Justin Slaughter from the south side. You all know how we do this when I see. Saying, we will. You respond to say, rise, we will, we will, we will. That's right. Honor to be a Chairwoman house, Black August, between the house the city. We are 34 strong. Take a long look at the members that are behind me, the Illinois Legislative Caucus between the House and the city. We are 34 strong. Make no mistake about it. We are the most powerful sub caucuses. We will
simply not stand PPE and allow systemic racism to continue here in Illinois. So we want to be clear today, we stand here in solidarity, not just as legislators, but with the entire black community to not just advocate but to demand, but to demand that we have a state budget that will adequately address the historical disparities in our communities. Yes, listen, y'all, we've come a long way, whether it's 1619, slavery reconstruction. Jim Crow here the civil rights movement for our modern day, mass incarceration crisis. We have perseverance. Our hands are pleasant but unbounded. The IDC demonstrated our resilience when we made history and passed our Black Caucus pillars. This was amazing, but we all know that these are simply just words on a piece of paper. We must now usher in a new area, a new day, a new chapter, but we have a budget that comes through these critical programs, funds these vital services, and funds these very important initiatives so that we can achieve and accomplish the goals, the objectives of our bill, criminal justice reform, education, health and economic development. Well, passing policy is great, it's the alignment and implementation of supportive resources that truly defines our efforts and our commitment. You know what it is this is all about equity. We must, we must invest in the critical areas of crime and finance, prevention, black maternal health programs, chronic illness and disease prevention,
affordable housing,
equitable education funding, mental health services, workforce development and black owned business initiatives, as we said it once. We'll say it again. Blacks and Miller are disproportionately impacted by every social determinant of heaven. We will not wait any longer. We will not wait any longer to get the budgetary resources our communities so desperate to need and deserve. Let's enjoy this great day of action. We are proud to stand with our black communities. Thank you, and always here
for more of our great leaders. Just our past joint Chair of our great caucus will now address us as representative, Carol Hammons,
thank you. Thank you all for being here this afternoon.
All right, see I'm
a feeling that I got too much out of interest. Culture is power and boldness sparks change. Culture is power and boldness sparks change. See, we have heard a lot of things are like equality, equity, distribution resources, but they don't seem to align with the actual carrying out of allocations. 60 million to 100 million folks died coming across the Atlantic Ocean, enslaved in the government of ships. See, there was something mentioned today during that time in 1818, the first constitution was written in this state that did not include you and me. See, we were in the salt mines at the time, and I. Distance is not recognized. There's no mention about the fiscal house of the black community, but the goal of the black community is absolutely a number one target. This spirit that I am experiencing Illinois. We have to grow our economy. Yes, we spent over $1.1 billion in one sector. The governor mentioned, he said, We need to live within our means, but our means have been extricated from us for years. We have not received the dollars promise to our communities. We have not how many in his audience have not received the dollars. This
is a budget address. This is not a reality because
we enough money, because we
pay taxes in this same state, and our communities look the same from the time I was on the southwest side growing up as a young mother to share Kate Urbana in Danville, and you say north we look the same, and we cannot stand in this capital as if it is not true. Let me just say this. I wrote a whole speech without saying for later. What I am clear about is that at this very moment, I'm a no vote on the budget, and until we get to a yes, that means that my community needs to tell me that they are receiving resources that were promised to them. My students need to tell me that they got accepted and admitted and can afford to go to our universities in our state. That's how we get to yes, I would it's not really
good to guess our communities deserve better health care because of COVID It's because of divestment. I am always going to stand with the most vulnerable in our community. There's a lot of likeness in this building, and I don't work for anyone. I
work for the poor people of my district and my state, and our people are under attack and for them, not to even mention what is happening
in our communities, not in the slight insult to this entire community. They are standing right here watching, not just by our words, but by our actions. Be willing to say no, no. Oh, good
afternoon.
I'm Will Davis, representative of the 30th district. Is anybody out there from the south suburbs? We hear a lot about the city of Chicago, but all the black people who live in the city of Chicago, they live all over the state of Illinois. So we are here as an Illinois legislative black box to offer a response to the governor's budget. And the one question that I thought about that, I would ask each of you is, did you hear something not one minute. Did you hear something that applies directly to you? Did you hear something in that budget speech that talks about you and your priorities and your appointment in your community? Did you hear it? Our chair K 12 appropriations and the governor talked about more money and what we call PD ambulance based funding, the school district brought the entire state of the world, which is a good thing. It's moving in the right direction, but that's just a small piece of puzzle when we're talking about what it takes and what's necessary to make sure that black people in the state of Illinois get what they deserve, get what they deserve. So we are here to make sure that we hear you and that you hear us. Because what's important is I look around this rotunda, this balcony, your presence here today is making some people uncomfortable. You are making people uncomfortable because what they've never seen before is that you stand up for what you want. And what you deserve. They want to make sure that we are standing always in the background. Well, ladies and gentlemen, we're tired of standing.
Absolutely tired. Some people might say, Pastor, you would agree, I'm tired. It doesn't get much better than that, ladies and gentlemen, but we are here to show you that we hear and we feel and we understand, because even though we're state legislators, we're just citizens of the state of Illinois, just like all of you, we pay taxes, we live lives, we have families, so we are like you. We are not different from you. So don't necessarily put us in a box and say, well, they're there, and we're us. We are all together, ladies and gentlemen, all together. Ladies and gentlemen, our job, our perspective
here today is to
make sure that you understand that we will fight for what we deserve. We will fight for black families. We will fight for our community. That is what we're going to do. I'm standing with my colleagues here today, in solidarity with all of you. Let's continue to make people under this dome uncomfortable. Make them more
comfortable. Get in their faces
and you don't say it, they don't hear it and they don't care. Make them care, ladies and gentlemen all over this dome, make them care from here to there to there today, everywhere. Let them hear you and make them understand what's important
to you. God bless you. Good afternoon. I'm State city with Pritzker, and I have right to my right representative, Sonia Harbor, real quickly will not be long. I echo the sentiments that have been seen already. Listen at the end of the day, right to get all the changes that we need. You guys have 34 reasons to believe we'll get it done right, and that constitutes our legislative, Illinois Legislative Black Caucus. We're here. You sent us here to fight. We will fight, and not only will we fight, we will be victorious. But here's the thing, there's stages to this thing. We can pass legislation and we can be successful, but we have to be vigilant. We have to keep our eyes on the prize and make sure the implementation goes the way that it's supposed to. Can we do that? God bless each and everyone of you. Thank
you. Good afternoon, y'all. I'm Mary cancer. I represent the 54th District of Illinois, and I want to take a moment to recognize the work of the Illinois Legislative Black Caucus. Here, because of the Black Caucus, we have an evidence based funding model for our K 12 system. We have a child tax credit. We have full day kindergarten. We have a new Department of Early Childhood that can focus on important programs like Head Start and Early Head Start. We have paid family leave, paid family leave, don't you didn't get that without the Black Caucus. We got those things because the Black Caucus fought for them. Because what is good for black people across this state is good for all people across this state. We've seen some great progress in recent years to advance kids, families, black, maternal health, and we have an opportunity today with your presence to continue that good work. So as we go through this budget line by line, it's important to remember that as much good work is being done, it's far from Harmon a well funded education system and Family Support Services have impacts of resound into other areas of importance, public safety, economic growth, environmental concerns, you name it, but together, this legislative black caucus with you and your voices is going to make good On the promises that have been made to our communities, we are going to continue to fight for you and for all people across the state the right thing to do. It's what we've been doing for centuries. You will not stop down. You will not stand down, and I will be gone. Thank you. Give
them a round of applause one more time, everybody for our response the IO, DC responses to the governor's address, and right now, we're just going to pivot into our you know, leaders who have come down here, all of you who have come down here and show your support. If you have any individual questions to the media, thank you for coming out. You can speak to Sean, who is standing here to my right individual leave, but we're about to pivot into our press conference right now with our community organizations who have come down to express their support of the work that we're now here doing, but also the fact that we're standing in solidarity.
