Chicago 2020: Ready for a New Era

It’s 5:30 on a wintry Tuesday evening, and the twinkling lights of Chicago shine as city dwellers slowly fill trains and highways on their way home to the north, west, and south sides. And if you are really quiet, you can hear the sound of Chicago remaking itself.

It’s no secret that Chicago has its issues. If you believe the national headlines, Chicago is nothing more than high profile shootings and decades of corrupt, one-party rule. President Trump gleefully portrays Chicago as a crime-infested, crumbling, shoot-em-up gallery. But actually living in Chicago is so much different than the headlines.

The city still has a lot of work to do before Chicagoans in every neighborhood can thrive, that is certainly true. We have been and are a city divided. Across the city’s segregated blocks, resentment simmers over schools closing in the poorest neighborhoods. Tensions between underinvested communities and the police fester.

But everywhere I go, in every corner of the city, I meet people working hard every day to make Chicago better for all of its residents. Community leaders are working to improve shared spaces and provide services for low-income neighbors. Important conversations are happening among residents, philanthropists, and city commissioners about how policies and investments in each city department can begin to undo years of segregation and disinvestment in black and brown communities. And, the new mayor has made fighting corruption one of her top issues.

It’s not perfect, but the Chicago I see every day is vibrant, tenacious, beautiful, and hardworking.

On the west side amid shabby graystone homes, elegant old parks, and vacant lots, a career pathways navigator from Chicago Citywide Literacy Coalition is helping adult literacy providers use technology to serve some of the city’s poorest residents. With help from innovative, new platforms, busy parents who struggle with basic skills can build reading, English, and math skills wherever they are and prepare for a new job that will actually pay the bills.

Near Marquette Park, the south side site of Martin Luther King’s famed Chicago housing march, the Innercity Muslim Action Network works with their Catholic and agnostic neighbors to renew the community. The organization has built a health center and homes for homeless youth and parents that help preserve families. A group from the organization tours an abandoned school in Englewood, as they make plans to break ground on a nearby corner to provide a unique new co-op and community arts space.

In Rogers Park near the gorgeous, sandy shores of Lake Michigan, a diverse group of Chicagoans with roots all over the world were some of the first in the country to test out a new form of participatory budget-making. Low income, white, black, and brown people work together to direct politicians to the greatest needs in their communities. Other wards have followed suit.

Under the snowy, gothic arches of the University of Chicago, a team of dedicated staff and students provide intensive capacity building support for the nonprofits surrounding the south side campus. After years of tension between the prestigious university and the mostly African-American community that surrounds it, dedicated leaders are working hard to make sure the local community has access to the wealth of resources and connections at the university.

In Pilsen, community members and nonprofits prepare for a listening session with the city’s first Chief Equity Officer to tell how city policies have helped or hurt their neighborhood. New Americans from south of the border prepare to share their stories with city leaders and help build reinvestment in their neighborhood.

After dusk under the sparkling lights of downtown, software developers and data scientists from top tech companies make their way to the Merchandise Mart after a long day at the office. At the weekly Chi Hack Night, they learn about how a new nonprofit is partnering with companies all over the world to use new technology to test water safety on the south and north sides. Later, experienced technologists and newbies break into groups to create new apps and sites to solve local problems.

New America Chicago is here for all of it.

Located at The Chicago Community Trust, our new, refreshed hub is officially open for business.

Part of the New America Local team, with branches in California, Phoenix and Indianapolis along with our headquarters in the nation’s capital, we’ll be partnering with community leaders, residents, nonprofits, technologists, and government leaders to help make Chicago a place where everyone thrives.

For us, as for Chicago, 2020 is a building year. Over the next few years, we’ll bring together New America’s brilliant thinkers and doers with the brainy, tenacious Chicagoans working hard to make our region better. Our work will include engaging Chicago community leaders and New America thinkers in discussion about solutions to the challenges Chicago faces. We’ll also bring some of the best strategies from the tech world to engage community voices in the policymaking process. The Chicago Community Trust’s amazing leaders, creative approach to problem solving, and new focus on eliminating the racial wealth gap make the Trust the perfect place to base our work.

Our strategic goals for 2020 include:

• Contributing to a robust civic conversation about equity in practice, in concert with The Chicago Community Trust. We’ll co-host events and workshops with New America thinkers and Chicago community leaders to build support for fresh solutions to community challenges.
• Using innovation to build support for at least two policies or practices that help eliminate the racial wealth gap. Together with local advocates, we’ll conduct user experience research and explore new models to help increase resources in low-income communities, such as new delivery methods for the EITC and better options to high interest cash loans.
• Helping to engage underrepresented Chicago communities in public problem-solving. Our team will work with community organizers, nonprofits, government leaders, and universities to identify and test out new ways to engage local communities in the policymaking and community problem-solving process. This work will include elevating solutions coming out of disadvantaged communities.

As Chicago enters the 20s again we have the chance to make them an entirely different kind of Roaring 20s. We have a diverse economy, some of the best universities in the country, and a beautiful lakefront that keeps getting better. Let’s make the 2020s a time of renewed prosperity and burgeoning innovation that works for everyone in Chicago, no matter where they were born or what they look like. We hope you’ll join us for the journey.

Sign up for our mailing list to keep tabs on what we’re working on.

Keep an eye on our webpage for New America Chicago events in 2020!

Save the Date:

• April 27, 2020 11:30 am The Chicago Community Trust

Tapping Tech World Strategies for More Equitable Policy Delivery

• May 12, 2020 On the Table
• November 2020 Anne-Marie Slaughter