BUILD THE PEOPLE'S ECONOMY • HEALTHCARE, HOUSING, AND AN AFFORDABLE CHICAGO • STOP POLICE & ICE TERROR • DEFEND OUR COMMUNITIES FROM CLIMATE DISASTER • BUILD A FUTURE FOR OUR YOUTH •
the socialist program for chicago
Working people produce everything, and a tiny clique of billionaires hoards the vast majority of it for themselves. We are socialists, and we believe workers should run the world. Socialism is a society where political and economic power belongs to the working class and the oppressed, and where the basic needs of the population and the planet are planned for and guaranteed. Getting there means working people organizing to take power into our own hands and defeating the billionaires. This is our socialist program for Chicago, five demands that meet the needs of working class Chicagoans and move us toward our socialist horizon.
01
Tax the rich • Raise the minimum wage to $30/hr • Municipalize ComEd and Peoples Gas
02
Guarantee free healthcare for everyone • Renovate and build 500,000 public housing units • City-owned grocery stores in every neighborhood • Free Transit • Expand the CTA, connect the Southside!
03
ICE out of Chicago • Prosecute killer ICE agents and killer cops • Cut the CPD budget and fund real violence prevention solutions • Black and immigrant Chicago, united against police and ICE terror!
04
Ban private data centers • Demand worker control of data center development and technology • Remove every lead pipe • Modernize exiting infrastructure • Fund green infrastructure • Publicly funded disaster response and recovery program
05
Fully fund public schools • Free pre-K and childcare for every family • Zero school closures, zero privatization, zero charter expansion • Enact a citywide jobs program for our youth
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BUILD THE PEOPLE'S ECONOMY!
The Chicago metro economy produced about $760 billion in 2025, more than enough to give everyone a decent life. That wealth was created by workers. But the billionaires siphon the vast majority for themselves.
01
TAX THE RICH
We demand to tax the rich so that the people who create this wealth finally share in it, and so that we can build the public goods our communities have gone without.
02
Defend organized labor
We demand the defense of organized labor and the right of every worker to organize, and we stand with workers on the picket line, from teachers and nurses to hotel and transit workers.
03
Raise the minimum wage
We demand to raise the minimum wage to thirty dollars an hour, a wage that actually reflects what it costs to live in Chicago today, so that no one working full time has to struggle to cover rent, groceries, and everyday bills.
04
MUNICIPALIZE ENERGY
We demand the municipalization of ComEd and Peoples Gas, taking electricity and gas out of the hands of private companies and putting them under public control. Building public goods and putting our utilities into public hands will take a lot of work, and that work must be based on good, higher wage, union jobs.
HEALTHCARE, HOUSING, AND AN AFFORDABLE CHICAGO
Healthcare, housing, food, and a way to get to work are the foundations of a decent life, and we demand guarantees for every one of them.
01
FREE HEALTHCARE
We demand guaranteed free healthcare for everyone, so that no one in this city is one diagnosis away from bankruptcy or turned away from care because of what they can afford.
02
NO HOSPITAL CLOSURES
We demand a stop to hospital closures, so that no neighborhood loses its emergency room, its stroke care, or its labor and delivery unit to owners who run a hospital into the ground and walk away
03
CANCEL MEDICAL DEBT
We demand end medical debt, wiping out what families were forced to take on for care they needed to survive.
04
RENOVATE PUBLIC HOUSING
We demand that the city renovate and build 500,000 public housing units, because housing is a human right and not a commodity for private profit.
05
CITY OWNED GROCERY STORES
We demand open city owned grocery stores in every neighborhood, treating food as a public necessity and ending the food deserts that leave whole communities without fresh, affordable groceries
06
PUBLIC TRANSIT FOR ALL CHICAGOANS
We demand free transit and an expansion of the CTA to connect the South Side, so that getting to work, to school, or to the doctor is never a barrier for anyone no matter where they live.
STOP ICE
& CPD TERROR!
Working class communities in this city are being terrorized by the police and by federal immigration agents. CPD disproportionately terrorizes Black Chicagoans, alongside our immigrant neighbors, and the politicians and billionaires who profit from our division want us to believe these are separate fights. They are not. Black and immigrant Chicago face the same violence from the same system, and we answer it with the unity of all oppressed and working people in this city.
01
ICE OUT OF CHICAGO
We demand ICE out of Chicago, so that no family has to live in fear of agents who tear our neighbors away from their homes and loved ones.
02
JAIL KILLER AGENTS
ICE agents and police officers who kill and brutalize must be prosecuted and brought to justice.
03
CUT THE BUDGET
We demand a cut in the police budget, the city currently gives CPD over $2 billion a year, money that the police then use to terrorize the very taxpayers who fund it. Instead, that money should fund community violence prevention and intervention programs that put people respected as leaders in their own neighborhoods at the heart of the work, backed by the supports that stop violence before it starts, like kids in schools and afterschool programming for our youth.
DEFEND OUR COMMUNITIES FROM CLIMATE DISASTER!
01
BAN PRIVATE DATA CENTERS
We demand ban private development of data centers and demand worker control over their development and the technology they run.
02
REMOVE LEAD PIPES
We demand that every lead pipe is removed from our water system, because nobody in the city should be poisoned by the water coming out of their tap.
The climate crisis is already here and it is hitting working people the hardest.
03
FUND GREEN INFRASTRUCTURE
We demand funds for green infrastructure, and we demand that we modernize our infrastructure grid, from our sewers to our stormwater systems, so that it can absorb bigger flood events and protect our neighborhoods from the flooding that follows every major storm.
04
PUBLICLY FUNDED DISASTER RESPONSE
When disaster does strike, we demand a publicly funded disaster response and recovery program in place, so that families are not left to rebuild alone after a storm.
BUILD A FUTURE FOR OUR YOUTH!
Every young person in Chicago deserves a public school that has everything to provide a holistic and fulfilling education.
01
FULLY FUNDED EDUCATION
We demand fully funded public schools and guarantee free pre-K and childcare for every family. No parent should have to choose between a paycheck and their child.
02
NO CLOSURES, NO PRIVATIZATION, NO CHARTER EXPANSION
We demand zero school closures, zero privatization, and zero charter expansion, because our schools belong to the communities they serve.
03
JOBS FOR OUR YOUTH
We demand the city enact a jobs program for our youth, so that young people have real, paid work and a real stake in the city they are growing up in.
CHICAGO NEEDS SOCIALISM!
THE CRISES OF CAPITALISM
Chicago’s working class is experiencing an acute crisis of displacement, economic warfare, and racist austerity. The city’s Black population has declined by nearly 30% since 1980, with the most severe losses concentrated in historically Black neighborhoods like Englewood (-35% since 2010), Austin (-22%), and North Lawndale (-28%). People are increasingly pushed into the suburbs.
Between 2013-2022, Chicago Public Schools (CPS) closed over 50 schools, disproportionately in Black neighborhoods, under the guise of "underutilization" while funneling public funds into charter schools. There are similar proposals and calls from the billionaires and right wing in the city to close more schools just a decade after Rahm did.
The median rent in Chicago increased by 48% from 2010-2023, with Black and Latino neighborhoods facing the most aggressive speculation. Despite Chicago’s GDP growing by $100 billion since 2010, real wages for service and logistics workers have fallen by 4% when adjusted for inflation.
Chicago is not alone in facing these crises. Across the country, we see the same again and again. The billionaires get richer, and the Senate, the Supreme Court and the banker-control of the Federal Reserve manage the affairs of the ultra-rich as millions continue to sink into debt and poverty. Poverty is now the fourth leading cause of death and 75% of all Americans between the ages of 20-75 will be among the “current” poor or near poverty, it is clear that vast majority of people in this country cannot have a future while capitalism allows the ruling elite to thrive and grow their profits while life and work worsen for the working class. It is time that the working class takes matters into our own hands, building a mass movement for socialism that can put power into the hands of the oppressed and working people.
our socialist horizon
Everything we call for in this program can be achieved under capitalism. The wealth in this city exists. What stands in the way is not scarcity but the boot of capitalism. We have to ask ourselves, what will it actually take to build a new Chicago? A new society?
To achieve liberation for the oppressed and working class, we have to build a socialist movement, anchored in a multinational organization, that fights for a socialist transformation and abolishes the tyranny of the market, that abolishes the rule of private property and profit.
We are fighting for a planned economy, the democratization of decision-making, production and distribution that works to our collective resources and labor to meet the needs of the people and the planet. The market, capitalist exploitation and a profit motive will no longer dictate who gets access to life-saving medicine, who has a place to live, who gets evacuated from a flood zone or who goes to prison.
There are two choices: it’s capitalism or it’s socialism. We choose socialism because it’s possible and it's necessary. We know we cannot wish socialism into existence -- it takes political organization and uniting millions of people of all backgrounds for a common goal and a common vision -- that we have no choice but to take power from the tiny elite and give it to the vast majority -- to the water protectors, the climate activists, the students, the political prisoners, the immigrants, the farmers, the women, the workers, the poor, the LGBTQ fighters, the anti-racist organizers.
Join us in the ongoing fight. This is about more than one election cycle. It takes building an independent political organization.
We are in over 50 cities across the United States and count with multinational and multigenerational leaders of key social movements engaged in the daily fight against exploitation and oppression and for the socialist reorganization of society. The socialist horizon remains just that -- in sight but not in hand -- unless we fight for it. Join the growing movement for socialism today!