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Health Care

Everyone is hurt by a lack of health coverage; young people are hit hardest. Half of us go without insurance at some point between our 19th and 29th birthdays. We have connected 120,000 City College students with services, and we are sponsoring state legislation to cover 250,000 young adults statewide with reliable, affordable coverage.

Housing and Homelessness

There are 119 beds for the 12-15,000 youth who were homeless in Chicago last year, and rising costs are pushing young families out of the city. We will work with community groups and homeless youth to fully fund Chicago’s ten-year plan to end homelessness – starting with $13 million for attainable housing. This means doubling state funding for youth homelessness.

Financial Aid

No one should be deprived a college education. We have achieved our first goal of restoring $38 million that had been cut in state MAP grant funding for low and middle-income students. Our second goal, informing immigrant students of their rights, was achieved in September when pamphlets & education were given to City College counselors. We will maintain these victories.

Police Reform

Fear, prejudice, and violence between youth and police in and around Chicago are facts of life in our neighborhoods. There is no quick fix, whether the problem is racial profiling or harassment of queer, homeless, or other youth. We have begun dialogues in 6 police districts, and we are piloting a youth-led training for officers in the 10th district. We want to expand this program and improve police accountability.

Creating Good Jobs

Youth jobs have been cut every year for the last 3 years, even though they reduce crime and provide experience. We want more living wage jobs. We supported the Big Box ordinance, but we also want commitments from companies to hire young people shut out of the process – ex-offenders, city college students, and people of color. We also support two statewide efforts: 1) to create 1,000 more youth jobs annually and 2) to start a $2 million transition-to-jobs program.

Civic Power

We will turnout 14,650 new voters on November 7, 2006. The last 6 months, we have been organizing and training young adults in all of our institutions to gear up for this election.

School Funding

Every suburban kid who has been to the city, and vice versa, knows the disparity between rich and poor schools. Illinois is 49th in education equality. This is a long fight. PACT authored a curriculum that teaches students and teachers the problem and how they can start to solve it. We support HB 750.

Ex-Offender Organizing

Every year tens of thousands of young adults re-enter society from the criminal justice system. Led by young ex-offenders themselves, PACT has created an ex-offender speaker’s bureau, and will launch a small business development program this summer and a trade school January 1st, 2008.

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