While the overall unemployment rate for Chicago is nearly 5.8% in August, the rate for Black residents is more than twice that, at 14.3%.
Richard Wallace
The city of Chicago approved the plan in its 2022 budget three months ago, promising $500 a month to 5,000 low-income households for one year. It would be the nation’s largest test of a guaranteed basic income program.
The federal government deliberately targeted Black Lives Matter protesters via heavy-handed criminal prosecutions in an attempt to disrupt and discourage the global movement that swept the nation last summer in the wake of the Minneapolis police killing of George Floyd, according to a new report.
When recreational marijuana was legalized in Illinois, Gov. J. B. Pritzker’s stated goal was to use the burgeoning industry to reverse the harm done to Black and brown communities during the war on drugs. But those profiting from pot sales are nearly all white men.
Chicago aldermen recently approved a resolution calling for the city to use federal relief funds for a basic income pilot program. Some organizations have already been testing out the idea, but skeptics are looking to build up social services instead.
