UPDATED* We have taken all steps to preserve the anonymity of signers. All information requested below is entirely to verify that signers are active employees and will only be viewed by the organizing group of staffers to tally numbers. No identifying information will be shared with supervisors. You can stay in touch or ask questions @chicagoprogressivestaffers on Instagram or @312Staffers on Twitter.

 Contact: chicagoprogressivestaffers@gmail.com

November 21, 2023

This letter is penned and supported by a diverse coalition of 85+ staffers from the Office of the Mayor and the Chicago City Council. 

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Dear Mayor Brandon Johnson and Members of the City Council,

We have come together to join our federal counterparts and urge you to call for: a permanent ceasefire in Palestine; de-escalation of the current conflict by securing the immediate release of the Israeli hostages and arbitrarily detained Palestinians; the restoration of water, fuel, electricity and other basic services; and the passage of adequate humanitarian aid to Gaza.

We present this statement with the utmost urgency for two reasons; first, the situation in Palestine continues to escalate at an exponential rate with the death toll in Gaza exceeding 20,000* at the time of writing - with the majority being children. Second, Chicago will be hosting the Democratic National Convention (DNC) in 2024. We see the need for our elected leaders to call for a ceasefire as directly tied to showing that our city is united in support of human rights. If we are planning to spend public dollars to support the convention, we cannot invest in programs that do not support calls for peace. 

Accordingly we, urge you to support Alderman Daniel LaSpata and Chairwoman Rossana Rodriguez-Sanchez’s resolution R2023-00006422 by:

• Supporting Alderman Daniel La Spata and Chairwoman Rossana Rodriguez-Sanchez’s resolution R2023-0006422 by:

  Signing onto the resolution as a co-sponsor and voting YES on January 24. We implore our city leaders to call for President Biden and the DNC to demand an immediate ceasefire. The people of Chicago are on the right side of history in disavowing the United States’ complicity in Palestinian genocide and we hope our Mayor, our Council Members, our bosses and their coworkers can find time to hear them too and support the call for a ceasefire.

The staffers who have signed onto this letter work hard every day to reconfigure our local government from perfunctorily holding up the status quo. We set about improving the lives of all Chicagoans and listen to each constituent equally, regardless of race, ethnicity, class, gender and/or faith. It is from this lens that we cannot remain silent as we hear a groundswell of Chicagoans who reject the notion that the United States must continue to use its geopolitical position to enable a genocide. 

In Chicago, residents have a tradition of seeing past the headlines and coming together to demand what is just, to hold elected officials and their staff to their duty of enacting policy that dismantles historic  injustices. They recognize that it is not anti-semitic to want an end to the Israeli imposed Palestinian apartheid – in fact, we see many of our Jewish siblings in Chicago echoing this same call. It is not surprising that there is so much opposition to a call for justice; we face the same opposition by those maintaining the harmful status quo in our own fight for Black, brown, queer, working class Chicagoans.

We are proud to be your staffers, we are proud to work with you to make Chicago a better city each and every day. However, we cannot be proud to be silent at a time when silence is complicity in atrocity. From your constituents we have heard the outcry against injustice and we have heard the demand for ceasefire as a necessary precursor for peace. We hope you will hear it too. 

Until Liberation,
Chicago Progressive Staffers

*We are excited to launch this new coalition and we look forward to seeing support grow as the public learns about these efforts.