That is the name of a proposed Chicago city ordinance to make Covid vaccines more available to poor and minority communities citywide.
It was introduced in March 2021 by Ald. Byron Sigcho-Lopez, a progressive member of the council. He and 11 other council members are sponsors of the proposal. The City Council represents Chicago’s 50 wards.
It is a year later and no action has been taken. That is because Mayor Lori Lightfoot’s followers in the council promptly moved the proposal to the Rules Committee. Meanwhile public health experts are warning of another COVID surge with a new variant threat on the horizon. It will require major public pressure to get it out of the committee to a vote on the council floor. The force for changes lies among Chicagoans who have lost their jobs and are lining up for food, among the tens of thousands seeking medical care to treat the coronavirus and the many who cannot pay their rent or are already living in the streets. Otherwise, it will probably stay there indefinitely. And that is the usual way these certain council members handle something they do not want to act on.
The proposed ordinance is neither vague nor pie-in-the sky. It is a complete plan for a city-level public health service that is open to all the neighborhoods. It provides an exact number of personnel and a budget with exact dollar amounts. It is budgeted in exact dollar amounts for services and salaries.
At the time it was introduced last year, the city of Chicago used the United Center as the central location for mass Covid vaccination. About 6,000 doses a day were injected there. Community leaders called on the federal government to move 5,000 of those daily doses to more than two dozen vulnerable communities of color that were under-vaccinated.
The proposed ordinance goes a long way towards bringing back the kind of public health service Chicago had before their budgets were slashed in recent years.
For example, in May 1963, the Chicago public health department vaccinated more than 300,000 people for polio within 12 hours on a Saturday. It was done by using every public school and public building in the city as a vaccination site.
Under the proposal, priority is given to the 26 underserved communities, mainly of color, in which permanent vaccination sites would be operated by Chicago Department of Public Health.
A January 2021 report from the city noted that residents of “high vulnerability” communities were three times more likely to die from COVID-19 than those living in 25 “low vulnerability” communities, largely majority-white and affluent areas on the city’s North, Northwest and Southwest sides. However, city data showed that residents in low-vulnerability areas were more likely to get vaccinated than in high-vulnerability areas.
The money is there for public health, but it is being diverted. In Chicago and in Washington, conflicts of interest always get in the way of doing the most good for the most people. President Biden actually called on cities to divert Covid relief funding under the Cares Act to police departments. And in Chicago, Mayor Lightfoot did just that. She moved $281 million in discretionary money under the Cares Act to the Chicago Police Department.
If the city, state and the corporations were really interested in helping the economy, they would invest in a program such as this proposed ordinance which would allow people to get back to work and businesses to open.
The contradiction is that taxpayers fund the private corporations to develop vaccines and it is the corporations—the wealthy—who profit from the vaccines. Chicago is a Democratic Party city by virtue of the fact that it has been a city of Democratic voters since 1931 at the municipal level. In turn, it has been the elected Democratic mayors—with the notable exception of Harold Washington (1983-87)—who have been colluding with the corporations from their City Hall offices.
Who has been fighting in the people’s interests? The seven progressives who were elected to the Chicago City Council in 2019 along with the other sponsors of the Take Vaccine to the People Chicago ordinance who are responding to people’s demands. Teachers, other school employees, parents, and students have objected and demonstrated against policies forcing classrooms to open to in-person learning, without proper precautions, while the pandemic rages. “Essential workers” have been caught in the whipsaw of needing to eat without becoming another COVID fatality statistic. Workers throughout Chicago, fighting for housing, healthcare, education and all basic needs became the social force that propelled progressives into city council, a significant break from the past.
A government that does not take care of the needs of the people should be replaced. The next municipal election in Chicago will be in 2023. That election provides a forum within which the voices of the working class can come together.
Published: April 11, 2022
This article published by Rally, Comrades!
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