Speaking at a blended-income housing development in Chicago called KLEO Art Residences, the governor said “community activism and peaceful organizing and faith” are the keys to “real” transformations demanded after George Floyd, an unarmed Black man, died May 25 in Minneapolis after being pinned to the ground for nearly nine minutes with a white police officer’s knee on his neck.
The governor’s recommendations for necessary changes include law enforcement reforms with “genuine investigations, transparency and accountability;” ensuring the “justice” in criminal justice “means something;” and making “sustained economic investment” in all Black and brown Illinois communities.
More than $50 million in aid funding exists for local organizations and small businesses through the Chicago and Illinois COVID Relief Funds, the governor estimated.
And the General Assembly approved on May 23 additional financial assistance for small businesses — “hundreds of millions of dollars,” Pritzker said — in the state budget.
“…This last budget does express (Illinois’) values, but over the last five days, I think it’s been brought to the fore that our communities, our Black and brown communities that have been neglected, are the ones that we need to focus on.”
