Community Activist Kicks Off Petition Drive to Get on the Ballot and Oust Clouted Incumbent in Aldermanic Race

(From Jorge Mújica’s Campaign)

“This spring, the people of our ward will hand Solis a pink slip for selling out neighborhood residents to his political donors for almost 20 years,” says community activist and socialist candidate Jorge Mújica.

CHICAGO, IL -  Chicago’s aldermanic campaign season is officially launching this week with a record number of grassroots candidates surfacing across the city to challenge some of Chicago’s most powerful, politically connected incumbents.

In Chicago’s 25th Ward, Socialist Jorge Mújica is challenging incumbent alderman Danny Solis, a Democratic Party yes-man for Mayor Rahm Emanuel. This press conference will mark the formal beginning of a concerted effort by the Mújica campaign to hit the streets in the coming weeks to earn him a slot on the 2015 ballot and build support for his independent candidacy.

Jorge Mújica is a long-standing labor and immigrant rights activist and was one of three core conveners of Chicago’s historic 2006 immigrant rights marches, which put an estimated 1 million people on the streets. Mújica has assembled a dedicated and growing volunteer campaign team, who are committed to challenging Solis on his track record of school privatization, corporate patronage and developer deals that are driving up rents and displacing the local community.

A Press conference/petition drive kickoff will take place today, Tuesday, August 26, 2014, at Plaza Tenochtitlan, 1800 S. Blue Island (outside Rudy Lozano Library, across the street from the incumbent alderman’s office) at 10:30 A.M. For more information, contact Stavroula Harissis (224)595-4234

Mújica supports a $15-an-hour minimum wage in Chicago, opposes public school privatization and neighborhood school closures, supports legislative steps to end wage theft for low and middle-income workers, and opposes local development that creates displacement and undercuts affordable housing in the ward. The campaign seeks to build a people-powered movement for workers’ and immigrant rights.

“Chicago’s Democratic Party insiders represent elite interests that work directly against the needs of our residents — including corporate education profiteers, politically connected real estate developers, and poverty-wage employers. We need to create a real alternative to both the Democratic and Republican parties: a socialist alternative, committed to putting people before profits and challenging the growing income inequality that entrenched insiders like Solis embrace.”

Mújica’s campaign team includes advocates for public education, immigrant rights and housing rights, alongside local residents who want to see a change from the incumbent’s dismissive approach to local community members’ needs.