We have something to say to all those big corporations and special interests who spent all those millions to install their own mayor: We want change! - Chuy García

There’s another issue in the school system, which is standardized tests. Teachers focus so much time and energy in teaching students how to pass tests that they’re not able to educate them. So our students are overtested and undereducated.

We have to reduce our terrible violence in many of the neighborhoods in Chicago. Ten thousand shootings over the past four years is intolerable. We need a mayor who will be about the neighborhoods, who will have the disposition, the willingness to sit with neighborhood residents, who will be receptive to the need for mental health services in many of the neighborhoods in the city of Chicago. So, a mayor who is really in tune with ordinary people, with Chicago neighborhoods and with working people in Chicago is what residents in Chicago have said they want.

What we’ve seen in Chicago is a policy of inequality, a lack of equity. You have some parts of the city that have really good public schools, other parts of the city that don’t have the resources that you need to have successful education occurring. Those schools happen to be located in some of the poorest neighborhoods in Chicago. And, of course, the schools that were closed in Chicago are primarily in low-income areas that are predominately African-American and Latino.