To learn what makes us go, there’s no place you wouldn’t go, from the beaches of San Juan to the mountains of Mexico. And now that you’ve gone, we, t… - Chuy García

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!

I’m running for mayor of the city of Chicago because Chicago needs to go in a different direction. For the past four years, we’ve seen Mayor Emanuel arrive in town with a boatload of money, impose his policies on the people of the city of Chicago. They favored a select few in Chicago. Through the amassing of large sums of money, he thought he could get re-elected, while leaving behind Chicago neighborhoods, making Chicago a city that leads the nation in the number of school closings—almost 50—and making Chicago, at the same time, one of the most violent cities in the country. We’ve experienced in the past four years 10,000 shootings, for example. So people in the neighborhoods feel left behind. They have come together, supported me for mayor. We’ve forced him into a runoff by building a coalition that is truly multiracial, multiethnic, across faith and across geography in Chicago. We’re fighting back against the agenda that was imposed on Chicago, and we want some attention and resources and investment in Chicago neighborhoods.

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.