By: Daniel Ash
Associate Vice President, Community Impact
The Chicago Community Trust

As Chicago Mayor-elect Lori Lightfoot prepares to step into her new position as mayor, Lawndale News readers have a unique opportunity to share with her ideas on how to make their communities better.

On the Table, The Chicago Community Trust’s annual day of civic conversation, creates a great avenue for Chicagoans to voice their ideas to our new mayor. During On the Table, which is Tuesday, May 14, people will gather in conversations at tables across Chicagoland to create a Memo to Mayor. The memo will be a people-generated plan for the new administration’s first year in office.

Having a new mayor, only our third in 30 years, who pledges to have an administration that’s highly transparent is exciting and inviting to many Chicagoans. Add to this excitement the public expectations for unprecedented change, change born of our collective recognition that equity is key to our city’s progress because socio-economic inequity is holding us back as a region. Individuals seeking to earn an income with dignity, despite personal setbacks, oftentimes face institutionalized barriers; those barriers must be identified and leveled for our region to approach its full potential.

This makes 2019 the right time to leverage On the Table to create a Memo to the Mayor. Those interested in hosting a table conversation can register at onthetable.com.

We want each table host to generate a memo — documentation of their advice or actionable idea about an issue their table participants feel must be addressed in 21st Century Chicago. Over the last five years, On the Table conversations have always led to impactful change, in a variety of ways, in our neighborhoods. This year, those conversations will focus on a more inclusive future for the region under Chicago’s new leadership. We expect that On the Table topics, and the resulting memos, will focus on poverty, economic development, health care, job creation, affordability and more.

We plan to collect thousands of memos from On the Table conversations across the region. Each of these memos will be documented, and each will be used to form a single, compilation memo to be delivered in June to Chicago’s mayor and other leaders across the region.

Our collective voice has never been more important. This is our moment to spark bold, and courageous conversations that truly shape the public agenda and make this region one that works for every resident—homeowners, renters and our homeless citizens alike.