Representative Bill Black’s Danville office was the target of a budget protest on Thursday. Home care and child care workers from the area rallied in the front of the office to demand that Rep. Black stop devastating cuts to home care and child care by supporting a fair increase to the state’s income tax.
From the Champaign News Gazette:
A small group of home health care workers picketed outside state Rep. Bill Black’s Danville office Thursday morning to protest possible budget cuts of 50 percent or more in Illinois human services.
But the Danville Republican wasn’t there. An aide said that he was on a long-planned vacation with his wife and that he was scheduled to return home before the Legislature comes back to Springfield next Monday.
The eight pickets, including two organizers from the Service Employees International Union, presented Black’s aide with a letter imploring the state representative to oppose budget cuts to human service providers and to support Gov. Pat Quinn’s proposed income tax increase. Black voted against the higher income tax in May and has said he would continue to oppose it until there are more budget cuts and efficiency reforms in state government.
…Julia Gilpatrick, a health care aide with Addus Health Care of Champaign, said, “The elderly we serve really need us.”
“I have a 92-year-old client who, after I knocked on her door, started hollering for me. She had fallen the night before and laid there all night and part of the next day until I got there. She said that if I hadn’t come for her she would have laid there for who knows how long. Sometimes we’re the only contact these people have with someone else all week.”
Gilpatrick said she makes $9.35 an hour after 13 years with her company. “I enjoy my job,” she said. “I wouldn’t have any other job, but I think we deserve better.”
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