During Thursday’s lunch hour, Chicago’s Thompson Center Plaza and the surrounding streets were filled with thousands of seniors, children, health care and child care workers, students, disability advocates and more - all upset over budget cuts that threaten vital human services.

Protesters are demanding that lawmakers take immediate action to prevent devastating service cuts before it’s too late.

“What do Representatives think that seniors and people with disabilities are going to do?” asked Juanita Hayes, a home care worker from Chicago. “Where will they go when they’re forced out of their homes because they voted to eliminate the home care they depend on?”

If lawmakers do not pass a fair income tax hike, billions of dollars in cuts to critical human services programs are set to take effect July 1st – leaving 150,000 children and their parents without child care assistance, over 40,000 seniors and people with disabilities without home care, 120,000 adult students without their adult education courses, early childhood education eliminated for 100,000 children and countless other families devastated by drastic cuts to the programs they depend on.

Every group at the rally had their own story to tell about how the budget cuts would impact them. Parents came with their children, holding up signs telling lawmakers not to cut their day care and pre-school programs. Disability rights groups chanted “people over politics!” Calls to “stop the cuts” rang out long after the end of the official rally program.

Today’s rally was just one of many events taking place across the state calling for immediate action to stop the cuts. The Campaign for Illinois’ Future expects similar turnout at a rally in Springfield on Tuesday, June 23.

This entry was posted on Thursday, June 18th, 2009 at 5:56 pm and is filed under Budget News, Chicago Area. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.