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“Last year, we passed a law meant to dismantle systemic racism - and in many cases classism - in Illinois’ criminal justice system. Earlier this year, I passed a law helping keep ghost guns off the streets. I see violence and an unfair justice system as one of the top challenges facing members of our local communities, and I’m committed to keeping up the fight in Congress.”
True criminal justice not only keeps communities safe – it also keeps them whole. Over her 20-year legislative career, Jacqui Collins has passed dozens of laws that help reduce violence in our communities and ensure the system treats everyone with equality.
A lifelong advocate for keeping illegal guns off the streets, Jacqui has led the passage of many of Illinois’ most important gun safety laws. One of the very first laws she passed increased the penalty for using hidden compartments to smuggle guns into Illinois from other states. She also passionately fought for gun dealer licensing to rein in problem gun shops that sell too many guns used in crimes. Today, she’s sponsoring legislation to keep ghost guns – firearms people assemble at home that cannot be tracked or traced – out of Illinois. However, Jacqui understands that there are limits to how much she can do as a state senator to address gun crimes. In Congress, she would do even more to reduce the flow of illegal guns into Illinois communities.
Jacqui is also passionate about protecting women and families from sex crimes. When reports flooded the news that brave survivors of child sexual abuse were being denied justice because they waited too long to come forward with their stories, Jacqui took action, passing a law lifting the statute of limitations on these heinous crimes. She also has long fought to help survivors of human trafficking find safety – passing laws to raise awareness of this practice of modern-day slavery and to provide its victims more opportunities to escape and more resources to restart their lives once they do.
Having spent her entire life in diverse communities, Jacqui knows too many people targeted for crimes, violence, and even over-policing just because of who they are. In response, she passed laws helping ensure the criminal justice system protects everyone. Recently, she helped pass the law combating systemic racism in the police force. The new law sets strict limits on use of force, creates new accountability standards for officers, and reforms the bail system to make sure it truly reflects risk rather than access to wealth. One of the very first laws she passed made it a crime for white terror groups like the Ku Klux Klan to burn crosses as an act of intimidation. Thanks to the efforts of Jacqui and others, Illinois residents have protections to help keep them safe. In Congress, she would fight to expand these protections across the country, so that everyone can feel safe in their communities and when they’re traveling.
Of course, Jacqui understands that achieving true justice and safety requires more than just preventing crimes – it also means recognizing that justice-involved people are still part of the community, that they’re still parents, children, brothers and sisters. Because of this belief, she was one of the loudest voices supporting abolishing Illinois’ death penalty. Jacqui also recognizes that keeping people connected to the community is one of the best ways to help prevent future crime when they return home. To help achieve that goal, Jacqui has passed laws guaranteeing everyone in prison access to in-person or video visits, as well as requiring phone calls to be made available at the lowest possible cost. She’s also made it easier for people on parole to attend religious services and community events once they return to the community and supported laws making it easier for them to find employment. To help keep families from being torn apart before trials have even been held, Jacqui also passed a law requiring judges to consider the needs of children when setting pre-trial detention for their parents.
In Congress, Jacqui would apply this same perspective of true justice and safety to the federal court system – emphasizing the need to keep families and communities whole while still ensuring serious crimes have consequences.
Jacqui has been recognized by the Coalition to End Money Bond and the Illinois Network for Pretrial Justice for her efforts to support presumption of innocence and by the Target Area Development Corporation for her efforts to help justice-involved individuals reentering the community.
“Our economy doesn’t work for everyone. Lower-income families, people of color, immigrants, and women still have to overcome systemic challenges and predatory policies that more affluent households don’t. We’ve worked to break down these systemic barriers in Illinois, but I want to take this fight to Congress, where we can win even bigger victories.”
One of the cornerstones of Jacqui Collins’ legislative career has been creating true economic justice for everyone. She’s fought – and won – countless battles to level the playing field for working families and disadvantaged communities.
Jacqui watched as predatory lenders trapped too many families in endless cycles of debt. Forced to take out high-interest loans for emergency expenses like medical bills or car repairs, people found themselves paying many times what they borrowed by the time they paid off the loan – if they ever managed to. Jacqui established interest rate caps and other consumer protections against the worst predatory lenders, including payday lenders, currency exchanges, title loan companies, check-cashers, and debt settlement agencies. She’s ready to take that fight to the national level and improve consumer protections for everyone in Illinois and the nation.
Jacqui also saw too many older adults and others on fixed incomes forced to choose between heating bills, food, medicine, and other necessities. In response, she passed a law prohibiting gas and utility companies from shutting off lower-income families’ heat in the winter. In the Chicago area, heat is a necessity – not a privilege.
As someone who has always lived in a diverse community, Jacqui has seen too many families and communities struggle because of racism, sexism, and other prejudices – both personal and institutional. To help provide justice to her community, she passed a state-level law prohibiting banks and other lenders from discriminating on the basis of race, gender, disability, or national origin. She also passed a law requiring state economic assistance programs to first focus on supporting businesses in communities with high unemployment rates and lower incomes. Only by overcoming the inequities of the past can America ever see true economic justice, and Jacqui is ready to take that fight to the national stage.
A key part of economic justice is housing justice, and no Illinois legislator did more than Jacqui Collins to respond to the mortgage crisis that followed the Great Recession. She established new protections and programs to support homeowners in danger of foreclosure, and she passed laws to protect renters who lived in properties that were foreclosed on. With rent prices and the cost of housing skyrocketing in Chicagoland and across the nation, Jacqui would be a passionate voice for affordable housing in Congress.
Jacqui has been recognized by Black Contractors United, the Greater Auburn-Gresham Development Corporation, the Target Area Development Corporation, the Woodstock Institute, and many other respected organizations for her work to promote economic justice.
“Education is a springboard to a brighter future, but too many children and schools don’t have the resources they need to succeed. Here in Illinois, I’ve voted to increase school funding year after year, but I believe the federal government can and must do more to help our local students succeed.”
Jacqui Collins believes the most basic core of educational justice is ensuring that every student has a safe place to learn and the resources they need. If you don’t feel safe in school, you don’t have any chance of getting a good education. For too many children in too many neighborhoods, just getting to and attending school safely everyday is still a challenge.
To address that challenge, Jacqui passed the Illinois law requiring annual active shooter drills, so children and teachers know what to do when the unthinkable happens. She also passed laws requiring private school teachers to undergo background checks and to increase student accountability for bullying based on race, religion, and other characteristics that are part of a student’s core identity.
Of course, students can’t succeed unless they’re treated fairly and their teachers have the resources they need. That’s why Jacqui has repeatedly voted to increase school funding and why she served as chief co-sponsor of the law erasing decades of systemic racism in Illinois’ public schools, helping make sure Black and Brown students have access to high quality preschool, increasing foreign language and computer literacy requirements in high school, and reducing the need for catch-up classes in community college.
Jacqui has also passed laws requiring schools to establish absentee and truancy policies and to encourage schools to do more to support the families of students with truancy problems – rather than punishing them. But, she knows that more help is needed. In Congress, she would push for more resources to help schools support struggling families.
Because educational justice is also strongly tied to economic justice, Jacqui has worked to increase students’ access to higher education and to ensure children learn financial literacy in school. Jacqui passed the law requiring all Illinois public universities to automatically accept students in the top 10% of classes, and she established new standards for financial education, including teaching about the mortgage process. In Congress, Jacqui would be able to do more to improve access and affordability, and she would be a strong advocate for student loan reform and forgiveness.
Jacqui had been recognized by many groups for her efforts to improve educational excellence for Illinois students, including the Ukrainian Congress Committee of America-Illinois – for her work to ensure teaching about the Ukrainian Holocaust is included in Illinois schools – and the Chicago Teachers Union – for her support of teachers.
“For too long, pollution has been concentrated in communities where people lack the resources to object: neighborhoods of color and in communities stricken by poverty. Only strong, fully and fairly enforced environmental regulations can help ensure that no community is facing unnecessary and inequitable health risks, so I’ll fight to strengthen the EPA and other enforcement agencies.”
Jacqui Collins believes that everyone deserves a safe, healthy place to live – and that means fighting for environmental justice. Living in a polluted community can have long term health consequences, and too many over-polluted neighborhoods are home to lower income and minority communities.
That’s the reason Jacqui championed creating Illinois’ Commission on Environmental Justice, which is charged with advising the governor and key state agencies on plans and policies that will help ensure no segment of the population – regardless of race, income, national origin, or age – suffers from disproportionately high pollution.
Jacqui has also played a key role in the fight to reduce lead poisoning in our communities. Lead is one of the worst environmental risks, and it’s especially common in lower-income communities, where lead pipes and paint have not been removed or treated. Once someone – especially a child – experiences lead poisoning, they face lifelong health challenges. Jacqui strongly supported the law creating a lead pipe replacement program, and she sponsored the law requiring lead testing standards to match the current science.
Of course, true environmental justice requires us to do more than focus on physical health – it also encompasses the economic health of our communities. Abandoned polluted sites are a blight on our neighborhoods, preventing the growth of homes and businesses and lowering the values of the properties around them. Jacqui supported a landmark Illinois law providing grants to local cities, towns, and villages to help them clean up these sites – called brownfields – and make them once again part of the community.
The truth is that more and more jobs and energy production will need to transition to the clean energy economy. Jacqui is committed to ensuring that Black and Brown communities have a seat at the table and an opportunity to work at these good-paying jobs. She’s also committed to making sure this transition impacts lower income families as little as possible, because too many Chicagoland households struggle to pay their utility bills already. Jacqui knows we need to fight global warming and create a cleaner future, but she wants to make sure lower income families aren’t priced out and left behind – especially in minority neighborhoods.
If elected to Congress, Jacqui will continue to advocate for and support environmental justice, ensuring that no one is forced to live in dirty neighborhoods that endanger their health. She also will continue to support efforts to fight global warming while making sure lower income families don’t pay more than their fair share of the price.
Jacqui has been recognized by the Illinois Environmental Council for Leadership in the General Assembly in support of a healthful environment and by the Respiratory Health Association for her efforts to improve health and air quality.
"Health care is a basic right, but for too many people, it’s still unaffordable. We need to put people over profit in the health care industry and pursue audacious plans like Medicaid for All the will guarantee everyone can receive life-saving treatments."
Jacqui Collins believes that health care justice means everyone has access to the health care they need at affordable prices. Over her career as a state senator, she has helped expand people’s access to many different kinds of treatment and given people more options to deal with the real life difficulties of sick family members. In Congress, she would be able to do even more to provide affordable accessible health care to everyone in Illinois, including supporting Medicare for All, building on her strong advocacy to reduce the price of insulin for Illinois families.
It’s no secret that the COVID-19 pandemic had a disproportionate negative impact on Black and Brown communities, and Jacqui’s own neighborhood was no exception. The people she represented couldn’t even get access to reliable, timely testing. Jacqui relentlessly advocated the South Side’s needs to the governor and Department of Public Health, and they soon opened a testing site in Auburn Gresham to serve those families and people from surrounding neighborhoods.
It’s also thanks to Jacqui that all workers who get paid sick time can use it to care for ill parents, children, spouses, and other family members. She understands that navigating the American medical system is difficult at the best of of times, and it’s especially hard when you’re sick. Too often, you need a family member who can serve as your advocate and help care for you in the hospital or at home.
Jacqui took action so Black and other minority mothers have the same rights and access to care as white mothers, lowering maternal morbidity rates. She created a bill of rights for pregnant women and new mothers, giving them access to more information, more decision-making authority, even the simple right to hold their child after birth. Because mental health and substance use also contribute to maternal death rates, Jacqui also passed a law requiring insurance to cover postpartum depression and other conditions faced by new and expecting mothers.
Jacqui’s passion for health care justice stretches from birth to old age. She has been a tireless advocate for nursing home reform. During the pandemic when many older adults found themselves isolated from friends and family, she passed a law requiring nursing homes to provide their residents access to video calls so that they could maintain their social relationships. “On behalf of our 1.7 million members, we commend Gov. Pritzker– following the leadership of Sen. Collins and Rep. Moeller – for signing into law this simple, humane source of comfort for nursing home residents at a time when they feel most alone,” said AARP Illinois State Director Bob Gallo. Jacqui’s advocacy began long before the pandemic, though. She helped passed laws preventing nursing homes from using medication to make struggling patients easier to handle and helping protect residents from neglect and abuse.
Jacqui Collins was also instrumental in establishing Illinois’ organ donor registry, passing the law that made it possible. Each organ donor saves eight lives and enhances 75 more. Her efforts have helped save thousands of lives.
Creating health care justice requires us to do more to help the people who are falling through the cracks of the American medical system. She would continue this fight in Congress. In Illinois, she has passed laws requiring Medicaid to cover breast cancer screenings and encouraging medical researchers to include more minorities and women in their studies. We can trust Jacqui to advocate for true health care justice in Congress.
Jacqui has been recognized by many important organizations for her efforts to promote health care justice, including The American Cancer Society, the AIDS Foundation of Chicago, the Inner-City Muslim Action Network, and Susan G. Komen for the Cure of the Chicagoland Area.
"Safe, affordable housing is a basic human need, but too many families are getting priced out of their homes. The housing market is fundamentally unbalanced, and Congress must do more to contain skyrocketing costs."
When the Great Recession that started in 2008 led to an avalanche of foreclosures and evictions, no one in Illinois did more than Jacqui Collins to help keep people in their homes. She passed a long list of laws creating programs and protections to help keep people in their homes. With housing prices and rent skyrocketing in Illinois and across the nation, the people of the 1st District could have no stronger voice in Congress fighting for housing justice.
Thanks to Jacqui, Illinois has programs in place to counsel homeowners at risk of foreclosure, and banks and other institutions that offer mortgages have to participate in a national licensing system. Jacqui also successfully banned the surprise fees and balloon payments that often forced families who took out high-risk home loans into foreclosure.
Jacqui is also responsible for many of Illinois’ strongest protections for renters. When renters were being forced out of their homes because their landlords faced foreclosure, she passed a law saying no one could be asked to move before their leases were up or with less than three months notice. When area residents came to her and complained their landlords weren’t holding up their end of the bargain, failing to pay utilities that were included in the rent, she passed a law allowing them to break their leases with no fear of retaliation. Similarly, Jacqui gave renters the right to make repairs themselves and deduct the cost from the rent when landlords failed to act on important repairs for more than two weeks after being notified.
Tying into her commitment to environmental justice, Jacqui has fought to keep homes safe in addition to affordable. She passed the law prohibiting utility companies from shutting off lower-income customers’ heat in the winter, and she took on the issue of radon – an odorless cancer causing gas – by requiring new construction to be radon resistant and setting standards for radon detection devices.
Jacqui truly believes in housing justice, and she would fight to create more affordable housing – for both renters and buyers – across the country. No other candidate in this race has Jacqui’s record of fighting for people’s most basic right to clean, safe, affordable shelter.
Jacqui has been awarded the Gale Cincotta Community Visionary Award by Neighborhood Housing Services for her leadership in rebuilding Chicago’s communities and been recognized by the Illinois Credit Union League for her effort to fight the Great Recession mortgage crisis.
“In my lifetime, I hope to see a day where the glass ceiling is completely shattered and women no longer live in fear of sexual assault and domestic violence. Congress needs to hold employers truly accountable to the standard of equal pay for equal work and to take the problems that still overwhelmingly affect woman seriously.”
When Jacqui Collins started her career in the news industry, there were still more men than women in the newsroom. She experienced the same thing when she was elected to the Illinois Senate. The situation has improved, but Jacqui has vowed to keep fighting until women are paid the same as men and have the same career advancement opportunities.
There have been few stronger advocates for survivors of sexual assault, domestic violence, and human trafficking than Jacqui. Unfortunately, these problems still disproportionately impact women and girls. She passed the law lifting the statute of limitations on child sexual abuse. She required hotel and restaurant employees to be trained to recognize and report human trafficking and expanded assistance programs for survivors. She even passed a law ensuring that non-citizen human trafficking survivors qualify for help – because too often they’re forced across national boundaries against their will. Jacqui would take the same aggressive approach to addressing these issues and protecting women and other survivors to Congress.
Jacqui has also been a fierce advocate for women’s health care – especially for pregnant, minority and lower-income women. She passed the law requiring Medicaid to cover breast cancer screenings, bringing this vital service to millions of lower-income women, many of them young mothers or elderly.
In response to study after study showing that Black mothers are dying at three to four times the rate of white mothers – and that other minority mothers also have higher death rates, Jacqui passed laws further protecting pregnant and recent mothers. One of these laws created a bill of rights for pregnant women, giving them more control of their care, more access to important information, and even the right to hold their babies after they’re born. Because mental health and substance use also contribute to maternal deaths, Jacqui passed a law requiring insurance to cover postpartum depression and other mental health for pregnant women and recent mothers.
Jacqui also firmly believes that women should be able to control their own bodies. She is appalled by the assault on reproductive rights across the country, and she would be a strong supporter of women’s right to choose in Congress.
The world has become a much bigger, brighter place for women since Jacqui started her career, but she knows that women still face unfair challenges in the workplace, medical care, and other areas. She will keep fighting until there is justice for all women.
Jacqui has been recognized by Southwest Women Working Together for her efforts to support survivors of domestic violence and by the Chicago Coalition for the Homeless for efforts to give women in the sex trades more dignity and opportunity.
“Anyone who works should be able to afford a safe roof over their family’s heads, put healthy food on the table, and live a fulfilling life. While big businesses look to their bottom lines, Congress needs to do more to make sure the people who are the root of their success are justly compensated.”
Jacqui Collins has lived in working-class neighborhoods her entire life, so she knows that many people struggle to balance their jobs and the needs of their families and communities. She has always supported efforts to help right that balance and provide justice for working families, and she would take that fight to Congress, where she will also protect Medicare and Social Security.
The daughter of union parents and sister of a union steward, Jacqui knows firsthand the difference unions have made for working men and women, as well as the rise of the Black middle class. She will be a reliable vote in favor of the right to organize. Jacqui has consistently opposed “right to work” and other efforts to limit the influence of labor unions. She’s especially supportive of local educators, and she stood with teachers to ensure public school and charter school teachers aren’t treated differently.
Jacqui also believes in a living wage – that anyone willing to put in a hard day’s work should be able to provide safe shelter, food, and other necessities for their family. She was a strong supporter of raising the Illinois minimum wage to $15 per hour, and she would keep up this fight in Congress. She also has consistently supported requiring the wealthy to pay their fair share of taxes and strengthening the earned income tax credit, which helps working parents provide for their children.
It’s also thanks to Jacqui that working families can use sick time to care for immediate family members. She’s fought to make sure employers respect their workers’ religions, having passed a law requiring them to accept religious dress and hairstyles, except for reasons of safety or sanitation. Because child care is a strain for so many families, she also set in law that leaving a child with a capable adult family member, like a grandparent, aunt, or uncle, cannot be considered neglect by DCFS.
Jacqui recognizes the unfortunate truth that all too many families work, but can’t make enough money to make ends meet. While she has strongly supported efforts to create more good paying jobs and raise the minimum wage, she also has made it easier for working families to access public assistance. For example, Jacqui gave people who access SNAP, TANF and other resources to transfer their case management to an office near their work or their children’s school. She’s also passed laws and worked on committees to help address the problem of food deserts, which are found all too often in working-class neighborhoods, depriving residents of easy, affordable access to fresh fruits and vegetables and other healthy foods.
However, the needs of families don’t end with old age or retirement, and Jacqui has heard far too many horror stories from families navigating nursing home care and the other special needs of older adults. She has passed laws requiring nursing homes that accept Medicaid patients to prominently post information about how to report abuse, fraud and neglect. During the pandemic, she passed a law requiring nursing homes to give residents access to video technology to keep in touch with friends, family, and community. Jacqui would take this same attitude and innovative solutions with her to Congress.
Jacqui has been recognized by AARP Illinois as Legislator of the Year and by the Associated Builders and Contractors of Illinois for her support of their Community Builders program.
