Windy City Media Group Frontpage News

THE VOICE OF CHICAGO'S GAY, LESBIAN, BI, TRANS AND QUEER COMMUNITY SINCE 1985

home search facebook twitter join
Gay News Sponsor Windy City Times 2023-12-13
DOWNLOAD ISSUE
Donate

Sponsor
Sponsor
Sponsor

  WINDY CITY TIMES

Ald. Maria Hadden encourages community to be active participants
By Cris Villalonga-Vivoni
2021-10-18

This article shared 1610 times since Mon Oct 18, 2021
facebook twitter pin it google +1 reddit email


AIt was Chicago Ald. Maria Hadden's friends who convinced her to run for city council as the 49th Ward's alderperson.

Originally from Columbus, Ohio, Hadden moved to Rogers Park 20 years ago after graduating from The Ohio State University. She quickly became acquainted with the local hangout spots—her favorite was the Heartland Cafe—and began to connect with other residents.

Although she was initially hesitant to run for office, Hadden decided that not only did she have the necessary skill set and a solid connection to the community, but her identity as a queer Black woman would help her better understand the complexities of intersectional issues as well.

"I'm living at the intersection of all marginalized identities," Hadden said. "It just makes you think differently and act differently."

Since taking office in 2019, Hadden has been working collaboratively with the 49th Ward community to address social issues, such as establishing access to COVID-19 resources and support for seniors as well as encouraging vaccinations. In addition, she actively seeks out diverse perspectives from "people who don't think that their voices matter" to learn more about the people she serves and their complex needs.

"There is a lot of work to be an alderwoman, but most of it doesn't happen in city hall. Rather, it is [within] the community," Hadden said.

Much of her recent focus has been on finding ways to support her constituents throughout the COVID-19 pandemic. Hadden and her team organized a COVID-19 response group and created a website that both provided the community with information about the virus and recruited volunteers.

Hadden and her team helped train volunteers, established a resource hotline and helped coordinate numerous testing and/or vaccination events. They also created a grocery pickup system in which volunteers would drop off groceries at the homes of people most vulnerable to coronavirus.

She said that these programs could only have been accomplished through the relationship she cultivated with her community, by building trust and connections as well as actively listening to her community's needs.

Hadden's first significant piece of legislation to be approved was the Senior Safety Ordinance. This mandate, approved in June 2020, requires that owners and managers of senior housing implement further practices to protect their residents' safety, health and well-being during a public health-related disaster, such as COVID-19.

Some of the new requirements include biweekly wellness checks with tenants, the provision of food and a new cleaning regimen that ensures high-contact surfaces are disinfected multiple times daily. Owners and managers will also need to provide documentation regarding the dates and times of all resident wellness checks and cleanings.

Overall, Hadden believes the city has done a good job, considering the massive pivot everyone experienced when the pandemic shut down Chicago. She praised the city's transparency and daily updates.

"We had librarians making face masks. We had city workers making hand sanitizer," Hadden said.

However, she does believe Chicago Public Schools (CPS) needs to step up its COVID-19 protocols, as cases among students and teachers are increasing. She called for more transparency regarding testing and infection rates and making information more readily available for parents. Hadden hopes new CPS CEO Pedro Martinez will correct these issues.

She has also been a huge advocate for vaccinations and continues to encourage those who have yet to get the COVID-19 vaccine to ask questions and choose to get the vaccine.

She described how one night, while putting away chairs and equipment from a community meeting, a man riding his bicycle saw Hadden and her colleagues and asked if they were distributing the vaccine. He explained that his partner was a school teacher and was already vaccinated. However, he still had some reservations. Hadden spent the next 20 minutes answering all his questions.

"Some people who are unvaccinated still just have some honest-to-goodness questions," she said. "They're uncertain. They don't have the information. Maybe they've heard misinformation. Maybe they're nervous or scared."

Hadden is also one of eight council members who signed a letter to public health commissioner Dr. Allison Arwady asking that all public indoor spaces begin requiring proof of vaccination before entry. She hopes that this letter will encourage more people to get vaccinated, as she feels that small businesses couldn't handle another major city shutdown.

"We have some things that we can do that are preventative, like vaccinations and mask-wearing. So we should do that as much as possible," Hadden said.

She encourages her community to continue to stay informed and in contact with her office as she begins working on other social issues, such as creating a non-police crisis response team and violence prevention initiatives.

"We've got to find some alternative paths to what we're doing in our city," Hadden said. "It's not so much even finding alternatives to policing. It's how we are addressing the social needs that are the root causes of our violence."

Hadden also wants Chicago citizens to pay more attention to the impacts of climate change on Lake Michigan. With record-high lake levels, the 49th Ward is one of many districts vulnerable to flooding. It has already lost three of its beaches.

"I believe that having people most impacted by an issue of policy or law at the table, and being able to weigh in and have decision-making power, is what makes our democracy stronger," Hadden said.


This article shared 1610 times since Mon Oct 18, 2021
facebook twitter pin it google +1 reddit email

Out and Aging
Presented By

  ARTICLES YOU MIGHT LIKE

Gay News

Thailand parliament passes landmark marriage bill
2024-03-27
On March 27, Thailand's parliament approved a marriage-equality bill by an overwhelmingly large margin—a landmark step that moves one of Asia's most liberal countries closer to legalizing same-sex unions, media ...


Gay News

Brown Elephant Returns To Northalsted
2024-03-26
Brown Elephant's Lake View location is moving to Northalsted and already accepting donations. Howard Brown Health, the largest LGBTQ+ health center in the midwest, operates three Brown Elephant resale shops in the Chicagoland area to help ...


Gay News

An interstate trans healthcare crisis: Illinois prepares for influx of people seeking gender-affirming care
2024-03-26
With hard-won rights, such as access to hormone replacement therapy or permission to use one's chosen pronouns in school, breaking down in states across the country, trans residents of all ages are left with a choice: ...


Gay News

Planned Parenthood of Illinois expands Orland Park health center
2024-03-26
--From a press release - ORLAND PARK, Ill. - Planned Parenthood of Illinois (PPIL) announces the expansion of its existing Orland Park Health Center at 14470 S. LaGrange Rd., Suite 106. The 1,800-square-foot expansion is projected to increase sexual and reproductive ...


Gay News

Kara Swisher talks truth, power in tech at Chicago Humanities event
2024-03-25
Lesbian author, award-winning journalist and podcast host Kara Swisher spoke about truth and power in the tech industry through the lens of her most recent book, Burn Book: A Tech Love Story, March 21 at First ...


Gay News

Wyoming is latest state to ban gender-affirming care for minors
2024-03-24
On March 22, Wyoming became the latest state to prohibit gender-affirming care for minors, The Hill noted. In doing so, it joined 23 other states that passed laws restricting or banning the treatment. Legislators in both ...


Gay News

Chicago alder proposes renaming street after Obama
2024-03-22
Openly gay Black Chicago Ald. Lamont Robinson has proposed renaming Columbus Drive after former U.S. President and city resident Barack Obama, media outlets noted. The street stretches through the Loop from East Grand Avenue to DuSable ...


Gay News

Congressional Equality Caucus on FY24 bills passing the house
2024-03-22
--From a press release - WASHINGTON, DC — Today, Chair of the Congressional Equality Caucus, Rep. Mark Pocan (WI-02), released the following statement after the House successfully passed the final funding bills for Fiscal Year ...


Gay News

WORLD Uganda items, HIV report, Mandela, Liechtenstein, foreign minister weds
2024-03-21
It turned out that U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) Senior LGBTQI+ Coordinator Jay Gilliam traveled to Uganda on Feb. 19-27, per The Washington Blade. He visited the capital of Kampala and the nearby city of ...


Gay News

NATIONAL Va. marriage bill, AARP, online counseling, Idaho items, late activist
2024-03-21
Republican Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin signed bills protecting same-sex marriages at a state level, surprising some, WRIC reported. The bills—passed out of both chambers along mostly party lines—will require clerks ...


Gay News

LGBTQ+ candidates Marcelino Garcia, Precious Brady Davis win primary elections to keep MWRD seats
2024-03-21
Marcelino Garcia and Precious Brady-Davis, the two openly LGBTQ+ incumbents in the race to keep their seats on the Metropolitan Water Reclamation District (MWRD), won their primary elections and will move on to the general this ...


Gay News

Small LGBTQ+ candidate pool nevertheless scores some important victories March 19
2024-03-20
Relatively few openly LGBTQ+ candidates were running in the March 19 Illinois Primary Election. But there were some significant contests in play at the local, state and federal levels. Openly gay Ald. Ray Lopez (15th Ward) ...


Gay News

Gay Irish prime minister to step down
2024-03-20
In a surprise move, openly gay Irish Prime Minister (or Taoiseach) Leo Varadkar has announced his resignation, citing "personal and political, but mainly political reasons," according to CNN. Varadkar said he felt he was no longer ...


Gay News

Chicago's LGBTQ+ Advisory Council sets a new course
2024-03-18
Chicago's LGBTQ+ Advisory Council held its first meeting of the calendar year on Feb. 28 at City Hall in the Loop under the leadership of the recently appointed chair Jin-Soo Huh. The LGBTQ+ Advisory Council is ...


Gay News

WORLD Leaked messages, Panama action, author dies at 32, Japan court, out athletes
2024-03-15
Hundreds of messages from an internal chat board for an international group of transgender health professionals were leaked in a report and framed as revealing serious health risks associated with gender-affirming care, including cancer, according to ...


 


Copyright © 2024 Windy City Media Group. All rights reserved.
Reprint by permission only. PDFs for back issues are downloadable from
our online archives.

Return postage must accompany all manuscripts, drawings, and
photographs submitted if they are to be returned, and no
responsibility may be assumed for unsolicited materials.

All rights to letters, art and photos sent to Nightspots
(Chicago GLBT Nightlife News) and Windy City Times (a Chicago
Gay and Lesbian News and Feature Publication) will be treated
as unconditionally assigned for publication purposes and as such,
subject to editing and comment. The opinions expressed by the
columnists, cartoonists, letter writers, and commentators are
their own and do not necessarily reflect the position of Nightspots
(Chicago GLBT Nightlife News) and Windy City Times (a Chicago Gay,
Lesbian, Bisexual and Transgender News and Feature Publication).

The appearance of a name, image or photo of a person or group in
Nightspots (Chicago GLBT Nightlife News) and Windy City Times
(a Chicago Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual and Transgender News and Feature
Publication) does not indicate the sexual orientation of such
individuals or groups. While we encourage readers to support the
advertisers who make this newspaper possible, Nightspots (Chicago
GLBT Nightlife News) and Windy City Times (a Chicago Gay, Lesbian
News and Feature Publication) cannot accept responsibility for
any advertising claims or promotions.

 
 

TRENDINGBREAKINGPHOTOS







Sponsor


 



Donate


About WCMG      Contact Us      Online Front  Page      Windy City  Times      Nightspots
Identity      BLACKlines      En La Vida      Archives      Advanced Search     
Windy City Queercast      Queercast Archives     
Press  Releases      Join WCMG  Email List      Email Blast      Blogs     
Upcoming Events      Todays Events      Ongoing Events      Bar Guide      Community Groups      In Memoriam     
Privacy Policy     

Windy City Media Group publishes Windy City Times,
The Bi-Weekly Voice of the Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual and Trans Community.
5315 N. Clark St. #192, Chicago, IL 60640-2113 • PH (773) 871-7610 • FAX (773) 871-7609.