Profiles In Citizenship II: Illinois State Rep. Will Guzzardi
I am a constituent of Mr. Will Guzzardi here on Chicago’s Near Northwest side. This is a fascinating time to live in Chicago! I have had the pleasure of seeing him speak and bring his gregarious personality to a room. I appreciate him taking the time to work with me and his work as a citizen. His story is very inspirational.
In his own words below:
Where are you from?
I was born in New York City but grew up in Chapel Hill, North Carolina.
What is your educational background?
I have a bachelor’s degree in comparative literature from Brown University.
When did you decide to pursue politics?
I quit my job to run for office in August of 2011.
What is your story? How did you get to office?
I was working as Chicago local reporter for Huffington Post out of undergrad. It was a great job, and I learned a ton about the city I had come to call home. In particular, I learned about the old-school way of doing politics in Chicago — Machine political power, corruption, nepotism, graft — and how that politics was prioritizing the greed of the powerful and connected over the needs of our community. I also met a ton of organizers and activists who were fighting against that system, to build a new progressive politics that was connected to the grassroots and fought for the neighborhoods. I got swept up in the excitement of that movement and decided to run against the Machine-backed incumbent state representative in my district. I lost in 2012, but ran again in 2014 and won, and I’ve been state representative ever since.
What is citizenship to you?
Citizenship is seeing a problem in your community and doing something about it. It means understanding that we’re not just passive recipients of a system but active participant, each with a role to play in making our society more just and equitable.
What is your life philosophy?
Each of us has an obligation to find some level — global, local, person-to-person — to bring more love and decency and compassion into the world. Find that path and pour your whole heart into it.
What should readers know about your district?
My district is a really multifaceted place. Parts of it are rapidly developing, with all the attendant benefits and the challenges of gentrification and displacement that come along with it. Parts of it are poor and under-resourced. Parts are largely millennials, parts are largely seniors. Parts are mostly white, parts are mostly Latinx, parts are diverse. But across all these different demographics, people face the same challenges and care about the same things. Their paycheck doesn’t quite stretch far enough to cover rising rents and child care and college tuition and prescription drugs. They want safety and security and better opportunities for their kids. And they mostly think, unfortunately, that government won’t provide this for them — that it will help the insiders do better and leave their family behind. We have to show them we can do better.
In a polarized America, how do we build bridges?
I think we start by recognizing that most of us have a lot in common, and that a very tiny set of people are benefiting from systems that hurt the rest of us as a group. People are dying because they can’t afford the skyrocketing costs of their lifesaving medicines. That’s only the case because drug companies have rigged the rules to guarantee their own profits at our expense. That’s just one example among countless. When we stop looking at the guy next to us, or beneath us, for the cause of our problems, and start looking up at the folks at the tippy-top of the pyramid, that’s when we’ll be united. And that’s exactly why the elites have a continued interest in dividing the rest of us against one another.
What message do you have for politically cynical/uninvolved citizens?
Politics is dirty, messy, and unpleasant. But if we leave it to the politicians, it’s only going to get worse. We have to be willing to roll up our sleeves and try to make it better if we want to get better outcomes from government.
What is your dream for the future?
My dream is to live in a world where your gender, the color of your skin and the ZIP code of your birth are completely uncorrelated to your health, wealth, education, and life expectancy.