On May 13, 2026 Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson announced an expansion to the city's CARE Program, a specialized team that responds to mental health crises without police. The CARE Program — which stands for Crisis Assistance Response and Engagement — IS NOW available in all 77 community areas in Chicago. The program sends a mental health professional and an emergency medical technician – not police officers or firefighters — to respond to calls of mental health emergencies.

This is a culmination of multi-generational effort to restore public mental health services, so that people who are experiencing mental health crises could be met by trained mental health professionals to de-escalate the situation, get them treatment, and avoid putting them in potentially dangerous situations.

If you didn’t know this, chances are it’s by design…

Welcome to the April 2026 44th ward update.

So much has happened in the last few weeks since the March primaries. We went to not one, but two definitely not-town-halls, we have watched the next chapter of the tipped wage saga unfold both in Chicago and Springfield, our alderman’s scheme to get the Zoning Chair didn’t work out in his favor, Springfield is still playing games with our progressive revenue, and the vote for the ordinance that would allow CPD to remove officers connected to far-right extremist groups has been pushed to next month…

Primaries are over. What we’ve learned from these primaries is that try as they might, the corporate establishment and donor class’ iron grip on our primaries and their efforts to consolidate control over every single seat in the state house, senate, comptroller, to say nothing of the congressional and US senate seats is actually… failing. The progressive coalition of Chicago is making steady gains, which is especially important in anticipation of the next year’s municipal elections, which will most likely be even more saturated with dark money and in-fighting.