Keshia Golden’s plea deal acceptance was a bittersweet victory after courageously fighting a legal system historically stacked against survivors criminalized for defending themselves. Despite more than 50 police calls, four arrests documenting her partner’s abuse and an order of protection, she was eight months pregnant when, fearing for her life and that of her unborn child, she stabbed him in his leg in self-defense and was charged with first-degree murder, facing up to 60 years in prison.
The reduced charge of involuntary manslaughter and probation is a victory, enabling her to continue caring for her daughter. But even a conviction without incarceration can create lifelong barriers to housing, education, employment and stability, particularly for Black women who are disproportionately criminalized and incarcerated.
In Cook County, multiple survivors of domestic violence have been charged for fighting back against their abusers. There were at least two cases in the last year where survivors fought murder charges for over a decade only to be found not guilty. These survivors lost housing, jobs, stability for their children and their freedom.
Across the nation, nearly three women a day are killed by an intimate partner. In Chicago, 3 of every 4 domestic battery victims are women. The majority of women in state prisons have histories of domestic violence, sexual assault and other forms of abuse.
The outcome in Golden’s case forces us to confront these realities. There are hundreds of women in Illinois prisons whose experiences of abuse and survival were never fully considered. State’s attorney’s offices have the power to drop charges in current cases and to agree to resentencing petitions for dozens of survivors under Illinois’ Gender-Based Violence Resentencing Act. These survivors, many who served decades in prison for defending themselves, can and should be released in cooperation with state’s attorneys offices across Illinois.
The Women’s Justice Institute, along with advocacy organizations that make up the Alliance in Support of Criminalized Survivors, are calling on officials with the Cook County state’s attorney’s office to meet with us to review the cases where survivors are facing criminal charges for choosing to fight back. This approach should be replicated statewide, and we stand ready to help build it.
The contradictions must end now: We cannot celebrate progress in public safety while criminalizing survivors of domestic violence for refusing to die quietly.
Deanne Benos, executive director, Women’s Justice Institute
Alexis Mansfield, director of policy and special projects, Women’s Justice Institute
Take postpartum illness seriously
When will America recognize how deadly postpartum psychosis is?
New mothers do not kill their babies or themselves because they are murderers. Their illness causes them to do it.
My daughter, Melanie Stokes, jumped from a window after her baby was born. She said her baby hated her because she was a bad mom. The baby was 2 weeks old. She said her husband needed a new wife.
These new moms are delusional and in another world.
They do not understand what is or might be wrong because the illness has taken over their mind.
They should not go to prison. They need help. My heart breaks when I read about these new moms.
Carol Blocker, Bronzeville
Make polluters pay
Many of us are familiar with this viral quote we’ve seen on social media: “Climate change will manifest as a series of disasters viewed through phones with footage that gets closer and closer to where you live until you’re the one filming it.”
This summer, Chicagoans took photos of massive trees falling on cars and homes after violent, unpredictable storms. We scrolled through videos of flooded streets and basements filled with sewage. We watched news about the record-breaking tornadoes, record-breaking heat and record-breaking air quality. And then there were things we couldn’t film: sleepless nights in a sweltering apartment, itchy eyes and aching chests from wildfire smoke and worry for loved ones who work outside.
In 2024, climate and extreme weather events cost Illinois nearly $4 billion in damages. Chicagoans pay with our money, health and lives, but data shows we aren’t the ones responsible. Reports trace 71% of global industrial emissions to 100 fossil fuel producers. These companies understand the devastation they cause. By 1977, Exxon’s own cutting-edge climate research predicted global temperatures would increase by 2 to 3 degrees Celsius. Yet Exxon chose to deny its own findings, discredit future climate science and lobby against the climate action we needed, all while the industry accrued nearly $1 trillion in profits annually over the last 50 years. Exxon knew, and still decided the profits were worth more than the floods, heat, smoke and all the families who would suffer from a mess they didn’t make.
It’s time to balance the scale. Following the lead of Vermont and New York, the proposed Illinois Climate Change Superfund Act — House Bill 4773 and Senate Bill 2981— applies a similar legal framework as the 1980 federal Superfund laws, which forced chemical companies to clean up toxic spills. This act requires oil and gas companies to pay for climate adaptation, providing Illinois with billions for vital projects like flood control and cooling centers. Disadvantaged communities, which often face the worst environmental injustices, would receive 40% of funding.
We no longer need to look at climate change through our phones. Just look up. It’s here, and we need resources to adapt. Join the Make Polluters Pay Coalition and call your elected leaders and demand they co-sponsor the Climate Change Superfund Act to ensure those responsible for this mess pay.
Aleah Rogalski, ONE Northside volunteer, Lake View
Students need help curbing absenteeism
As we work to address chronic absenteeism in Chicago Public Schools, we need to acknowledge that the conversation and effort is falling short. Venture philanthropy is not the solution, and in fact, could be adding to the issue by focusing solely on the “return on investment” and treating real people as numbers on a dashboard.
Chronic absenteeism leads to several negative outcomes, ranging from decreased student disengagement to increased dropout rates. While providing additional mental health and family support may seem like the solution, all it does is continue to place the blame on individuals for their circumstances instead of addressing the systemic racism and poverty that have created these inequities.
At CPS, 71.8% students are economically disadvantaged, 17.3% have disabilities, and 88% are people of color. Students with disabilities are three times more likely to be chronically absent, with asthma as the leading cause of health-related school absences. Couple these issues with other systemic barriers, such as living in a transportation and medical desert, and now you have a parent taking all day to get to get his or her child to a needed medical appointment instead of school. These scenarios make it clear we need to start framing chronic absenteeism as a public health issue.
Even when youth overcome barriers to get to school, they’re often faced with punitive practices, bullying and a lack of positive relationships. At a time where chronic absenteeism is soaring at about 40%, we continue to disinvest in school practices that build culture, like restorative justice and trauma-informed support, while prioritizing band-aid interventions instead.
We need real solutions in our communities. Research has shown that school-based health centers that offer on-site care can reduce a young person’s risk of chronic absenteeism by as much as 15%. If a health center can make that much of a difference, imagine a community hub model that includes food pantries, eviction defense, housing services, mental health counseling and transportation for the whole family?
To move the needle on the issue of chronic absenteeism, we need to show our communities that we value them as whole people by funding comprehensive solutions to root causes.
Bessie Alcantara, executive director, Alternatives
Safeguard current workforce under rural health plan
Illinois has a rare opportunity to strengthen rural healthcare with $193.4 million in first-year funding through the federal Rural Health Transformation Program.
The Illinois Critical Access Hospital Network announced last month it will administer $5 million for hospital workforce investment and long-term workforce sustainability — illustrating a real understanding that healthcare professionals need support today and a plan for the future. While training is hugely important, healthcare facilities also need to consider how to fill a shift for this weekend.
We learned in prior crises that there are many health licensed professionals willing to work, but they require schedule flexibility to reenter the profession.
An August survey of 150 Illinois nurses, certified nursing assistants and direct care workers who use ShiftKey, a digital platform connecting independent healthcare professionals with open facility shifts, found that 96% said schedule choice was very important to their decision to remain in healthcare. Even more striking, 91% said they would work fewer hours or leave the field entirely if flexible, independent contractor shift options were no longer available.
Independent work is not a substitute for a strong full-time workforce. For parents, caregivers, students and others who cannot commit to a traditional schedule, it’s what keeps them in the workforce.
Independent work also helps facilities respond to immediate needs. In the same ShiftKey survey, 95% of respondents said flexible shift work allowed them to pick up shifts at short-staffed Illinois facilities in the past year that they otherwise would not have worked.
Illinois understands the needs of today and tomorrow and can build the healthcare workforce of tomorrow and provide opportunities for health professionals that for this moment in their lives need flexibility to work today. Investments in nursing education, recruitment and retention should go hand in hand with policies that preserve multiple ways for licensed professionals to participate in the workforce.
The goal of the Rural Health Transformation Program should bring together additional licensed professionals along with additional schedule flexibilities — not force every clinician into a singular employment model that doesn’t meet the needs of all licensed professionals.
This will ensure a pipeline today and tomorrow of qualified professionals capable and ready to care for Illinois patients — especially in communities where every available worker counts.
Dr. Deborah L. Birx, former White House coronavirus response coordinator and U.S. Global AIDS coordinator
Bearing traffic
I drive the Interstate 94 and Interstate 80 corridor frequently. The traffic at the state line is often congested and goes in both directions from morning until past sunset seven days a week.
Imagine an additional 25,000 vehicles trying to get to a Bears game? Lake Forrest personnel better have early lunches and leave, or they may miss the first half. What about Monday or Thursday night games?
Gregory Collins, Antioch
Religious term doesn’t belong in football
In the sports section of Monday’s Sun-Times, a subheadline of a USA Today story read “Big Ten officials gave the Wolverines time to pull off Hail Mary.”
However, the article wasn’t about the University of Michigan football team players huddling up to say a prayer that Roman Catholics recite to honor a person they believe to be the mother of God.
Instead, the article detailed how the Michigan team was given time to attempt a last-second, game-winning pass play that only had a “prayer” of a chance of being successful.
I believe it is well past time that the football world and media discontinue using this phrase in a manner that Catholics such as myself feel can only diminish the sanctity of the actual prayer.
Patrick J. Molony, Alsip
Football isn’t only dangerous sport
With all of the justifiable emphasis on concussion protocol and chronic traumatic encephalopathy in the NFL, why don’t we see stories of professional boxers or UFC fighters having concussion protocol or CTE? It seems with athletes punching each other in the head over and over it could be more of a problem than in the NFL.
Jim Hogan, Palos Hills