We've got to make sure that we use every tool in our toolkit. And it's -- soft power is more, much more effective than the hard power of law enforcement for this particular problem.
Lori Lightfoot
The Public Record
Lori Lightfoot served as the 56th Mayor of Chicago from May 20, 2019, until May 15, 2023. A member of the Democratic Party, she was the first African American woman and the first openly LGBTQ+ person to hold the office. Lightfoot's tenure focused on issues such as police reform, affordable housing, and economic development, particularly in underserved communities. She faced significant challenges, including the COVID-19 pandemic and rising crime rates during her administration.
★ Featured Quote
March 6, 2025
It's disgusting. There are kids waking up today in California with this news thinking that their governor hates them, and rightly so.
— Lori Lightfoot
Look, every mayor's going to tell you that they need more resources. What we've seen that's been successful is the things that I talked about before, but we've also I think done a lot with diversion at the police station.
The White House says they've been in touch with both you and the governor to quote, assess your needs.
I get that people are scared. This Omicron surge is real. And we're doing everything that we can across our city to mitigate it.
I'm determined. I'm resolute, I've said enough is enough. And we're going to get our kids back to in-person learning.
Unfortunately, some people like to politicize the pandemic. And that's not just something that happens on one side of the political divide.
We're in a good, I think, a place with both our Governor and the White House.
Remote learning, for any period of time is off the table from a system wide standpoint.
I think we've made significant progress over the last few days. But I want to deal done this weekend. Our kids need back -- be back in school, schools are safe.
This is an unnecessary and illegal work stoppage. And I've drawn the line, we are not going to remote for the whole system. It's completely unnecessary.
When you start talking to people one-on-one about those kinds of shocking statistics, that catches their attention.
I think, look, at the very beginning it was just getting out the basic information about the various clinical trials, the results of the effectiveness.
The other thing that we are really avoiding doing is shaming people in communities for not being vaccinated.
Intelligence sharing, that's going to be a game-changer for us. Being able to be aggressive, looking at those sales, following up to make sure that those guns are still in the hands of the person that bought them, that's going to be key…
Having a strategy that relies exclusively or even primarily just on law enforcement doesn't work. And we know that. We've spent billions of dollars across the city policing without other supports for communities, and it's not moving the…
Our young men, the ones that are most likely to be the victims, but also the perpetrators of crime have to know at the earliest possible stage, their destiny is not preordained to be picking up a gun or an early death.
The raw video footage is extraordinarily jumpy. It's really hard to see anything, providing kind of a slowed down frame by frame opportunity to see what happened is going to be helpful to members of the public.
It was excruciating -- watching the body cam footage, which shows young Adam after he is shot is extremely difficult.
I've seen no evidence whatsoever that Adam Toledo shot at the police.
I'm the mayor of the city, but I'm also black woman. And I have had numerous conversations this week with my sisters, with my black girlfriends. And I know that, if I wasn't mayor, that could be me.





