robert emmons jr

The Weekly sits down with the gun violence prevention activist running for Congress in the 1st District

BY JADE YAN

Running to represent Illinois’s 1st District in Congress, Robert Emmons Jr. has placed stopping gun violence at the center of his campaign. Part of this stems from his experience with the death of his college roommate and best friend, who was shot and died from his wounds. Since attending the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, where he majored in political science, twenty-sevenyear-old Emmons has worked with activist groups including Generation Progress, NextGen Climate, and J Street to advocate for gun violence prevention, solutions for criminal justice, and stronger climate policies. Emmons is the youngest candidate in the race and is taking on a longtime incumbent Bobby Rush, a pastor and former Black Panther and alderman who has held the seat for more than twenty years. Emmons believes that Rush is ineffectual and out of touch, evidenced by the fact that his “district has looked the same for twenty years.” Emmons has been endorsed by climate groups such as 350 Action and the Sunrise Movement, as well as organizations against gun violence. A few days after our interview, Emmons earned a surprising endorsement from the Tribune, a paper whose editorial board is relatively conservative but has also been critical of Rush in the past. This interview has been edited for length and clarity; find an extended version at southsideweekly.com. How much power does a Congressional representative have to make the changes that you want to see? Tons. [A representative has the power to reverse amendments such as] the Dickey Amendment, [which is an amendment that] prevents the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention from studying gun violence as a public health epidemic. We need to completely reverse the Dickey Amendment in order to dive deeper into gun violence. It’s a public health epidemic, and we have to acknowledge it as one.

[A representative also has the power to] allocate funding. That’s one of the most important things a member of Congress can do, because cities and states know what to do with that money better than the federal government does. We have to allocate funding to go directly to community based organizations that are already doing the work on the ground to end gun violence.

That’s the hallmark of our solution: we don’t have a monopoly on the best ideas. In fact, our best idea is that we don’t. I want to give money to the people on the ground, who are already doing the work and who understand the community. How do you see yourself as different from other people running for Congress? I’ve been in this campaign for officially about a year, but unofficially, for one year and six months. I left my work, and took three to four months just exploring a run for Congress. [I went] around the district asking key questions [like] what people want to see in the representative, and where they want to see this district and country go. When I saw that what the people of the 1st District wanted was the same thing as what I wanted to do, I officially made my decision [to run]. So I’ve proven that I have the stamina and the conviction to be [a] Congressman, and I’ve also listened to real people on the ground.

Some of my other opponents haven’t done that work. Sarah Gad jumped in September of 2019, after I had already been in [the race] for a good amount of time. If she truly believed that we need a progressive in the seat, she would have gotten behind us, rather than jumping in to divide. She didn’t do [the] work necessary to make sure that the people of the 1st Congressional District truly want you to run. Back when I was exploring a run for Congress, I went all

SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY ¬ FEBRUARY 19, 2020 across the district, not just in Chicago, I went to the southwest suburbs also and talked directly to them. My first endorsement was from Will County board chair Amanda Koch, because we did that work necessary to truly understand the entire district, and we did so honestly, and transparently.

You’re running against incumbent Bobby Rush, who has been Congressman of the 1st District for three terms. In what specific areas do you feel you could do a better job than him? How specifically do you plan to improve these areas?

During our campaign, we’ve been incredibly sensitive to the situations and trauma that Rush has faced over his tenure, so we typically don’t like even talking about the fact that he has one of the worst voting records; we more or less focus on the times he’s voted incorrectly.

For example, he voted for the disastrous 1994 crime bill, which disproportionately impacted Black and brown, predominantly young people. Then he apologized for it, but twenty-five years later, he’s still supporting candidates and policies that do the same thing. He [recently] supported a mayoral candidate in 2018 who said that we should spend $50 million on drone surveillance on the South and West Sides of Chicago in order to reduce crime. [Ed. note: that candidate was Bill Daley; the $50 million was proposed for gang intervention, but Daley did propose mass drone surveillance over wide swaths of the city.] That means Bobby Rush hasn’t really learned his lesson. So it’s more or less about when he is voting, what is he voting on.

Also, Bobby Rush has taken $540,000 from the fossil fuel industry over the course of his tenure; this is why he sits on the Committee of Energy & Commerce, and why he called the Green New Deal a “smash and grab.” Who you take money from helps to dictate your decision-making. That’s why my campaign hasn’t taken money from any corporation—the fossil fuel industry or the pharmaceutical industry. I’ve taken the pledge to not take money from any corporation, ever. With that, I think we’re building a movement that is sustainable because people trust when their leaders are only being held accountable by them. The only group of people that I want to be responsive to are the people of the 1st Congressional District. ¬

Jade Yan is a contributing editor to the Weekly. She last wrote about efforts to increase youth voter turnout in the city and state.