A NOTE FROM BILL.

I learned the value of community early in my life. When I was 10, a fire raged through my family home, taking the lives of my mom and my little brother. I survived only because our neighbors saw the flames, climbed onto the roof, broke a window, and pulled me out.

In that moment, I became a survivor: a child who would grow up being shaped by loss, love, and the steadfast hands of those neighbors who saved my life.

I grew up on the Northwest Side of Chicago, in a neighborhood called Sauganash, primarily populated by police officers, judges, firefighters, teachers, city attorneys — everyday people who worked for the city, and lived by a code of service.

When city services work — when public safety, mental health, education, infrastructure and leadership, all function together — those services can save lives. I know, because they helped save mine.

I have carried that understanding through everything I have done — whether serving as General Counsel for the State of Illinois or building a law firm from the ground up. I have seen the difference a good government can make, and in contrast, what happens when it falls apart.

City services — the backbone of what makes a city livable — are falling apart. We are losing not just people — but trust. Families are leaving because schools feel inaccessible with unsustainable budgets. If our streets don’t feel safe, neighborhood businesses cannot afford to stay open and people feel unheard and unseen, why should they stay? Not all families can afford to leave. How then do they trust that the city can educate their kids, keep their streets clean, protect their family, and build a future? That trust can only be rebuilt if leadership earns it — not with slogans, but with action.

And I know the cost of inaction. My grandfather was murdered when I was one. He was coming home from the bank when he was followed and gunned down in his own garage. My grandmother witnessed it all. It broke her in the same way too many in our city know all too well — through the devastating ripple of gun violence.

Years later, I became a victim of violent crime myself. I was walking home after a concert when four men circled me, sprayed me with mace, pistol-whipped me, and held a gun to my head. I learned later that the group had murdered six other people. I survived — barely. But I still carry it. 

To this day, I stop and let people pass me on the sidewalk if I hear footsteps behind me. That’s what fear does. That’s what trauma does — it lives inside you. And it shapes the way I lead. Because I’m not here to throw around talking points about safety. I’ve lived the fear. I’ve lived through the aftermath. And I want no one — no child, no parent, no neighbor — to have to live through what I did.

Decades later, I watched my younger half brother slip through the cracks of a mental health system that wasn’t built to hold him. Diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia in his 20s, he was smart, kind, and deeply sensitive — and the world didn’t know what to do with him. He wanted to contribute, to belong. But as his illness worsened, and as COVID pushed him into isolation, the gaps in the system swallowed him whole. We lost him — not because we didn’t try, but because we didn’t have the support families need. 

These are not just my stories — they are our stories. Too many families in this city carry similar grief. Lives stolen by violence. Futures lost to untreated mental illness or inaction. Systems that are too broken, too slow, or too indifferent. I believe in city services. Not as line items in a budget — but as lifelines. And I believe leadership means taking these deeply personal wounds and turning them into action for all of us.

I understand what it means to lose someone to senseless violence and to be a victim of that same senseless violence.  I understand what it’s like to feel helpless in the face of broken systems. And I understand that when we talk about public safety, mental health, and city services — we’re not just talking about policies. We’re talking about people’s lives.

Losing my mother and brother made me understand, all too early, the fragility of life. Losing my second brother to mental illness decades later — after watching him fall through the cracks of a broken mental health system — made me realize how fragile our systems are, too. My dad, through all of this, modeled for me that fragility is not a reason to give up. It is a reason to fight.

We must return to what made this city work: a shared belief that government is here to serve everyone, not just those with influence. The city should function for every child walking to school, every grandparent trying to cross the street safely, every small business owner trying to support their families and have ownership in their future.

Everyone means everyone.

I have spent a lifetime seeing where this city, my hometown, is strong, and also where it falls short. Now, I am stepping up — not for power or legacy or a title, but for my love of the people of this amazing place we all call home. I hope you'll join me.

Yours in Service,

Bill