People’s Action Institute member groups The People’s Lobby and ONE Northside are celebrating after Illinois’ state legislature passed a tax on the advertising revenue of big tech companies like Meta, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram, Alphabet, the parent company of Google, and Amazon. The new measure may generate as much as $1.2 billion annually to support health care and education in the state.
“This breakout victory for movement organizations demonstrates how grassroots organizing can fight back against widening wealth gaps, cuts to essential services, ballooning corporate power, and growing authoritarianism,” said TPL’s Shaddi Zeid and ONS’s Hannah Gelder, who wrote about the victory with Maria Bramble from the Grassroots Collective for Truthout.
This victory is the culmination of a multiyear campaign by the organizations to get massive corporations to pay their fair share in Illinois, which has the nation’s eighth-most regressive tax code. Starting in 2015, a broader coalition of groups organized a series of civil disobedience actions with faith leaders to draw attention to the role of big money in state politics, as well as a 15-day, 200-mile march from Chicago to Springfield.
These efforts helped close $125 million in corporate tax loopholes, followed by a measure advanced by State Senator Robert Peters to close an additional $655 million in corporate tax loopholes in 2021. In total, these combined campaigns clawed back more than $1 billion in corporate revenues from 2016 to 2025.
This year, more than ten organizations banded together as the Illinois Revenue Alliance marched on Springfield on Tax Day to call on lawmakers to adequately fund health care and education by taxing corporations and the very rich.
In parallel to the ILRA’s efforts, TPL, ONS and allied organizations, including SEIU Healthcare, Chicago Teachers Union, ICIRR, and Citizen Action Illinois organized massive days of action at the state capitol.
These efforts, which were compounded by acts of civil disobedience at Amazon warehouses, culminated in the passage of the new bill, which was sponsored once again by State Senator Peters and State Representative Norma Hernandez.
“Organizers must continue to connect the dots to show that we can tax extreme wealth and our governments can and must use that revenue to address the needs of the vast majority of Americans,” said Zeid, Gelder and Bramble. “Going on offense with a bigger vision for the kind of world we want to win, and who has the wealth to pay for it, is a key element in fighting authoritarianism.”