- Pritzker Fellows
- Former Fellows
- John Bouman
John Bouman
President of the Shriver Center on Poverty Law & Chairman of the “Vote Yes for Fair Tax” Illinois Ballot Initiative Committee
Winter 2020 Pritzker Fellow
Seminar Series: “Striving for Equity: Lessons in Anti-Poverty Policy Advocacy”
John Bouman has been president of the Shriver Center since 2007, having been the leader of its advocacy program since 1996. During these years, the Shriver Center has maintained a leading multi-issue law and policy role fighting poverty in Illinois, while also building a national program of training and information for anti-poverty advocates and strong multi- state networks of organizations and practitioners aimed at transmitting state and local strategies and victories across multiple states.
He was a leader in the design and implementation of positive aspects of Illinois’ new welfare law in 1997, and he spearheaded the statewide efforts in Illinois to create both the FamilyCare program, which provides health care insurance for up to 400,000 working poor parents of minor children, and All Kids, the first state plan to extend health coverage to every child regardless of immigration status. He has consulted and co-counseled with advocates in many states; helped draft numerous pieces of legislation; given hundreds of presentations; published extensively; and served as counsel in numerous federal and state cases, including Memisovski v. Maram, which established substantial reforms in children’s health care in Illinois. He led litigation that forced Illinois to continue paying for health care and related services during the 2015-17 budget impasse. He currently leads the Responsible Budget Coalition, an effort bringing together more than 300 diverse organizations to advocate for state revenue and budget reform in Illinois. He chairs the ballot initiative committee, Vote Yes for Fair Tax, which is organized under Illinois campaign finance law to win an amendment to the Illinois Constitution on the November 2020 ballot that would allow the state to adopt a graduated rate income tax.
Before joining the Shriver Center in 1996, he worked for two decades at the Legal Assistance Foundation of Chicago, where he spent ten years as a high-volume storefront legal aid lawyer in Chicago neighborhoods, and then supervised public benefits advocacy. Among his honors, he has received the Kutak-Dodds Prize from the National Legal Aid and Defender Association, John Minor Wisdom Public Service and Professionalism Award from the American Bar Association’s Litigation Section, Child Health Advocate Award from the American Academy of Pediatrics, and Excellence in Pro Bono and Public Interest Service Award from the United States District Court and Federal Bar Association. A 1975 graduate of Valparaiso University School of Law and former board member of the Chicago Transit Authority, John currently serves on the boards of Illinois Partners for Human Service, the Center for Law and Social Policy, and the Retirement Research Foundation.
Seminars
“Striving for Equity: Lessons in Anti-Poverty Policy Advocacy”
Many important public policy issues affecting people in poverty need - or are faced with - significant change, from health care reform to immigration to criminal justice to public finance and much more. How do these issues arise? How do they attain importance on the public agenda? How do advocates for change or reform succeed or fail? Who are the players having an impact on policy? What are their roles and what strategies do they employ?
This seminar series will examine these questions from the perspective of a non-governmental lawyer and policy advocate with four decades of experience working on poverty issues. Each seminar will be illustrated with examples from successful efforts he has led or participated in, with added context from guest speakers.
John Bouman will talk about his 44 years of experience as a public interest lawyer, from ten years of high-volume storefront legal aid in Chicago neighborhoods (mostly Uptown and Englewood) to working on big reforms of policies and systems as a front line staff attorney and ultimately CEO of the Shriver Center on Poverty Law. Using examples from a long career in advocacy, this seminar will provide an overview of the ways in which issues arise, the many strands of activity that comprise an advocacy campaign, and the coordination of all these strands. This seminar will introduce the elements of successful policy advocacy, which will be developed in more detail in later seminars.
Welfare reform in the late 90s was a sea change for poor families, ending the 60-year policy entitling eligible families to assistance, re-vamping the amount and flow of federal funds to states, and giving states unprecedented authority to change dozens of rules and procedures. Each state would then enact its own law implementing its version of the reforms. In 1997, at the very end of the Illinois legislative session, state officials dumped a 300-page welfare reform law into committee, way too late for community leaders and advocates to change the public politics or have any influence on it. Or was it too late? We’ll look at how my Shriver Center team was able, over a weekend, to produce a comprehensive set of amendments that led to negotiations that significantly improved the law. How do lawyers, lobbyists, public officials and other “insiders” play the inside game to get policy measures through? What goes on “under the dome” and in the back rooms among the power players with settled relationships and substantive credibility? How are these insiders accountable to the people who need the significant change? And who holds them accountable?
Special Guest: Olivia Golden, Executive Director, Center on Law and Social Policy in Washington, DC
The Shriver Center knew that there were hidden openings in the late-90s welfare reform law and children’s health insurance law that allowed states to access federal funds that would dramatically expand health coverage to low-income working people. But this classic “inside” game knowledge could not by itself move the issue forward. It needed and got a decisive boost from organizing and people power to move the politics around the law. The result was the FamilyCare expansion of health coverage to hundreds of thousands of families. How do you marry insider expertise with “people power” and political punch? More importantly, how do you do it in a way that respects the community players, enhances their power, and balances big movement goals with pragmatic decisions about incremental progress? What are the difficult trade-offs that have to be made? And how are these relationships at work today in the Healthy Illinois campaign which is aimed at gaining coverage for all undocumented people?
Special Guests: Josh Hoyt, Executive Director, Partnership for New Americans and former Lead Organizer for United Power for Action and Justice on FamilyCare; and Rebecca Shi, Executive Director, Illinois Business Immigration Coalition
When Congress decided in 2005 to require original birth certificates for Medicaid eligibility, it immediately threatened millions of the most vulnerable people in the country. The Shriver Center launched litigation, but it was the compelling stories of the endangered people that drove the successful advocacy against the requirement. Powerful stories about the deprived and relentlessly fraught lives of people in the Henry Horner Homes public housing project in the 1980s elevated public housing issues on the policy agenda. The use of narrative is essential to lifting the political importance of issues, as well as to driving the advocacy for change. Word choices and message strategies are crucial. Deeply funded conservative organizations have concentrated on media and message to win political victories; progressive forces have not been as focused or successful on this front. What are the roles of stories, messaging and media in effectively reaching the general public? How can progressives be more effective?
Special Guests: David Axelrod, Director, University of Chicago Institute of Politics; and Alex Kotlowitz, Author of "An American Summer" & “There are No Children Here”
Important research data on the powerful impact of early childhood education programs on outcomes later in life (“return on investment”) have driven advocacy to fund and improve those programs. On another front, the ability of an expert to retrieve, clean and analyze administrative data in Medicaid provided crucial evidence in winning a Shriver Center lawsuit that resulted in major improvements in children’s healthcare. Here we are on a campus famous for quantitative skills and analysis, social science, and evaluation, what is the role of quantitative and qualitative research in an advocacy campaign? Can research trigger a campaign? How can data be used to advance or hinder a campaign? How can you take what you are learning here at the University of Chicago to become a compelling advocate for equity?
Special Guests: Mark Bouman, Chicago Region Program Director at the Field Museum’s Keller Science Action Center; and Harold Pollack, Helen Ross Professor UChicago’s School of Social Service Administration, Co-Founder of the UChicago Crime Lab & Co-Director of the UChicago Health Lab
Bouman has been involved as counsel in dozens of lawsuits with significant consequences in state and federal courts. These have involved issues including disabilities, housing, healthcare, cash assistance, Food Stamps, and consumer issues, among others. Litigation is the most aggressive tool our society has for forcing someone to do what they do not want to do or stopping them from doing what they want, particularly when it harms vulnerable populations. Lawsuits are also very effective news hooks. What are the advantages and pitfalls of litigation? How can litigation be deployed as a part of a larger strategy? How can it enhance and not undermine community power?
Special Guests: Kate Walz, Vice President of Advocacy, Senior Director of Litigation, and Director of Housing Justice at the Shriver Center on Poverty Law; and Colleen Connell, Executive Director, ACLU of Illinois
The Illinois Constitution requires that the state’s income tax place the same tax rate on everyone regardless of income. There will be an amendment on the ballot in November 2020 that would allow the state to adopt a graduated rate income tax, where people with higher income pay a higher rate than people with lower income. Illinois campaign finance law requires that activity in support of a ballot measure be organized into a ballot initiative committee. Bouman is chair of the ballot committee in support of what is known as the Fair Tax. The Fair Tax ballot initiative is an ongoing campaign that presents in real-time all of the aspects of policy advocacy examined in this seminar. What is it exactly, and why is it vital to people in poverty? How does it address (or how can it redress) inequality in Illinois? What are the “facts” (research)? It is set for the ballot in 2020, so now getting Fair Tax into law is mostly a campaign to win the hearts and minds of voters. What is left of the inside game? What are the strategies for the outside game – organizing, message, media? What are the challenges? How can you be a player?
Special Guests: John Cameron, Director of Politics & Community Engagement at AFSCME Council 31
Bouman will recap some of the campaigns discussed in the seminar, with a focus on how all of the different pieces were organized into a whole and managed. What are some approaches or tools for weaving all of these strands into a coordinated campaign? What about funding? What about non-profit tax laws limiting lobbying and electioneering? Who gets a vote in the coalition? How do you allow for crunch-time decisions so that the process aids and doesn’t inhibit decisive action? Those attending the seminar will form small groups to surface an issue and brainstorm how, as quarterback of a campaign, they would design it and bring together the various parts examined in the seminar. The groups will report out and get feedback from Bouman and the larger group.