C of C 6-30-18 David Mihalyfy, Labor and Education Activist for Alderman
Channel: Tim Bolger
Date: 2018-08-23

David Mihalyfy, Labor and Education Activist for Alderman (11th)
"Let our Light Shine" Campaign

Meeting # 3,483 - Mihalyfy is running on a platform of expanded economic and community development under the slogan “Let Our Light Shine.”  

Mihalyfy’s proposed policies include a home solar energy program to reduce cost-of-living, create jobs, and spur local business; advocacy for a newly-built neighborhood CPS high schoo; a Chicago flag-themed “mural corridor” with paid summer jobs for youth; and renovation of a local theater, presently closed, as a non-profit move house serving the entire community with kids movies, recent blockbusters, and films in languages like Chinese and Spanish.

He has signed the Illinois State Board of Elections’ Code of Fair Campaign Practices, becoming the first 11th Ward aldermanic candidate ever to do so.

A current SEIU HCII member working in home healthcare and elder care, Mihalyfy has participated in many unionization drives, including 2 recent campaigns that brought 2500+ workers into AFT-IFT and 200+ workers into Teamsters Local 743. As part of an ongoing SEIU Local 73 unionization campaign, he also gave testimony before Chicago City Council’s Education Committee and helped obtain a unanimous resolution in favor of the unionization of contingent instructors at Chicagoland’s private colleges and universities.

As a freelance writer on higher education’s accessibility crisis, Mihalyfy has consistently fought the bureaucratic waste causing student debt. Most notably, his financial investigative reporting about his then-employer the University Chicago revealed that 8 high-level administrators took more than $7.6 million in payraises over 5 years, even as the school moved toward and received a credit downgrade. Mihalyfy’s uncovering of outsize payraises later informed Crain’s Chicago Business coverage probing the school’s financial management.