What can the coalition do that hasn't already been tried?

We need unemployed professionals to hone their skills assisting local businesses, new and old. If you are between jobs and need a reason to make new connections, feel free to take up the shield of the IICC-IESI and volunteer your skills on a short term project for a local business. Choose a business from our forum or suggest a local business that faces particularly fierce competition.

We can more clearly identify our locally owned and operated businesses.

We don't answer to those who call Illinois "just another fly-over state," we answer to you.

Not many businesses can say that. The best businesses are those that don't have far away investors, foreign manufacturers, and far away corporate officers who rake in $Millions in salaries and bonuses while their sales clerks who live here must go to the food bank every week, apply for food stamps, and turn over their paychecks to PayDay Loan outlets that charge outrageous interest rates.


H. Ross Perot ran for President in 1992 on the platform that NAFTA, the North American Free Trade Agreement, would create what he called, "A Giant Sucking Sound of jobs leaving the United States of America."

He was right. Jobs left America, and the cheaper labor costs and lack of safety and environmental regulations overseas has enriched just a few industries that are bringing their cheaper products here to compete with local merchants.

They have so much money that they can drown out local business advertising. They literally overspend on advertising to artificially drive up the price of advertising beyond the real fair market value, and they can operate their businesses at such great losses that they are driving down prices to far below the real fair market value.