• MWA membership canvass volunteers with a new member they just signed up.

  • MWA volunteer organizer Valery Trigsted enlists new volunteers at Sundays on State street festival.

Join MWA to End Poverty and Build a Sustainable Future

Midwest Workers Association (MWA) members—among the Chicago area’s lowest-paid workers—have been forging daily progress in building strength through organization, joined by local professionals, students and academics, small business people, clergy and other concerned residents. We refuse to accept deprivation and degradation, and we know that through effective organization, we can and will accomplish fundamental change that leaves no one behind.

  • Nearly 1 in 5 people in Chicago live in poverty

  • While Chicagoans living in the Streeterville neighborhood have a life expectancy of 90, residents of Englewood die on average at age 60

  • Chicago’s minimum wage is below a living wage even for a single adult, and less than half of what it takes to support an adult and one child

  • In 2015, 193 nations including the United States adopted the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development with goals of ending poverty and combating climate change

From climate change to rapidly growing income inequality—it is increasingly clear that the forces that currently control our government value money over our very lives. The lowest-paid workers bear the brunt of their destructive policies, but most of us will be adversely affected sooner or later. Join us in our cause. Change is possible—help make it happen.

Independent organizing, starting with those at the bottom, is the only thing that has ever succeeded in making lasting change that can benefit all working people. Since 1996 Midwest Workers Association (MWA), an all-volunteer membership association of low-paid workers, along with others from all walks of life, has been building an all-volunteer, non-government funded effort to make that change.

Our victories range from operating a free-of-charge 11-point benefit program of emergency food, preventive medical care and more, 365 days a year, to running community education campaigns and mobilizations that have denied nearly $1.5 billion in rate increases to Peoples Gas and ComEd and stopped the city of Chicago from shutting off water to low-income households. MWA members demand full implementation of the Sustainable Development Goals—NOW!