Chicago City Wire

A Few Good Women sprang out of a community effort to help beautify Karen Hicks's neighborhood at 87th and Ingleside and spread outward from there.

“We are a group of women that give love and support at any level,” Hicks told Chicago City Wire. “We started with our mass campaign of cleaning up. We call it the 'pop up cleanup.' We go to different communities westside, Southside. What really got it was the trash that I was seeing on the expressway over three years ago. The trash has gotten to be just unbelievably abundant in our communities. So we began just popping up, cleaning up. I made phone calls to IDOT to get involved and talk about the trash along expressways. So that's how we started with our system with the help of Harold Davis.”

Hicks and A Few Good Women have made a pivot to political advocacy.  

“Well, you know, let's just be real. If you look around majority of the Democratic communities, they all look like garbage. And what I'm tired of is that nothing has ever changed. It's almost like we're following a system that has never really been for us. We talk about the Republicans, but Illinois hasn't been Republican. I have seen somebody like Jeff (Coleman, 87th House District candidate) and many others that I've known a long time. And I see how their way of thinking is totally different than what has been program in the state of Illinois,” Hicks said.

Hicks said her family has always been Republican and that she's one.

“What I don't like about the Democrats is that America is a business ... period. Whether we want it to like us or whatever it is. What the Democrats do not do is they do not teach business or civics or how it goes. Everything is around them where they can get it. And if you look around, mostly the Democrats have become what getting in office, but the community has become less,” she said. “You know, somebody like Jeffery Coleman, who I watched him and his father for years do great things. That's why I'm standing behind him, supporting him and I just want to see a change in what we're seeing. And the main change I want to see is the beautification of our communities. Because when you see things better, then you want to do better. But right now, you're not seeing some wonderful things. The schools look like garbage. We don't even have grocery stores in the average black communities. Come on. Something's got to change.”

Hicks said former activist and radio host Harold Davis, who died in 2020, was the inspiration behind A Few Good Women.

“Harold Davis was the one that gave me the idea to start A Few Good Women, because I used to just get out my car with trash bags and start cleaning up,” Hicks said.  

Coleman is a Republican running for the 29th House District in the Nov. 8 general election, South Cook News reported.

He is a businessman who started Barbershop News Network in 2003, which gives barbers and stylists access to more than 200,000 merchants through his network.

“I want to shed light to my community that we need to stop being so blind – we need to spread our options, open our options up to other possibilities and not just blindly follow one party that necessarily doesn't work for us,” Coleman told South Cook News of his reason for running. 

Other black leaders have encouraged their communities to quit corrupt, ineffective politics in favor of common sense candidates, regardless of party affiliation.

The Black Voters Project is aimed at turning the black vote in favor of candidates who will actually improve day-to-day life in the state’s black communities.

"The goal is to organize the black voter block in the state of Illinois. So it's a specific media-targeted door-to-door survey and data-driven effort to engage the black electorate in issues relating to the black community. Not Democratic, not Republican, not Independent, specifically not libertarian, but start with the issues so that we can then push people to the right candidate, not a party. So it's organizing our own vote for the first time outside of party boundaries that will allow us to move our agendas and our exchanges forward,” spokesman Brian Mullins told South Cook News.