Occasional Streetsblog Chicago contributor Micheál Podgers is a key figure in Chicago's sustainable transportation advocacy landscape. He recently served as policy director for the grassroots group Better Streets Chicago. Now he's the policy lead at Climate Cabinet, an organization that describes itself as "Moneyball meets climate policy." More on that in a bit.
A native of Chicago's Northwest Side, Podgers lived in Germany and Austria as part of his studies for the University of Wisconsin. Podgers says living in Europe was formative to his understanding of urban planning and policy, opening his eyes to what could be done in the U.S. Streetsblog caught up with him a few days ago to discuss his experiences with transportation policy during his time at Better Streets Chicago, and what the future holds. This interview has been edited for clarity and brevity.
Cameron Bolton: How did you become involved with Better Streets Chicago?
Micheál Podgers: As I remember it, BSC was an idea that was percolating for a while online... But I remember I was one of several people myself, alongside [former Streetsblog Chicago co-editor] Courtney Cobbs, Kyle Lucas, and a few other people, kind of on the urban planning / bike Twitter space, back in like 2017 to 2019, who were talking about the need to have an organization that was more political and more active.
We started having some conversations, but I was busy with my own life. I was doing a job search at the time. So, it was something that was in my mind, with a little peripheral, and then all of a sudden, in spring 2020, summer 2020, I had a job search that dried up quickly, and I had nothing to do, and I had a resume I needed to build, and I knew these people who were doing this work, and Kyle had started reaching out to me a lot more. And next thing I know, he and I are getting beers with each other a lot on the lakefront. So, this is within weeks or months of BSC getting formally incorporated. The next thing I knew, he was suddenly not so subtly recruiting me to be part of BSC with these beers on the lakefront. And it became a thing where I started just working with the organization.
CB: Are there any projects you and the others at Better Streets Chicago did that you're particularly proud of?
MP: Yeah, a lot. If I had to narrow it down to two, I would say the two projects I'm most proud of have been Plow the Sidewalks and our efforts around DuSable Lake Shore Drive. I'll start with DLSD... In a lot of ways, BSC exists because of... our frustration with how the City and the State had been handling that project and the proposals that they've been presenting. In a lot of ways, the organization got started because we were concerned that as things were moving along, there wasn't enough advocacy on the issue to make a change when the opportunity was going to arise.
And then, of course, Plow The Sidewalks... I'm proud of it for a lot of personal reasons, kind of even more so than our DLSD advocacy because that was the campaign where I and Kyle and a lot of other people at BSC, Alex Nelson joined the organization at that time, for example, like we cut our teeth on organizing and advocacy work, and we figured out how to do it. It was a huge learning opportunity for us. We got a lot of good support and lessons from our main partner, Access Living. [AL Senior Policy Analyst] Laura Saltzman, in particular, was a huge and really important teacher for us in that moment. So we just learned a lot as an organization, [and] we learned a lot as individuals.
CB: What is the main thing that people unfamiliar with Better Street Chicago should know about the organization?
MP: The most important thing to know... is that we really put being grassroots at the heart of how we operate and how we do things, and that could be difficult, because you're constantly having to engage with the public. And that's just to say that when you have to, when you're engaging with the public on a regular basis, it's just a lot of work. It's a lot of work, and it's a lot of energy to maintain, but we really put that at the heart of everything that we're doing. And making sure that as we're doing engagement, we're working to meet people where they're at so going out into the community, going out into the field, but also constantly striving to make sure that we're finding opportunities for members of our community to take leadership on the work that we're doing.
Additionally, as part of that, we are willing to put our energy behind projects that sometimes seem small, but those small projects snowball and have big consequences. For example, we did a lot of work to push [the Chicago Department of Transportation] to improve their redesign of the intersection of Chicago and Halstead. That's one intersection, but that's a weeks of work between organizing volunteers, getting people out to flyer, coordinating communications, eventually getting meetings with CDOT, developing our asks, and pushing for it. That's a lot of work for one intersection, but every single time we have a success on one intersection, or one block, or whatever it may be, that further ingrains the institutional changes that we want to see.
CB: You have recently started a new job. Is there anything you're able to divulge about that at this time?
MP: Yeah, I can introduce the organization, and a little bit of what I'm doing. In January, I started at an organization called Climate Cabinet. I'm the Midwest policy lead. So, as I've jokingly said, I'm taking the show on the road. Instead of working just at the local level of Chicago, I'll be working across four states, Illinois, Wisconsin, Michigan, and Minnesota, which I'm so excited to do. So, in terms of things that I'll be doing, my day-to-day, it doesn't change much from what I was doing at Better Streets Chicago; I'm continuing to do policy work. I'm continuing to research, prepare reports, and do thought leadership on issues. I'm just scaling it up to a regional level.
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