RESOLUTION
WHE REAS, The Members of this Chamber are proud to congratulate our friend and colleague, Alderman Daniel ("Danny") Solis, on his twenty-three years of dedicated and outstanding service to the people ofthe 25th Ward and the City of Chicago; and
WHEREAS, Alderman Solis was bom to a working-class family in Monterrey, Mexico in 1949. When he was six, his mother moved him and his five siblings to Chicago to join his father, who had gone ahead ofthe family to find work. Starting at the age of thirteen, Daniel Solis began working various jobs to help support his family. His favorite job lasted for only a short while: selling newspapers outside of City Hall. After graduating from high school, Daniel enrolled in a civil engineering technician apprenticeship to help pay his tuition at the University of Illinois at Chicago, which he attended from 1970 to 1974. In 1972, while working toward a Bachelor's Degree in Education, Daniel Solis enrolled in the National Teacher Corps. Later, he co-founded and directed the Latino Youth Alternative High School in Pilsen in an effort to get teenagers who were using drugs interested in learning; and
WHEREAS, In the early 1970s, when Pilsen became Chicago's first predominantly Mexican-American neighborhood, Daniel Solis committed himself to neighborhood improvement and to political empowerment of the Hispanic community. He served as the first Latino Executive Director of the Pilsen Neighbors Community Council, a grassroots effort to improve housing, build educational opportunities, and organize residents. He served on the Board of Directors of the Eighteenth Street Development Corporation, which worked to create job opportunities for young people, and on the Board of Directors of Gads Hill Center. And he founded the United Neighborhood Organization ("UNO"), where, as Executive Director, he led an effort to help 12,000 immigrants become naturalized citizens and register to vote. While at UNO, Daniel Solis participated in an intens...
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