Josip “Joe” Trutin, candidate for state representative of the second district is a lifelong resident of Chicago’s southwest side and a business owner in his community. Though he has little political experience, he has been a long-time advocate for his area and has worked on several grassroots campaigns; something, he says, that has given him insight into local issues. Trutin spoke to EXTRA about his decision to run for state representative and his goals for improving the community.

Why have you decided to run for this position?

I have helped out other candidates before. Two years ago, a lot of the teen centers that I worked with, especially one that’s just a couple blocks away from me, all of their budgets were zeroed out. One closed its doors for a summer. If everybody’s losing their money… where is all this money going? So I found out that out of our state districts, we were one of the lowest funded districts when it came to special funding, which given that we’re a low-income area, I find completely unacceptable. I even found out that there’s a Popeye’s chicken at 76th and Racine that was given half a million dollars to open up a training facility. That wasn’t even a Popeye’s Chicken franchise that was based in Illinois, it was based in Georgia. It was just something I was appalled with. We have one of the lowest income areas in the whole city. We need more resources to be able to help everybody out around here so at that point I was like, ‘I’m angry, I can’t take it anymore.’ So I got myself on the ballot.

Do you have political experience?

I’ve worked with a lot of grassroots campaigns. I’ve always been active even going back to when I ...