CHURCH
Lindsay Church

CHOOSE YOUR FIGHTER

A LINE IN
THE SAND

Raised in poverty. Queer, non-binary, disabled post-9/11 veteran. Reluctant at first, but unwilling to let someone else decide who gets a voice.

A Reluctant Fighter Steps Forward

Lindsay Church steps into the race for Congress the way they have stepped into every other fight of their life: reluctantly at first, but utterly unwilling to let someone else decide who gets a voice. Raised in poverty by a single mom who served in the military, a queer, non-binary, disabled post-9/11 Navy veteran, and a nationally known advocate for under-represented veterans, Church is now running as an independent in Illinois's 4th Congressional District—one of the bluest, most machine-driven seats in the country.

For them, this campaign is less a career move than a line in the sand about democracy, accountability, and who gets to choose their fighter.

Church is the sort of organizer who has always preferred the plural we to the singular "I." In the world of advocacy, they are most comfortable behind the scenes: building coalitions, whipping votes, and testifying in rooms where decisions get made but cameras rarely linger.

"I never thought I'd be running for office. But here I am."

They describe this candidacy not as a solo bid but as a campaign rooted in community survival. The language they default to is collective: a "we" that spans neighbors carrying passports in their pockets, organizers with whistles on their keychains, and families terrified of a knock on the door in the middle of the night.

WE, NOT I

Lindsay Church - Chicago
Watch: Lindsay Church | A Line In The Sand — IVA Feature
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WATCH THE FULL FEATURE: LINDSAY CHURCH

Life in a District Where ICE Never Left

To understand why Church is running, you have to understand where they live. In the southwest of Chicago, in suburbs like Berwyn, Cicero, and Broadview, ICE is not an abstract acronym debated on cable news; it is a daily presence driving quiet terror through streets and storefronts.

"This hasn't been hypothetical in this district for a minute. Ever since the ICE raids started, they've been decimating Cicero, southwest Chicago, portions of our district."

Their stories are granular and local: protesters pepper-sprayed in the face until they feared losing their sight; people killed during detention attempts; six ICE officers converging on a resident as Church was leaving a friends-and-family campaign launch. Grocery stores stand half-empty, restaurants sit quiet, small businesses wither as families decide it is safer to stay home.

In Church's district, people clip whistles to their keys and circulate an agreed-upon code: one blast to tell the block ICE is nearby, a moving chorus of warning as neighbors drive six-block loops sounding the alarm.

This is the backdrop to the Minneapolis killing of Renee Good by an ICE officer—a death Church insists on naming plainly as murder. As a veteran who has carried a weapon in service, they dissect the footage with the cold precision of someone who understands the rules of engagement.

"We have never trained as military professionals to hold a weapon and a cell phone at the same time."

What lingers for Church is not only the violence but the familiarity. The audio, they say, echoes the language of domestic abusers; the power dynamics feel less like law enforcement and more like an intimate terror replayed on a public stage. They reject the attempt to cloak the officer's behavior in the language of trauma or post-traumatic stress. If someone is so triggered that they cannot control their weapon, "this man should not have been in the field."

Chicago Skyline
SURVIVAL

THE
CODE

Referencing the killing of Renee Good: "It is rage, not fear. Sympathy for PTSD cannot become a hall pass for state violence."

"IT MIGHT BE LEGALLY ALLOWED, BUT COLLUSION IS COLLUSION. THE ONLY THING YOU HAVE TO LOSE IS A CHOICE."

THE RIGGED SYSTEM

The Insider

0

Signatures needed for the anointed successor.

The Independent

0

Signatures Church must collect in twelve weeks.

"Do you want the person who stole your voice, or the candidate willing to fight?"

A System Rigged Long Before Election Day

Church's run is as much an indictment of party machinery as it is a campaign against Trumpism and ICE's excesses. Illinois's 4th District is deep blue, roughly two-thirds Democratic; whoever wins the Democratic primary effectively wins the seat.

So when the incumbent quietly informed his chief of staff that he would retire, she quietly gathered petition signatures from party insiders—state senators, representatives, aldermen—filed at the deadline, and then watched as her boss announced he was stepping down.

"It might be legally allowed, but collusion is collusion and wrong is wrong."

To them, the issue is not just procedure—it's contempt: the message that voters in the district are too "stupid" or too passive to deserve a real choice. While the insider candidate needed just 694 signatures to secure a spot on the primary ballot—and one candidate reportedly made it on with only 54—an independent like Church will have to collect over 10,000, realistically closer to 15,000, to survive legal challenges.

They do the math out loud: 15,000 signatures in twelve weeks, more than 1,200 a week, and a five-city, block-by-block plan that starts right where they live in Berwyn, a city with roughly 20,000 households. The work is punishing and intimate. Every signature is a conversation.

"The only thing you have to lose is a choice. The only thing you have to lose is your voice."

For them, this race is a referendum on how democracy should work. Do you accept a successor chosen behind closed doors, or do you demand the right to choose your fighter?

FIGHT

"I'm willing to take on the hardest fight I've ever taken on in my whole life. Why not this one? Why not us?"

Chicago Skyline

LEGISLATIVE
SCARS

Critics rail about "radical gender ideologists," but Church counters with something older: patriotism rooted in service.

Church is not shy about the stakes. No openly non-binary person has ever appeared on a general election ballot for federal office.

DEBORAH SAMPSON ACT

Landmark reforms for women veterans.

VANESSA GUILLÉN REFORMS

Changes to the UCMJ regarding sexual assault and harassment.

PACT ACT

Advocating for toxic exposure legislation.

MINORITY VETERANS OF AMERICA

Built from a scrappy idea into a national organization.

A Historic Candidacy and a Different Kind of Patriotism

Church is not shy about the stakes. America has not elected a true independent to Congress in roughly three decades, they point out, and no openly non-binary person has ever appeared on a general election ballot for federal office. Simply qualifying for November would be historic. Winning would be seismic.

Yet they resist the notion that their identity alone is the story. When critics rail about "radical gender ideologists," Church counters with something simpler and older: belief in America. Their patriotism is rooted in service, in the idea that this country is worth the pain of fighting for it—whether that means standing up to ICE on a Chicago street or standing up to a party machine that assumes your loyalty is automatic.

They point to a record that predates this campaign: pushing landmark reforms like the Deborah Sampson Act for women veterans and changes to the Uniform Code of Military Justice in the wake of the murder of Army Specialist Vanessa Guillén; advocating for toxic exposure legislation that helped lead to the PACT Act; building Minority Veterans of America from a scrappy idea into a national organization.

These are not theoretical commitments. They are legislative scars and policy wins, earned in rooms where very few non-binary, disabled, queer veterans are invited, much less listened to.

"I'm willing to take on the hardest fight I've ever taken on in my whole life. Why not this one? Why not us? Why not today?"

Building a Movement, Not Just a Campaign

If traditional campaigns are built on donor lists and consultant memos, Church's run feels more like an organizing drive turned inside out. Their first ask is not for money but for bodies: 250 volunteers, each knocking 100 doors to collect 25,000 signatures—enough cushion to survive the inevitable challenges from party lawyers.

They want people at train stations, on stoops, in the small moments when commutes and grocery runs intersect with civic life.

Money matters, too, but they draw hard lines: no party money, no PAC checks, no big-ticket benefactors swooping in with six-figure buys. The campaign will live or die on small donors and shared links, on people who believe that "person-to-person, people-to-people" politics is not nostalgia but necessity.

Church's horizon stretches beyond Illinois. They speak with a kind of fierce admiration about older Iranian women defying a brutal regime, mouths bloody but spirits unbroken, insisting that the next generation must not inherit their fear. For Church, that image is less a foreign news item than a mirror.

In the end, Lindsay Church's candidacy is an act of stubborn hope. It is rooted in a belief that democracy is not something you consume but something you build, petition by petition, door by door, whistle by whistle.

The Movement

STUBBORN HOPE

In the end, this candidacy is an act of stubborn hope. It is rooted in a belief that democracy is not something you consume but something you build.

PETITION BY PETITION
DOOR BY DOOR
WHISTLE BY WHISTLE

This is winnable.

Today, IVA is endorsing Lindsay for U.S. House — Illinois’s 4th. They joins our 2026 slate of independent veteran candidates running to break the two-party stranglehold on Washington. Last cycle we endorsed 11. Four won. This cycle, we’re playing bigger — and Lindsay is the kind of candidate who shows what’s possible.

They’s running on things both parties claim to care about and neither has delivered:

  • Breaking the party machinery that hands seats to insiders behind closed doors
  • Real reform for veterans — building on the Deborah Sampson Act and UCMJ accountability
  • Honest, accountable representation for Illinois’s 4th — petition by petition, door by door

We need your help to put them over the top.

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