The reelection of Donald Trump as president of the United States promises great changes in the coming new year. However, there are politicians who have chosen to resist Trump and his administration. They often claim to do so because they believe they are more moral, virtuous, and human than the incoming president. Chicago mayor Brandon Johnson is one of them.
On the morning after the election, after he had campaigned for Vice President Kamala Harris in North Carolina, Johnson released an official statement from his mayoral office saying that "our president-elect has made direct threats against the most vulnerable and marginalized in our society."
He added: "Chicagoans can be assured that they have a mayor who will not bend, who will not break when it comes to protecting our city, our values, and our neighbors. When it comes to fighting back against any hate, we will not flinch."
There you have it: Brandon Johnson, the mighty moral man who would save us all.
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Only if an ounce of that were true.
The reality is that Johnson has been a force against too many of us Chicagoans. It is because of men like him that I went to the American public for help in raising the funds to build my Economic and Leadership Opportunity Center on the South Side of Chicago. I have not received so much as a good word from him.
This is not surprising, since this man has not done much for public school education. The elementary school down the block from me has barely any kids reading or doing math on grade level. Why doesn’t Johnson, a former teacher, care about these kids? Where is the morality in sentencing kids to schools-in-name only?
It turns out that he was too busy launching a campaign to shut down some of Chicago’s best performing high schools: the CPS Selective Enrollment Schools. Many Black kids, including those from my neighborhood, fled to those schools to escape the failing ones. Now, Johnson wanted to shut down these schools because it wouldn’t be fair to the Black kids stuck in poor performing schools. You can’t make this up.
It was only after public outcry and pushback from a few government officials that Johnson backed off this issue — for now.
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I couldn’t help the irony when Johnson posited him as a defender of the migrants that have moved into the city en masse. He said, "We’re going to defend the people of this city because…President Trump, his threat is not just toward new arrivals, and undocumented families" Mayor Johnson said. "His threats are also against Black families."
How is he defending Black families when he threatens to shut down schools? And how is he defending Black families when he allows migrants into his city without any vetting and then allocates millions upon millions of dollars to them?
In a recent city meeting, a woman wearing a "Chicago flips red" shirt told Johnson that he was going to be "held accountable" for appointing a deputy mayor for "immigrant, migrant, and refugee rights" and spending freely on these people when the city is so far in debt that it’s not funny.
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Another speaker said in the same meeting, "We gonna talk about this budget, about the strange things that’s happening, because again, your name was on this executive order of May 2023, this executive order for immigration, migrants and refugee rights. You caused all this money to go to illegal immigrants."
Yet another one said, "No one appointed a monarch to rule over the people of Chicago."
Mayor Johnson’s response? "Sergeant at arms, please remove these individuals from the chambers."
Johnson has appointed so many people to his administration that the public no longer has an accurate idea of who is responsible for what. All we know is that far too many of them are making six figures and apparently enough of them are people of color, allowing Johnson to brag that he has the most diverse administration of all time.
He may have that, but is he a moral man who truly cares about his people? Or is he an ideologue who uses resistance to Trump as a shield against his failures as a mayor? I strongly believe it is the latter. Johnson is not a friend to the city of Chicago. He is not a friend to the people. He’s a friend to the old rot of Chicago, institutional corruption.
That is why for this coming New Year I have made it my resolution to continue the fight for a better Chicago from my tiny corner in the city. Trump may be the president, but he is nothing without us, The People. That is why we must resist the Brandon Johnsons of our cities.
