South Side of Chicago closes ranks against Trump

Chicago, IL – Over 400 community members from the South Side of Chicago gathered March 30 for a community listening session featuring Mayor Brandon Johnson.

After more than two months of attacks on Chicago from the White House, the mayor spoke and answered questions about his platform and in defense of the city.

The listening session was held at the Trinity United Church of Christ, an historic civil rights church in the Washington Heights neighborhood on the South Side.

Frank Chapman, field organizer of the Chicago Alliance Against Racist and Political Repression (CAARPR), opened the event with a call for unity. “Black, brown and working-class Chicagoans must unite with Brandon Johnson to face down the racist and reactionary agenda of mass deportations and drastic public service cuts wielded by Republicans at the local and national level,” Chapman said.

Unprecedented level of attacks on immigrants, workers

In his first 60 days, Trump has signed over 100 executive orders attacking progressive causes, dismantling public services and laying off federal workers. His administration has particular animosity for Chicago, a union city under Black, progressive leadership.

“There is a war being perpetrated against Chicago by Donald Trump,” Chapman said.

“But the war was underway before January. Since the spring of 2022, Republican governors in Texas, Arizona and Florida have trafficked hundreds of thousands of migrants to Democratic-led cities around the country in a racist – and costly – political ploy.

“Texas Governor Greg Abbott has spent $148 million to bus over 100,000 migrants to Democratic cities across the country, according to reporting by National Public Radio.

“By the fall of 2023, Chicago was receiving up to 25 busloads of migrants a day.”

Chapman emphasized, “Some of Johnson’s enemies have falsely claimed he invited the migrants to Chicago. They were sent here to torpedo the Johnson administration. They sent them to create distraction and disunity among our people so that we could not focus on the progressive agenda that this administration was elected on.”

But even as thousands of families were dropped off in communities already stretched thin by decades of disinvestment, Johnson upheld Chicago’s sanctuary city status and worked to provide housing and human services by leaning on community partners, including Black-owned businesses.

In response, Republicans in Washington, DC called Johnson to testify in a congressional hearing at the beginning of March in an attempt to intimidate mayors of sanctuary cities. CAARPR mobilized two vans of Chicago organizers and community members to DC to support their mayor as he defended Chicago for providing a home for immigrants.

The case for Mayor Johnson’s program

For his part, when the mayor took the pulpit, he described Chicago politics before his election in 2023. “It was government of, by, and for the wealthy and the well-connected; a government that responded to the interests of lawyers, bankers and investors, and only some developers; it was a government that responded to the financial advisors, school closers, privatizers and billionaires.

“But now we have a government of the people and for the people for the first time in 40 years.”

Johnson spent much of his 20-minute speech describing the efforts of his administration to invest in Chicago communities: fixing streets, bridges and lighting in public spaces; replacing lead pipes in 30,000 homes; building thousands of new affordable housing units on the West Side; adding thousands of homeless shelter beds, and eliminating the waitlist for shelter requests.

In the realm of health and safety, investments include the opening of a free mental health clinic on the far South Side. There was a big struggle to save that clinic from being closed, a struggle against one of the most hated mayors in Chicago history, Rahm Emanuel. Emanuel was such a tool of the billionaires, the late Chicago Teachers Union President Karen Lewis dubbed him, “Mayor 1%.”

Johnson is the first mayor since Harold Washington who has fought to reverse the trend of neoliberal disinvestment that has plagued Chicago’s South and West Sides for decades.

Addressing the biggest labor battle going on in the city, Johnson announced, “For the first time in 15 years, we could get a teachers’ contract without a strike or a strike vote. No other mayor could have brought together the board of education, the mayor’s office and CTU to the table to make sure that our children get what they deserve, which is a fully funded, well rounded education.”

At the end of his remarks, Johnson addressed the attacks from the White House, stating, “Let me make one thing very clear: the individual that is engaging in one of the most iniquitous acts of government, that is working to intimidate us, to disrupt the evolution of our democracy, to get us to surrender our humanity – no matter what the president says or does, we will continue to move to build a better, stronger Chicago that works for everyone.”

After the mayor’s presentation on his platform, he answered a series of questions submitted by community members and selected by the organizers. The questions touched on police accountability, education, housing, Black and brown-owned businesses and mass incarceration.

When asked about what he can do to stop police crimes, Johnson mentioned the mayoral task force dedicated to rooting out extremism within the Chicago Police Department (CPD), and said he would meet with any family seeking justice for a loved one harmed by police.

Johnson conceded that there is an issue with the CPD and excessive use of force and lamented the huge sums of taxpayer money spent on police misconduct settlements, which he said could be spent on affordable housing or other progressive causes.

When he first was introduced, several people in the audience raised their voices to demand justice for a mentally ill Black man recently killed by CPD. While the protesters were there to disrupt the event, the mayor had responded with the empathy he felt for that man, having lost one of his two brothers to drug addiction and mental illness.

Unity against reactionary Trump agenda

From the perspective of CAARPR, Frank Chapman said, “There is no need for total agreement on all points. There is a need to unite in struggle against the reactionary attacks at an unprecedented level.”

“Whatever differences we may have, they are not equal in any way to the differences we have with the Trump administration,” Chapman said.

The meeting closed with about half the audience coming forward to shake hands with the mayor. Many expressed to Chapman and the organizers from Trinity their appreciation for the chance to hear the mayor and committed to the fight against the Trump agenda.

#ChicagoIL #IL #PeoplesStruggles #Trump #CAARPR #BrandonJohnson #

Source: https://fightbacknews.org/south-side-of-chicago-closes-ranks-against-trump?pk_campaign=rss-feed