By: Mark Glennon*
Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson outdid himself yesterday.
Earlier, a Wall Street Journal editorial said, about his empty comments on Chicago violence over Labor Day weekend: “Yes, he actually said that, which goes a long way to explaining why gunmen patrol the streets with impunity.”
But Tuesday, about last weekend’s number of shootings — the worst in ten years for the first week in June — Johnson said it’s the critics of Chicago’s violence who are wrong, saying, “What I find disingenuous is, where were these individuals when schools were being shut down and closed? Did they have a critique then?”
Are you kidding, Mayor Johnson?
It was your Chicago Teachers Union, where you worked and that played a major role electing you, that was behind Chicago’s indefensible, catastrophically long shutdown of its schools ostensibly because of Covid. That shutdown lasted long after even the Center for Disease Control and left-leaning press said it was safe to open schools. Critics sure did “have a critique then,” including Wirepoints, among many others. We wrote often to reason, shame, insult, and beg obsequiously to get schools open, but your CTU fought relentlessly against opening.
Maybe Johnson was referring not to the Covid closing but to the shutdown of empty schools ten years ago. Regardless, the point remains the same. And still today, nearly a third of CPS’ 478 traditional schools are less than 50 percent full. Further consolidation is needed and that certainly shouldn’t justify more killing.
Johnson was just getting started. He went on to give a speech criticizing the media for its coverage of Chicago violence, though he didn’t name names. To the Chicagoland Chamber of Commerce he said the best thing you can offer to young people is jobs. That’s good, but then he said what he wants: “Not criticism, not demonization of a city that is divided over whether young people should be seen or heard. We’re not going to allow the press or the media to dictate who our young people are.”
“In fact,” he said, “if you don’t live in Chicago and you aren’t offering solutions, stop talking about us.”
Forget that, Mayor Johnson.
All Americans have a stake in the destruction of what was once among the world’s greatest cities. As for jobs, you and your fellow progressives seem intent on running job creators away. Your and the CTU’s hatred of capitalism is open and notorious.
And you say critics aren’t offering solutions?
Among those that have been offered: Ask for legislation vesting Cook County prosecutorial authority in somebody other than Kim Foxx. Eliminate the paperwork and liability cops face if when they try to catch criminals. Ask to trash the Safe-T Act which, if courts let it get through, will further hamstring prosecutors and police. Get Cook County Chief Judge Tim Evans replaced. Tell your Chicago Teachers Union to cease teaching racial division and hatred. Rail against unwed parenting. Tell CPS to take down the video that’s one of the “Tools” on the Office of Equity page that justifies burning down communities.
And, most importantly, speak directly to the wrongdoers and their parents about personal responsibility.
Johnson will have none of that.
Instead, he really said what’s quoted above.
*Mark Glennon is founder of Wirepoints.
This column was updated to add the paragraph about Johnson’s possible reference to school closings ten years ago.
Audio and summary 
A largely unasked question is becoming glaring: Is Illinois doing all it should to use artificial intelligence to make government cost less and work better? So far, the evidence says no.
“In fact,” he said, “if you don’t live in Chicago and you aren’t offering solutions, stop talking about us.”
I’ll stop talking about Chicago and you Mayor Johnson when my state taxes stop going to Chicago to underwrite the malfeasance.
Lori on steroids…but thats what the voters wanted
Does Shytown miss Lori?
First, any young person desiring a job at this time can find one. Second, it doesn’t seem logical at all to solve problems by Not Talking about them. Third, we don’t care if young people are seen or heard; we care if they’re committing crimes.
This guy…. What a hoot. When are we out of the “let’s give him a little runway…” period where we can speak frankly about how obtuse this guy is? And, honestly, when will the economically well off, educated liberals who voted for JB, JB, and BJ (weird) admit to themselves liberal, progressive policies are garbage and will never accomplish squat?
Though, again, BJ is such a buffoon, it only speeds the descent to rock bottom where there is a chance some adults might be able to salvage some of this once great city!
This mayoral administration is going to be epic. Epic in the sense of complete failure and taking Chicago further down the road to a Detroit like scenario. Get out the popcorn and watch the crap storm happen.
So much for the toothy grin and triumphant pose this one made when elected. Becoming meeker with each passing murder filled weekend. Another clueless socialist.
He is so far gone! He lives in an alternate reality where lying is the norm. Don’t have to face the truth that way!
Exactly!
Johnson: Blah blah blah something about youths, jobs, disinvestment. I’m a compassionate leader!!
Also Johnson: Disinvests in youth by giving away jobs, $$ and employment to illegal immigrants.
I believe the cut-off date for kids to apply for city funded summer jobs is FRIDAY. Was this cut-off date ever communicated at CPS schools? I’ll bet NOT.
And despite park district astronomical budget and $51m for migrants it looks like park dist pools will be closed one again due to lack of life guards.
This is what you get from a person who is truly incompetent. BLM Brandon has never held a private sector job where he had to actually produce an end product. He’s just the latest in the line of community organizers who only exist to keep their constituents wound up and blaming others. There will be four years of BLM Brandon saying and doing dumber and dumber things.
Mayor Johnson thinks “corporations” should simply create more jobs for unemployed “gangbangers” and thieves, those young black adults causing the majority of Chicago’s violent crime. Apparently he thinks they will make good-enough employees. Apparently he thinks sociopathic behavior is simply resolved by a paycheck alternative to gangbanger lifestyle endemic in Chicago’s low-income black neighborhoods. He fails to consider that primary gangbanger organized-crime, ie the drug-dealing, retail-theft, and armed robbery, provides much more ready cash to gangbangers than a supposed minimum-wage job at fast-food enterprise. He also fails to realize that gangbangers who graduated CPS HS functionally-illiterate are not successful candidates… Read more »
Yes, that’s right. Just offering a sociopath a job will not prevent crime. People with antisocial personality disorder enjoy violating others. Building pickleball courts won’t solve crime either.
Those job-seekers were educated in CPS by unionized teachers under contracts signed by the mayor’s former employer CTU. If they’re not ready to enter the workforce for even the lowest level jobs, then he is partially to blame.
Hey there, what about the yellow jacketed peacekeepers? Only one, a convicted felon, committed a series of felonies while peacekeeping on the city dime.
Kinda reminds me of the Gilets Jaunes of France a while back….
It’s difficult to tell, without the full context, whether he was talking about the Covid shutdown, or, more likely it seems, A former mayor’s shutdown of underutilized schools, which certainly did create some prolems…
The column is updated to address that reference.
Mayor Johnson continually talks about “rowdy teens being kids” when confronted with altogether different concerns about weekend shooting/death counts, to distract from the enormous rate of violence here in Chicago. Either he’s doing it deliberately, to deflect questioning altogether, or he really equates rowdiness in black teens with “accidental” shootings. The videos which capture these shootings, however, usually show quite deliberate action, not emotional “triggering”, and demonstrate willful criminal misconduct. Mayor Johnson fails to address fact that gangbanger violence, and gun-shootings, primarily affect black people, primarily young black men, and sometimes, young black women. His own home-community, Austin, is a… Read more »
“Somehow black-on-black violence is of little concern to him” It is of little concern to him or anyone else. His community has its own laws and criminal justice system independent of the state. What they don’t like is the police and the prosecutors getting up in their business. What they have now is an even degraded form of wergeld, aka blood money, an old germanic system of law that allowed criminals to pay the family of their victims, based upon rank, as punishment in lieu of retributive justice. But this community doesn’t even the wealth to pay blood money to… Read more »
Johnson whines about the school closures 10 years ago. However, the long term trends, if he cared to examine them, have been declining enrollments, school underutilization, scarcer resources, woefully underfunded pension obligations and increasing operating deficits.
Have any of these trends improved? No. Wirepoints’ previously reported data on school underutilization and miserable student performance strongly suggest even more schools should close. Under a Vallas administration, Chicago would have had a chance to improve its educational and financial trajectories. Under this mayor? Not even a remote chance. Soon enough, Chicago will start whining, not with its mayor, but because of him.
Since when has the Chicago Chamber of Commerce been withholding jobs from Chicago’s youth? They’re practically begging them to fill out an application.
Has there ever been a better time this millennium to be a low/no-skilled worker seeking employment opportunities?
I ask, “Has there ever been a better time to run or join a gang?” The stars are aligned in Chicago – deficient police headcount, poor morale and poor response times; revolving door prosecution policies; clueless mayor blaming disinvestment; and county leadership emptying jails.
That’s a valid point. You have a mayor that spent the last ten years beating down the very department that he is now in charge of. Coupled with the judicial reforms favorable to the criminal element, I suppose the future prospects for gang membership have not been this rosy in a long time.
A neighborhood controlled by gangs combined with no enforcement of zoning ordinances, building codes or criminal statutes is a semi-autonomous Brazilian favela. Areas of Chicago are not too far removed from this. My hunch is that the kangaroo administrative courts at 400 W Superior will be targeted by activists next, because the city’s tickets and administrative fines overwhelmingly and disproportionately affect black and brown people. “Stop giving tickets for wobbily porches or uncut grass! Too many people of color are being forced to pay this!” I almost don’t want to put this suggestion in writing, but the commuter tax or… Read more »
Well, your are pretty close. Cook County announced yesterday it won’t challenge inability to pay court fees: https://foxillinois.com/news/local/cook-county-to-waive-court-fees-for-low-income-individuals-will-others-follow#
I’m all for waiving court costs but it should be for everyone, not just for poor people of color. Cook County (and by extension, the state) employs the absurd Ferguson, MO revenue model of nickel and diming residents for petty administrative costs to fund essential city services. (https://www.cnn.com/2015/03/06/us/ferguson-missouri-racism-tickets-fines/index.html). Court costs in Cook County for a speeding ticket are several hundred dollars, even more for any misdemeanor charge, and into the thousands for a DUI. Kim Foxx has taken the official position that the poor and indigent shouldn’t have to pay these fines, great, but let’s just see if it’s applied… Read more »
And for most city residents, especially the CPS grads, these administrative hearings and notices are a confusing morass of fines, late notices, hearings, fees and suspensions. They have no idea what any of it means and just mostly ignore all of it, until they can’t, and their paychecks get garnished for some unpaid water bill from 10 years ago, or some parking tickets from 12 years ago.
Yes, but even more chilling is the reality that these folks are entitled to vote…. How will there be any change when voting for the other guy/gal will trigger a cessation of the gravy train of freebies and an end to the victim-hood that these folks have been sold as their birthright?
And that is the problem that is designed to make it as bad as possible.
Nice counterpoint, and so true!
Well an enterprising Proprietor of Color ought to be able to make bank in one of Chicago’s food deserts.
““In fact,” he said, “if you don’t live in Chicago and you aren’t offering solutions, stop talking about us.”” How many times have I said that certain communities just want to deal with their own problems internally, without interference from the State, where the remedy for every perceived slight or grievance is a hail of bullets into a crowd? This is the same crowd that rejects policing in their community and reports a 97% unfavorable opinion of police but tolerates gang bangers running around like it’s Grand Theft Auto the video game. They want the Brazilian favela type of governance,… Read more »
That said, tourism in Chicago certainly hasn’t recovered to pre-COVID levels, nor are Chicago suburbanites flocking back to downtown Chicago for work nor for pleasure. “Voice of the people” is certainly registering by the significant drop in hotel and entertainment tax revenue in MPEA tax-district. People say they won’t come to downtown Chicago unless forced to do so by work or personal obligations, due to out-of-control street crime conditions downtown. Sorry that Mayor Johnson takes offense, but facts are facts. People avoid situations where they feel at risk of becoming another crime victim, and tut-tutting their concerns displays a lack… Read more »
When I walk down Michigan Avenue it certainly seems like there’s a lot fewer tourists. Could expensive airfare and lodging be the cause or fear of crime, who knows. I do see a lot of Hispanic tourists or maybe they’re migrants, they usually don’t have shopping bags.
Michigan Ave is now mostly people who work in the vicinity the requisite 2-3 days a week in the office. I have a neighbor who is down there 2-3x a week and says there are few tourists, at least during business hours, and everyone just seems to want to get from point A to point B as quickly as possible, for fear of being caught in gang crossfire, police pursuit or being mugged in broad day light. That’s why I find suspect those statistics showing Chicago’s ‘day trip only’ tourist count to be in the 20-30 million range to be… Read more »
Johnson is a wonder and undoubtedly will never cease to amaze. And many accused Trump of being bombastic 😆
Not that it makes his commentary be any more sensical, but I thought he was talking about when Rahm closed down the couple dozen schools, not COVID closures.
Yes, I assume he was. Same issue, though, and it’s the hypocrisy.