Mayor Johnson On What He’s Done for Black Chicago After First Year: Part 1
Mayor Brandon Johnson met with Nicole Jeanine Johnson to discuss how, in his first year, he made specific and intentional investments in Chicago’s historically divested Black community and the tension caused by migrant spending. Below is part one of the full transcript, with appropriate edits for clarity.
This story was originally published in the Chicago Defender.
Q: What do you regard as some of your biggest accomplishments?
Mayor Brandon Johnson: Serving in this capacity this first year has really been the joy of this particular phase in my life. I’m grateful for and very humbled by it. As you know, the historical disinvestment that has plagued our communities for generations now is quite severe.
“I made a commitment and promise to build a better, stronger, safer Chicago by investing in people, and particularly Black Chicago, who have been set at the margins for a very long time.”
So, just recently, we passed our $1.25 billion bond deal, which is the largest bond in the history of Chicago: $625 million to build housing, particularly affordable housing, as well as another $625 million for economic and workforce development. These dollars are designed for the purpose of restoring the wrongs [to] our people, and so I’m very excited about that.
The other thing that I’m really grateful for is that we are now positioned to provide more behavioral health care services for our people, which includes opening up two mental health centers along with providing more behavioral support.
We’ve already built 100 affordable housing units in my first year. There’s another 700 that are online now. I’m also very, very pleased with abolishing the sub-minimum wage.
As your readers know, tip wage work is part of the vestiges of slavery. And we’re conservatively estimating that 100,000 individuals who are working in restaurants, primarily, are going to receive a raise. They’re overwhelmingly women and primarily Black and Brown. The most substantive paid time off ordinance in the country where well over a million workers will benefit from the paid time off, doubling the amount of time that they’ll be able to spend with their families or to do the things that people should have the right to do, which is to have some time away from their workspace.
Those are the big things that I’m really excited about. It’s important that Black Chicago, in particular, knows that as Mayor of Chicago, I will be hyper-focused on the neighborhoods that have historically been damaged by previous administrations.
Q. You mentioned investments in Black Chicago, including the $1.25 billion bond, mental health clinics, and increasing the minimum wage, and you regard these as really ambitious contributions to revitalizing the Black community. These initiatives seem very systems-based and will eventually have a reverberating impact on an individual base down the line. However, your migrant spending seems to provide more individual, direct support to stabilize each person or family, and we can see that impact today. What do you say to the Black voter who feels that these investments don’t impact me and that you’ve been investing in other communities at a larger rate than our Black community?
Mayor Johnson: What I will say is that we are investing more in Black Chicago than we have had [before]. Historically, there are more investments in Black Chicago than in any other administration, particularly within the first year. If we just take recently, the $70 million that we appropriated for the migrant mission. Those appropriations came the same day we appropriated $1.25 billion into our communities. That’s 20 times the amount that’s going towards the bare minimum. [We’re] Just making sure that migrants can eat and have somewhere to lay down. It’s not like the services that are being provided for migrants are permanent.
This is a temporary shelter.
In terms of Black Chicago, we hired almost 25,000 young people last summer. That was a 20% increase, and 64% of those young people were Black Children. That’s immediate. I added $76 million more to this year’s budget, which now places us in the position of hiring as many as 28,000 young people.
I just released my plan for the remaining resources we received from the federal government for ARPA, [which includes] guaranteed basic income. It’s something I’m moving toward not just piloting or re-introducing a pilot but creating a long-term sustainable operation where there are dollars available for our people that [will] allow them to make ends meet at the end of the day. The quarter of a billion dollars into the unhoused. These are immediate things that are on the docks right now.
For some people, they will impact them differently. It just depends on where they are in their particular stage and phase of life. But I can tell you [that] 64% of those young people that are Black that receive jobs, they can feel that. The fact that we have 100 affordable units that are up now [and] are available for our people, they can feel it.
The 700 units that are being put online—the truth of the matter is that look, there’s not one single crisis in this city that I’ve caused. I inherited decades of damage, and we didn’t get here overnight. It’s going to take us some time to transform our city.
But that’s why I think it’s also important that Black Chicago knows that I have the Blackest administration in the history of Chicago.
Forty-four percent of my administration are Black, and 60% are women. We have more Black political leadership on [the] City Council because of my leadership than any other administration: Finance, Rules, Budget, even your Vice Mayor.
That’s intentional. Our Deputy Mayors of Education, Infrastructure, Economic Development, and Community Safety are led by brilliant Black individuals. Our Policy Director and our Budget Director both have law degrees. These are highly competent, skilled Black individuals who are putting forth a vision.
Q: I’ve been to press conferences with some of the organizers that are turned off by how you’ve used public facilities, park fieldhouses that provided after-school programs for Black children, and a school that was promised to transform into a community center from a previous administration, now being used to house migrants. These same organizers that historically voted Democrat are now saying that they’re not going to vote because Chicago is a Sanctuary City, and we are supporting migrants in such a grand way. Perception is reality. Can you speak to the intention versus the perception and reception for the people that were one of your strongest voting blocks?
Mayor Johnson: Here’s the reality. You have a governor of Texas who is determined to create chaos in the city of Chicago. That’s his sole purpose. Governor Abbott is not interested in responding to this crisis. Not one bus has arrived in the city of Chicago since last December. The reason why we have not had one bus arrive in Chicago since last December is because I put together an ordinance to create far more structure and order to this mission. He’s circumventing the City of Chicago by dropping off people in the suburbs, and then they’re getting on the Metra and coming down to Chicago.
Now we’ve had 40,000 [people] come through the city of Chicago. There have been 30,000 Ukrainians who have come to the city of Chicago as well. Do you know why people are not complaining about the 30,000 Ukrainians? Because the federal government responded. So, they should be frustrated. I’m frustrated. I’ve said from the very beginning that this mission is unsustainable, that this is unconscionable, that local municipalities all over this country, but particularly where Democrats are running them—New York, Chicago, Denver—are being asked to [set] up resettlement operations. It’s unprecedented. And so, they should be frustrated. The governor of Texas is looking to cause chaos.
“When I became Mayor a year ago, people were sleeping on floors in police districts and airports. That’s not happening anymore because we, I, fixed it. I’ve saved the taxpayer $211 million by restructuring the contracts that I inherited, and then even with the public spaces that were being used, we’re already returning those back to the neighborhoods.
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There’s nowhere else in this country where an operation has been established that is centered around people’s humanity, where we have saved $211 million because [of] the work that we’ve done, and we’ve still been able to make the critical investments to our people.
Here’s the last thing that I’ll say. Even with sanctuary, when Mayor Harold Washington declared the city of Chicago a “Sanctuary,” he did it because of the foreign policy that was being moved under the Reagan administration that was causing turmoil in his effort to eradicate communism.
And what ended up happening was the federal government began to essentially pay these so-called guerrilla groups, right-wing groups, to take out sovereign nations. And then those same groups that they were funding and receiving kickbacks from, became the modern-day terrorists that they’re saying that they’re fighting against. It caused turmoil, particularly in Central and South America, because these were places that the federal government believed were places in which the Russian government could recruit from. It caused all that turmoil in Central and South America, and Mayor Harold Washington at the time said that the type of chaos being promulgated through foreign policy is [instigated] by the United States of America, we will be a sanctuary for those places.
I don’t know if he imagined 34 years later there will be busloads coming. But now we have the same foreign policies through sanctions that have disrupted countries like Venezuela, of which the vast majority of the world’s oil reserves are in Venezuela. Now, those sanctions have made it impossible for people to live in that country because 58% of the economy is based on the oil supply.
And guess how the Venezuelan government transfers its resources into revenue?
Through gas stations, the big one being Citgo. So, I guess all I’m saying is that I understand the frustration that people have. I have that same frustration. It’s the same frustration that Mayor Harold Washington had a generation ago [with] foreign policy that has disrupted the livelihood of individuals in Central and South America and quite frankly on the continent of Africa as well that has caused this massive migration shift.
Seventy percent of migrants who are going to New York are from the continent of Africa. We just so happen to be getting the vast majority of them from Central and South America. But these global population shifts are inevitable because they are the result of foreign policy.
And now cities are being asked to carry the brunt of what the federal government is neglecting to do: create a real free, fair, open market so economies around the world can grow. And then we actually use those resources to make sure that we are providing the basic needs of everyday people in Chicago. So, more money is being spent on wars to cause disruption than what’s being spent in our communities. And so, I’m fighting to make sure that our resources that we are rightfully owed from the federal government have to be concentrated in the neighborhoods that have been harmed the most.
Q: Even still, you have 25,000 applicants who are applying for rental assistance through IHDA, and over 50% of them are Black. So, the need is there. This concern predates the migrant crisis. What do you say to the Black Chicagoan who wonders about their own subsidy and even where the money came from to provide new arrivals with a multi-month housing subsidy to get them on their feet to get a job?
Mayor Johnson: Well, that’s just one aspect of it. This is not just about the $1.25 billion bond deal, and I don’t have control over the state government. Some of these elements of resettlement the state of Illinois has done, and I believe it’s the right thing to do. That’s something that I don’t operate. [But] what I do have control over is what I’m actually doing, which is the 100 units that we put online for affordable homes, 700 that are being built right now, and the investment of a quarter of a billion dollars into homelessness. The work we are doing with CHA to build even more public housing. Yes, it has been decades of gross disinvestment. And these individuals are receiving temporary shelter or temporary living support because that’s temporary, by the way.
My job is not to replicate something that is not going to create generational wealth and real stability. And so, I understand that the services that [there] are being provided by the state for temporary rental assistance.
My job is to create permanent residence for people to remain in Chicago, particularly our people. I do what I have the ability to do.
But within less than a year, we’ve already put more affordable housing units, and [are] building more, and we’re bringing them downtown, a major investment. My administration [is] getting commercial office space to be repurposed as housing, of which 30% of it will be affordable. That’s unheard of downtown and affordability that doesn’t exist anywhere. But, it exists in Chicago, and that’s designed to make sure that our people who work downtown, working families, can actually live downtown if they decide to.
So, look, 40 years of gross disinvestment. And within one year, you’re already seeing the clear investments that people will experience over time. And I know why there’s a comparison because that’s the way our society has trained us to think. ‘What did that person get? I should get that.’ A temporary shelter, where the vast majority of migrants are within our shelter system anywhere from two to three months, and of 40,000, half of them have been resettled [with] some temporary assistance. That’s not permanent.
I’m not looking to replicate and match that for our people. That’s different. I have to build affordable housing, create jobs, create opportunities for our young people that are long term and sustainable. This temporary mission that we’re on does not speak to the value that I have to provide real long-term sustainability for our people.