Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson began his career as an activist organizer for the Chicago Teachers Union. He's marched, went on hunger strikes, and stood in solidarity with the "defund the police" movement. (“I don’t look at it as a slogan. It’s an actual real political goal.”)
At a roundtable discussion in 2023 during his campaign for mayor, the radical left activists who were supplying much of the energy and heart to his campaign were deeply disappointed because Johnson wasn't, well, radical enough.
“I’m not going to become mayor and then capitalism will fall,” he joked, according to meeting attendee, author Asha Ransby-Sporn.
But it's where Johnson's heart is. He still sees himself as an activist. And as tens of thousands of other activists descend on his city — some of them looking to blow up the Democratic Convention which starts Monday — the mayor appears torn between giving the radical left what they want and the political necessity of keeping the protests under control.
“A number of people have had their careers get a springboard at the convention,” says Christopher Cooper, a Western Carolina University political science professor. Cooper points to Anthony J. Foxx, Mayor of Charlotte, NC in 2012 who so impressed Barack Obama that he was named to the cabinet as Transportation Secretary.
The extent to which Johnson can manage the imperatives of the protesters to be heard and of law enforcement to ensure security will almost certainly affect whether the DNC serves as an accelerant for the momentum surging through liberal circles right now. Or, as was the case when anti-war protests broke out at the 1968 DNC, escalating stand-offs and violence between the two camps could bring enthusiasm to a screeching halt.
Outsiders describe the tensions as a battle between protesters versus police. Constitutional rights versus safety public safety. Radicals versus realists. But to Johnson, it’s a balance he wouldn’t be facing at all without his own activism-centered political ascension.
That activism was on full display earlier this week when Johnson went ahead and approved a stage in Union Park near the United Center, intervening directly into the dispute despite nearly unanimous opposition from his staff.
“We talked directly to the mayor,” Hatem Abudayyeh, executive director of the Arab American Action Network, said during a news conference. “We knew that he supported us, our coalition and these protests and it’s proof positive that he called one of the top leaders of the coalition directly on his cellphone and said ‘We’re gonna make this happen. I’m gonna make sure that everybody’s rights are protected.'”
In addition to allowing a stage and sound system for two rallies in Union Park, the agreement with the city also allows for the setup of seven portable toilets on the far east side of Union Park, away from parade assembly and disbanding areas, according to the coalition.
Abudayyeh said the deal was proof that “organizing works.”
“The city pulled another move in bad faith by saying we can’t have any sound and we can’t have a stage in Union Park, and then we did what we do best,” he said. “We did the grassroots organizing that we know how to do, and we won what we needed to win.”
"Organizing works" a lot better when you have a radical-left wing mayor on your side.
The protesters have a permit to march from Union Park through some smaller side streets and past another park that's across from the United Center. Union Park is only half a mile from the United Center and some protest groups have threatened to break off from the march and demonstrate directly in front of the convention venue. That's not going to happen what with delegates and VIPs milling around outside the United Center.
That the protest groups got so much from Johnson is not surprising. I wonder what Kamala Harris and the Democratic National Committee think about the arrangements?
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