Johnson Likens Himself To Second Coming Of Harold Washington

Mayor Brandon Johnson on Thursday portrayed himself as the second coming of Harold Washington and tried to ease lingering tensions with African American voters created by the migrant crisis.

With his public approval ratings in the single-digits, Johnson made yet another stop on his rehabilitation tour with Black voters, whose support he needs to bounce back.

The forum this time: a live interview on WVON-AM (1690).

Host Matt McGill provided the perfect set-up, telling listeners African American voters were getting a “second bite at the apple” nearly 40 years after the death of Chicago’s first black mayor Harold Washington.

Washington “thought he was gonna be mayor for 20 years." He was “setting in place a new Chicago that was going to change Black Chicago," McGill said. “He had the vision. He felt like he was going to be around to make sure that this plan to improve the lives of Black Chicagoans was gonna happen."

When Washington died in 1987, Acting Mayor Eugene Sawyer “took the baton and kept it going” for a while, but “Black people got split” between Sawyer and then Ald. Tim Evans (4th), McGill added — a rift that “handed City Hall to the Daleys,” McGill said.

“Instead of those Black communities that Harold Washington was setting the table for … the other communities got that investment. Their businesses grew. And we were still sitting there getting some of the crumbs,” McGill said.

“There’s value in having a Black mayor for a long period of time to see the vision happen. Right now, we have a second bite at this apple and we’ve got to get it right. … Like Harold Washington, you are trying to set this table for long-term progress and changing Black Chicago.”

When McGill asked Johnson if he was “mischaracterizing your vision here,” the mayor replied: “Not at all.”

Johnson then talked about the affordable housing units and the 29,000 summer jobs he is creating and the “hundreds” of Carpenters Union apprenticeships being set aside to establish a career path for Black youth.

The mayor claimed the “vast majority” of investments in the $830 million general obligation bond issue he muscled through the City Council would be made on the South and West Sides.

Johnson also talked about reviving long-neglected commercial corridors and claimed Madison Street “hasn’t had this much investment since the uprising” that followed the 1968 assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

“We’re laying the foundation ... that Mayor Harold Washington established. That includes things like mental health. I’m the first mayor since Mayor Harold Washington to reopen mental health clinics,” Johnson said.

Saying he’s spent “20 times” more to improve and “re-populate” South and West Side neighborhoods than he has anywhere else, the mayor said he was “grateful” to “stand on the shoulders of incredible leaders” like Washington and Sawyer who “made it possible for me to be in this position.”

“Of course, we’re gonna need more time to ensure that we not only plant these seeds, but the roots set up deeply so that it can sustain us for generations to come,” Johnson said.

The mayor has been touring Black churches as part of what he is calling his “Faith in Government” initiative.

That’s where he acknowledged he should have “cleaned house faster” when he took office and now plans to correct that mistake by sending people packing, adding: “If you ain’t with us, you just gotta go.”

That was followed by a provocative interview with the Triibe, a website focused on the city's Black community, before he testified before a congressional committee on Chicago's sanctuary city law.

Although McGill served up the equivalent of a fastball down the middle, Johnson got a hostile question about the migrant crisis from a listener.

The caller asked how Johnson can “justify” spending hundreds of millions of dollars “putting these people up when you can’t throw a brick without hitting a homeless Black person.”

Johnson said he had little choice but to deal with the crisis.

“We took an attack from the governor of Texas, responded to that attack even though it wasn’t our responsibility. It should have been the federal government. We … got those individuals off the floors of police stations and still built a system to respond to the unhoused crisis in Chicago,” Johnson said.

"I'm not saying that we're perfect," he added, but the city "built a mission, a system" to help unhoused families as well as migrants — "82 or 83% of those who are in those shelters that we created are Chicagoans."

Of those calling 311 seeking shelter, "there is not a single family on the waiting list. That has never happened in the history of Chicago.”