Chris Hayes speaks with Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson about his vision for the city.
Not too long ago, Brandon Johnson was virtually unknown to many Chicagoans. Now, he’s the 57th mayor of America’s third-largest city. His path to power, fueled by a markedly progressive campaign, was pretty unusual. Before taking the helm of Chicago, he was a school teacher, union organizer and county commissioner. Johnson, who lives on the West Side, has experienced his share of some of the city’s biggest issues.
There's a bunch of reasons for that. In the case of Chicago recently, Lori Lightfoot was the mayor from 2019 and 2023, and she lost badly. Her reelection bid, I think, you know, got 16 percent or 17 percent of the vote in the first round. And there were all kinds of reasons that people really didn't like the leadership of Mayor Lightfoot in Chicago.
And then sort of on top of that, the thing that I think really makes being a mayor difficult is that the challenges that any city faces, and particularly different populations within that city, tend to be produced and borne by a bunch of history and policy decisions made above the level of the city government.
Before that, he was a union organizer at the Chicago Teachers Union. Before that, he was a schoolteacher, and he grew up near Chicago. And now, Brandon Johnson, having won, has to be the mayor of a city that has all kinds of challenges. And I was just really, really excited that the mayor is willing to take some time to sit down with us.Brandon Johnson: Hey, I'm doing well. Thanks for asking. Thanks for having me on, by the way.Brandon Johnson: That's right, three weeks.Brandon Johnson: You know, I feel really good.
And so, I'm with my best friend in the world. It's my wife. And, you know, before we go to bed, the night before the inauguration, we looked outside and we could see, you know, the downtown portion of the city from where we were staying that evening, that particular hotel. And we just looked at each other. We looked outside and we just laughed, you know, honestly, you know, because, you know, here you have, you know, two individuals that come from working-class families.
Chris Hayes: I like the fact that you're pointing out that the most unlikely part of this trajectory is not that a child of Chicago's West Side has become the city's mayor, but rather that a Cardinals and Cubs fan have fell in love with each other as the truly strange part of the story.Chris Hayes: Speaking of which, tell me about where you're from in Chicago, your upbringing.
But he was, you know, a carpenter as well. That was sort of his side hustle, if you will. But he was also a pastor. And so, my father, who is a carpenter and a pastor, you know where I'm going with this, Chris, a lot of pressure when your dad is just like Jesus, raising us in this working-class community, three bedrooms, one bathroom, again with nine siblings, plus foster siblings growing up.
And so, you know, I'm pretty sure you've, you know, have heard the reference over years, government cheese, the --Brandon Johnson: -- peanut butter, the big can of meat. They called it pork. I don't know if it actually was. But, you know, the raisins and flour, but my parents would distribute these resources, you know, once a month.
But you can still see, I remember even when I was living in Chicago, like, there was still the steel plant until just a few years ago. In fact, Rod Blagojevich's 2002 election night party was in the steel plant over there on Elston, you know --Chris Hayes: -- the little Goose Island. You know, you had a steel plant just in the middle of the city until very recently. Like, Chicago really felt and lived through deindustrialization in a kind of frontline way.
And whenever I recall those moments, and you come home and your water's not on and you open the refrigerator out of habit, but there wasn't any food in there, that the number of individuals that would nod their head in agreement, like we remember those days, you know, coming through the '80s and they were quite horrific.
And, you know, once I fulfilled that goal of becoming a teacher, it was really the dream job that I've always sought after. And I think about, you know, how my father interpreted the gospel, you know, my father, before he was a pastor, he was an incredible Sunday school teacher at my grandfather's church, and how he understood liberation through the lens of equity.
And so, through all of those activities, you were always raised or taught to share, to lean on one another, to prefer someone's comfortability, even over your own.
And so, you literally have these economies, multiple economies that exist in one city, where those who have get more and those without, what we do have is taken away from you. So, in other words, my students will wake up in the morning, like all families, many families in Chicago, where they would chase down an economy that's behind them from the back window while everything in front of them was crumbling. Right? And that's the tale of two cities that you're articulating.
And there are obviously choices that mayors in Chicago have taken. But even when you talk about CHA, that of course, it was federal public housing. It was managed through this local board. You know, the plan for transformation was a project in D.C. that was partnered in Chicago. Brandon Johnson: Well, first of all, we won. Right? And so, you know, that's something that I'm very humbled by. And the people of Chicago have spoken, you know, in a very resounding way.
And what people know about me, especially those who know me and the people who have worked with me, whether they agree with me or not, they know that I know what it's like to live in a house with limited resources and having to figure out how to survive. And because people know that about me, they know that I'm a good listener. And so, those relationships are developing.
Chris Hayes: You're a busy man and you're a mayor, so I don't want to take too much time today. So, I thought the best way to do this , I want to focus on just two areas of the sort of challenge. And the first is public safety, because obviously that was front and center in the debate that was happening between you and Paul Vallas, particularly about, sort of, different theories of the case.
Brandon Johnson: Well, thank you for raising this important issue. I mean, public safety is something that is top of mind for every single person who lives in the city of Chicago. And quite frankly, it's a challenge for people across America. Right?Brandon Johnson: You know, the city of Chicago is not the only place in America where violence has spiked, especially over the last couple of years.
Brandon Johnson: Absolutely. And look, my youngest, my daughter, she's 8, my middle child is 11 and our oldest is 15, and life is different for us now. But, you know, prior to me becoming mayor, you know, having to negotiate when your sons and your daughter ride their bike and --Brandon Johnson: -- where they ride their bikes, you know, these are dynamics that I deal with every single day.
And, you know, whether it's making sure that, you know, we are training and promoting more detectives so that we can actually solve the violent crimes that do take place, investing in mental health services. I think roughly 40 percent of the 911 calls that come through in the city of Chicago are mental health crises, right, 60 percent of the violence that actually takes place in the city of Chicago, it occurs in 6 percent of the city.
And one of the things that struck me, I remember being in the room and we talked about the homicide clearance rate of the CPD. Now, I forget what the number was at the time, but it was low and it had gone down over the years. You just talked about hiring more detectives. And I remember everyone in the room knew the homicide clearance rate. They knew the number, and it was the right number. Everyone in the room yelled out the number, and it was the right number.
And, you know, Chris, I've sat with mothers in particular who have lost loved ones to gun violence. And many of these women are turning their pain, and this is the name of an organization, literally turning their pain into purpose. And part of the struggle is just having some closure, you know, to the loss of life that has impacted an entire community. And it's impacted the city of Chicago in a profound way.
We also have, you know, a dynamic in the city that has gotten out of control, and we're seeing this around the country. But the fact that we have 65,000 individuals that are unhoused, of which 20,000 of them are young people, are students who attend our Chicago Public Schools. What is your understanding of what happened? Because when you talk about these other programs, you talk about youth employment programs or mental health counseling, a lot of that went away during the pandemic.
And couple that with how isolating and debilitating poverty is in this country, and certainly lives out in the city of Chicago, that that exacerbated, essentially, what was already there. And that was a great deal of tension and frustration that had gone untreated. And so, what I'm conscious of, that by layering our approach towards public safety and investing in a holistic approach, bringing the full force of government, I'm cognizant of the fact that public safety and having thriving communities cannot come at the expense of working people. Right?
Brandon Johnson: Yeah, I'm glad you asked that because it was highly debated and contested during my campaign.Brandon Johnson: Where, you know, everyone was somewhat shocked that you had someone running for office laying out a plan for budgeting. You know, Chris, I was a Cook County commissioner just a couple of months ago. Many people don't talk much about local government, and certainly, they don't talk much about their county board or their board of supervisors. But Cook County government, as you know, is one of the largest economies in the world as well --Brandon Johnson: -- 5.2 million people, you know, passing the multibillion-dollar budgets.
But here's the part that's fascinating. Even though the state rejected it, 71 percent of Chicagoans said, yes, we should have a progressive structure where the wealthy or those with means should contribute a little bit more for public safety, for public education, for transportation.
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