While preparing for a safer Memorial Day weekend, Mayor Brandon Johnson repeatedly said violence is down by 24 percent compared to last year, thanks to a well-thought-out holistic safety plan.
Johnson also took a swipe at President Trump for cutting vital programs that provide food and medicine. Similar remarks were made earlier by Father Michael Pfleger, who warned that the president’s budget cuts and lawsuits will hurt the poor and middle class and increase crime.
Johnson said at a City Hall press briefing Tuesday, May 27, that lives are being saved because of his holistic, unified police department safety plan that includes hiring 200 additional detectives and achieving higher clearance rates.
According to the Police Department, crime during last year’s Memorial Day weekend included 24 people shot, three fatally, between Friday and Monday. That was a decrease from 2023, when 53 people were shot and 11 killed. In 2022, Memorial Day weekend statistics included 41 shot and nine killed.
The mayor was elated over the decrease in crime for this past Memorial Day weekend.
“Violence is down in Chicago. Violence is down in Chicago. We are saving lives. We are investing in people, building the safest, most affordable big city in America. It’s not a tagline,” Johnson said, emphasizing this is his objective.
He credited the decrease in crime to his administration providing more jobs for young people, creating affordable housing, and expanding community mental health services—resources that, he noted, had been largely unavailable since Mayor Harold Washington’s administration.
“It’s not just policing; it’s policing and youth employment. It’s policing and behavioral mental health support services,” Johnson said.
While Johnson’s safety plan seems to be working, he expressed concern over Trump’s “big beautiful” tax bill, passed by the House in a 215-214 vote. The bill includes cuts in Medicaid, a program that provides health insurance for 71 million low-income people.
The bill also includes $50 billion to complete the wall on the southern border, $45 billion for detention centers, $8 billion to hire more immigration officers, $14 billion for deportations, and $140 billion to pay for what Trump calls the “purging of immigrants,” according to MSN. It also includes $150 billion in defense spending, which may increase in the Senate.
“You have a president that is cutting off medicine and food, a president that is working to erase culture. I mean, you can’t make this stuff up. He’s doing it in plain sight,” Johnson told reporters.
“You have to fight and resist it with everything that’s in you. This is a fight that this generation has to show up for.”
During Father Michael Pfleger’s Sunday, May 25, worship service at St. Sabina Catholic Church, he referred to Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s remarks made at the United Nations a year before his assassination: “If there is no justice, you will have no peace,” as he reminded attendees of his long-standing message of non-violence—“no justice, no peace.”
At that time, Pfleger said church and religious leaders wanted Dr. King to “shut up, to be silent,” and warned that those in power today “are hoping that you and I will be silent.”
“They don’t want you to disturb your peace. They don’t care if you come to church… as long as when you leave this building, you’re silent.” Pfleger said preachers say “all kinds of righteous things in their churches, but when they go out their doors, they do invocations for Pharaoh. They want you to be silent.”
Pfleger said the government wants people to be silent while it “dismantles all the checks and balances… while they freeze funds… closing programs,” including those at St. Sabina.
According to Pfleger, St. Sabina’s programs are in danger of being shut down effective July 1, including his violence prevention initiative.
He commended Illinois Attorney General Kwame Raoul for filing many of the more than 100 lawsuits against the Trump administration, which has targeted Diversity, Equity and Inclusion programs.
But Pfleger warned that with so many lawsuits and Trump’s appeals, the legal process can “drag on and on.”
“Their whole purpose is to wear you out. They want you to be silent about knowing the students are losing their scholarships,” he said.
Pfleger, citing an MSN report, suggested that Trump’s targeting of Harvard University may be retaliatory, possibly linked to his son Barron not being accepted while President Barack Obama’s daughter Malia was. He added, “They are messing with the wrong one because Harvard ain’t no punk.”
He said perhaps officials don’t understand that it’s not just students who are impacted by Trump’s executive order, but alumni as well—many of whom hold influential positions.
“They want you to be silent while students’ diplomas are being held for protesting or for exercising their First Amendment rights…. They want you to be silent while children are dying in Gaza and in Ukraine.
“If you don’t stop fueling genocide and stop giving money to Israel, stop giving money to Russia, stop supporting genocide and ethnic cleansing that is going on in this world… they want us to be silent.
“There are children and adults who will die of starvation today around the country and the world while tons of food are rotting in USAID warehouses,” said Pfleger, who strongly objected to soldiers stationed outside those warehouses, preventing people from accessing the food.
Referring to SNAP program reductions, Pfleger said mothers who were receiving $300 a month will now receive just $150—“which,” he added, “is not enough.”
“I am a priest, minister and a pastor, and if you cut any way to feed my children, I’m going to feed them, by any means necessary,” he told a cheering audience, warning that violence is going to rise in this country.
The Trump administration’s cuts will also impact city services, according to Deputy Mayor of Public Safety Garien Gatewood, who said during the mayor’s press briefing:
“This is impacting our Office of Emergency Management, communications, fire department, our police department. All of these entities work together to continue to drive crime down.”