Businessman Willie Wilson asked an important question.
On March 4 at Sweet Holy Spirit Church, Wilson asked nearly 200 Black pastors who they should endorse for mayor in the April 4 runoff between Brandon Johnson and Paul Vallas. Only two hands went up for Vallas. Most of the pastors said they would support Johnson.
And why Brandon? Is it because he looks like us and has an agenda of hope and equity? Or is it because Blacks fear Vallas and believe his pro-police, anti-crime agenda threatens to take Blacks back to the days where officers behind the badge racially-profiled minorities and locked up innocent individuals in desperate attempts to solve crimes to the delight of the political establishment and Chicago’s well-heeled.
For Blacks on Chicago’s South and West sides, Vallas’ anthem of “taking back our city” has a different meaning than that which his core white voters understand on the North Side. Mayor Lori Lightfoot took back the Loop and the Mag Mile during the George Floyd protests, but she never connected with Blacks during her freshman year in office. Now, she’s packing her bags after many Blacks denied her a second term.
But media pundits argue this mayoral runoff between Johnson and Vallas isn’t about race. Both candidates won wards outside their race during the Primary Election on February 28. And both candidates have been endorsed by officials outside their race.
The political establishment believes the runoff is about the progressive Chicago Teachers Union against the conservative Fraternal Order of Police.
There is also the argument that the mayoral race is a battle to protect the interests of the ruling affluent social class on the North Side, where crime was declared a city problem long after it was a problem in Black and brown neighborhoods.
For Black Chicago, the mayoral runoff between Johnson and Vallas is about race, period.
That’s because crime before it became Vallas’ agenda was historically used as a license for police misconduct and racial profiling that led to thousands of pedestrian stops and arrests of innocent residents in Black and minority neighborhoods.
Vallas aims to add 1,000 officers to the police force to help fight crime. But Vallas could learn from the time period when Chicago’s top brass had a strong pro-police and anti-crime agenda under Mayor Rahm Emanuel, whose police Superintendent Garry McCarthy served from 2011 to 2015. Under McCarthy’s leadership, crimes and murder dropped dramatically. Murders declined from 525 in 2011 to 505 in 2012. In 2013, the number of murders fell to 415, while the overall crime rate was at its lowest since 1972.
Those numbers McCarthy and his supporters still tout today as McCarthy heads the police department in Willow Springs. During an interview with Fox News on March 5, McCarthy called Chicago a “lawless city,” after the fatal shooting of Officer Andres Vasquez-Lasso.
But during McCarthy’s leadership of CPD, incidents of police misconduct and racial profiling soared.
In August 2015, the CPD and the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) reached an agreement a decade after the organization filed a Civil Rights lawsuit against the police force.
The lawsuit accused police officers of stopping and frisking residents for no reason in Black neighborhoods and in mostly white police districts. At one point, there were 250,000 stops that did not lead to an arrest. Black Chicagoans were subjected to 72 percent of all stops, despite being just 32 percent of the city’s population at the time.
Black leaders and Black aldermen on several occasions urged Emanuel to fire McCarthy. Emanuel resisted those calls until 2015, when a police video was released to the public showing Officer Jason Van Dyke shooting Laquan McDonald 16 times. The teenager’s brutal murder led to a U.S. Justice Department investigation, which forced CPD to enter a consent decree for police reforms.
With a bruised ego after being terminated by Emanuel, McCarthy ran for Chicago mayor in 2019 with support from the Fraternal Order of Police. In a field of 14 candidates, he finished in 10th place.
When President Donald Trump was in office, he often blasted Chicago as a crime-ridden city and offered to send national guardsman to patrol the streets. But Blacks in Chicago and the nation also viewed Trump and his crime comments with suspicion and concern.
When white conservatives and elected officials talk about fighting crime, race becomes a concern among Blacks.
Fast forward to today. Blacks remain suspicious of Vallas as he promises to take back Chicago from rising crime. He’s backed by the FOP, whose leader John Cantanzara has a history of stirring racial tensions in Chicago. While Vallas said his agenda is not about race, Blacks disagree.
“It is about race,” said Gloria Norwood, a Black resident who lives in the South Chicago neighborhood.
“Paul Vallas to me never had a relationship with the Black community. Now he’s running for mayor, but what has he done to ingratiate the Black community? He’s running a campaign on fighting crime. But if you take crime out of his equation, he has nothing. Where’s his message on housing and employment?”
Pat Hightower, a resident in Hyde Park, said, “I believe this runoff is about race. When people show you who they are the first time, believe them. I think he’s using the crime message to justify his strong pro-police stance. I don’t trust him. He’s got to be a mayor for all people.”
For decades crime has been a problem in Black Chicago and despite the countless homicides and 85,000 Blacks leaving the city, no mayoral contender made crime the central concern of his or her campaign message.
At City Hall, crime became a problem when shoppers on the Mag Mile stayed away and ritzy shops like Cartier closed for good. Crime became a problem when it impacted the comfortable lifestyles of Chicago’s affluent on the North Side. For these folks, the mayoral runoff is about protecting the interests of the affluent classes.
The two pastors who said they would support Vallas during Wilson’s meeting at Sweet Holy Spirit Church were from the suburbs, where societal interests are usually based on class instead of race.
Two days before the election, on Sunday, February 26, Reverend Ira Acree of Greater St. John Bible Church introduced Johnson before his congregation.
“I just wanted to present him to my congregation as an emerging leader who has done great things,” Acree told the Crusader.
“The Teachers Union and the police union are going to influence this runoff race. A lot of Blacks would probably say ‘I’d rather trust a mayor who’s in the hand of a teachers’ union than a police union.”
