The People is our section for opinions and perspectives. Submit your opinion to info@thetriibe.com.
Chicago has always been a city of powerful movements — of labor, civil rights, and community organizing. But just as often, it has been a city where Black and Brown unity has been targeted, destabilized, and dismantled by those in power. Every time we’ve built something strong, every time we’ve dared to believe in our collective strength, there has been backlash. Propaganda campaigns. Political gaslighting. Manufactured divisions.
Now, with Mayor Brandon Johnson in office, who is a teacher, a father, a West Side son, we’re seeing those same tired strategies reemerge. Establishment politicians and legacy media are pitting Black and Brown Chicagoans against each other to erode support for Mayor Johnson.
Take failed (and disgraced) mayoral candidate Paul Vallas’ recent argument that Johnson’s support for migrant communities comes “at a direct cost to the Black community” and his ridiculous and, frankly racist, assertion that the mayor’s progressive policies amount to a “war against Chicago’s Black community.” It’s no coincidence that the same conservative Democrats who court police unions and Big Real Estate are leading the attack on Black and Brown coalition-building. When unity builds political power, systems of oppression respond swiftly and aggressively.
But the people of Chicago made the right choice when we elected Brandon Johnson, and we’re seeing the results already, less than two years into his term.
Under Mayor Johnson’s leadership, this city has made unprecedented investments in our future. The number of youth summer jobs has increased by 39% since 2022. We’re seeing historic declines in violent crime. Mental health clinics shuttered under previous administrations are being reopened. For the first time, trained mental health professionals — not just police — are responding to mental health crises. That’s not just a policy change; it’s a shift in the value system of our city.
Under the transformative, new Chicago Teachers Union contract, class sizes will shrink for every grade level, and librarians and social workers will return to schools in greater numbers. Sustainable Community Schools continue to grow. Protections for undocumented and LGBTQ+ students are not just rhetoric — they’re policy. And yes, this administration has established a reparations task force to begin righting generational wrongs.
But instead of celebrating progress, the media has chosen a different story: one of chaos, incompetence, and crisis. There was no outcry when billions of dollars went to corporate and real estate interests. But now that resources are flowing to the South and West Sides, to our schools, our communities, and our children, we’re being told that it’s too much, too fast, too irresponsible.
Let’s call this what it is: a strategic campaign to undermine a progressive Black mayor using the same old tools — fear, division, and dog whistles about mismanagement. The media plays a role, not by reporting, but by echoing these narratives without context, without care, and without regard for the people most impacted.
The right-wing has made it clear: divide and conquer is the strategy. We saw it when Texas Republican Gov. Greg Abbott began busing migrants to sanctuary cities like Chicago. It wasn’t about immigration; it was about disruption. A zero-sum game to pit immigrant communities against Black Chicagoans, fueling a false narrative that one community’s survival must come at the cost of another’s.
But Black and Brown communities are natural allies, not enemies. We have been marginalized, overpoliced, underinvested, and now vilified in the press. The same forces trying to criminalize immigrants are the ones who supported mass incarceration. The same people cutting food assistance are cutting access to housing and health care. This is a shared fight, and unity is our only path forward.
We’ve seen what happens when progressive leadership is branded as irresponsible and dangerous. In New York, after critiques of former Mayor Bill de Blasio’s modest progressive agenda, current Mayor Eric Adams stepped into power and has led the city to a crisis point — flooding the subways with police who have shot recklessly at fare evaders, failing to protect tenants from rents that are at an all time high, and attempting to cut funding from critical city services. As Adams’s public reputation tanks from corruption allegations, the Trump donor-backed Andrew Cuomo has emerged as the front-runner in the mayoral race, proving how pernicious anti-progressive narratives are, even in major blue cities.
We cannot let that happen in Chicago. We are building something different here — something rooted in care, justice, and accountability.
Our current moment requires courage. The Trump administration has named Chicago “Ground Zero” in its agenda, targeting us not just for our politics, but for our values — for being a sanctuary city, for being a city where immigrants, Black folks, and Brown folks have dared to build power together. Trump ally Tom Homan, his so-called “border czar,” is openly meeting with white supremacist groups and threatening our communities. But Mayor Johnson hasn’t wavered in his commitment to protecting undocumented families, to shielding trans and queer youth, to standing up to state-sanctioned violence. If we fail to keep him in office, we leave our neighbors vulnerable to harm and persecution.
I know what it means to see a movement person in power. As the niece of labor activist and community organizer Rudy Lozano and the daughter of Reverend Slim Coleman, I grew up with the stories of another time when Black and Brown unity transformed this city. The rise of Mayor Harold Washington — the first true coalition mayor — elected by the power of the people.
If Washington had been able to finish what he started, this would already be a different city. Now, Brandon Johnson is our chance to pick up that torch and carry it forward. He is not a symbol; he is a strategy. A strategy rooted in community, in justice, and in possibility.
In times of division and doubt, it can be easier to choose what’s familiar, even when familiar doesn’t serve us. But we need to remember that we know what doesn’t work. Disinvestment doesn’t work. Overpolicing doesn’t work. Politics that ignore our children, our schools, our mental health, our housing needs, none of that has ever worked.
For the sake of our city, we must reject the narrative that tells us we were wrong for believing in change. Because we weren’t wrong. We were right then. And we are right now.
