LETTER: Mayor Brandon Johnson, tell the Chicago police to stand down

Mr. Mayor, 

You have shared many words about the dangers of attacks against civil liberties from the Donald Trump administration, as well as the importance of the sanctuary statuses of both Chicago and Illinois. 

Now, as Trump threatens to violate both of those laws, alongside many federal laws and the Constitution itself by sending troops and tanks into Chicago, you are called to act in accordance with your values and your words.

First, you should order all law enforcement, including the Chicago Police Department (CPD), to stand down. When they police protesters, they’re indirectly assisting Trump’s fascist federal, military, and vigilante forces in the violent destruction of our lives and rights.

Second, do not demonize anyone standing up to resist Trump and fascism.

Trump’s fascist orders completely disregard the Constitution, including the Fourth Amendment which protects against unreasonable searches and seizures by the government, as well as other constitutional protections for due process, civil rights and personal freedoms.

Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has only existed since President George W. Bush started the so-called “War on Terror” and it needs to be abolished. ICE was sold to us as some temporary measure against vague threats, and it serves as a perfect example of how the rights we give away never come back to us without a long, hard fight. Instead, every loss of freedom is used to push further, and the tactics used against “that-one-group-you-didn’t-like” last election cycle will inevitably be used against you in the next one, if not before. If any person can be taken without due process, no one is safe.

Mr. Mayor, you have made some strong rhetorical points, referring to Trump and his jackbooted thugs as fascists, and most recently, as terrorists. I agree. But what do your words mean if you allow CPD to collaborate with those violent extremists against us? 

When CPD arrives at these events, whether for “constitutional policing,” or “to address criminality and violence,” they are, by proxy, assisting with Trump’s illegal and immoral orders by blockading, barricading, beating, and arresting — in short “policing” — those resisting these unconstitutional abductions. Following Tuesday’s anti-ICE protest, the National Lawyers Guild reported that CPD was “especially violent and aggressive” and made 17 arrests of anti-ICE protestors. No matter your goals and intentions, CPD patrolling these demonstrations not only goes against your own humanity, but also your calls for Chicagoans to “resist” Trump’s fascist orders. Chicago police officers also should refuse to follow orders that police the very people who are protesting to save our democracy.

Additionally, sending CPD to police Chicagoans resisting Trump’s illegal antics will only bankrupt the city with police misconduct and massive unaccountable overtime, and will cause further cuts to vital services including alternative emergency response, violence prevention and intervention, and youth programs that have brought violence to record lows. Property taxes and rent will increase as services diminish, leading to greater violence and crime. None of this is helped by the massive raise you gave CPD in the Fraternal Order of Police (FOP) contract with little transparency.

Mr. Mayor, you need to reign in the Chicago police now. Learn from your mishandling of the Democratic National Convention, after which you celebrated the detainment of dozens of peaceful protestors as “constitutional policing.” Of all of those arrests, court dates and wasted tax dollars, the city “has little to show for the effort in the way of winning cases at trial,” according to the Chicago Sun-Times. Don’t make the same mistake with much higher stakes.

It’s troubling to me that you have falsely equated vandalism with violence, when Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. himself has so many choice words on that subject as well as on the criminalization of protest, as in 1967:

“I am aware that there are many who wince at a distinction between property and persons — who hold both sacrosanct. My views are not so rigid. A life is sacred. Property is intended to serve life, and no matter how much we surround it with rights and respect, it has no personal being. It is part of the earth man walks on; it is not man,” King said.