Thousands of supporters, community leaders and Chicagoans flocked to the DuSable Black History Museum and Education Center on Sunday to watch Mayor Brandon Johnson officially kick off his 2027 reelection campaign.
In a one-on-one interview with The TRiiBE last week, Johnson shared his plans to run for reelection.
“It’s going to be billionaires versus Brandon and Brandon’s coalition,” Johnson told The TRiiBE. His coalition, of course, is inspired by the rainbow coalitions of past freedom movements led by the late Illinois Black Panther Chairman Fred Hampton, Sr. and civil rights giant Jesse L. Jackson, Sr.
“That’s why folks are raising so much money, to disrupt our broad coalition. The same people who closed schools want the fifth floor back. The same people who disinvested on the West and South sides of Chicago, they want the fifth floor back. The same people who shuttered our mental health clinics and lined the pockets of the ultra rich using TIF [Tax Increment Financing] dollars, they want City Hall back,” Johnson said. “We’re going to take on the billionaire class [and] the interests of corporations, and we’re going to make sure we have a people-powered campaign that continues our path to build the safest, most affordable big city in America.”
Sunday’s campaign launch took on the feeling of a community block party. Free food was available inside the DuSable’s Roundhouse and outside in the courtyard. La Barca El Taconazo and Cajun Cafe Chicago were among the restaurants and caterers there.
The event had translation services, activity stations for kids and a campaign merch station. Though a rainy start delayed the program, once the mayor hit the stage, attendees cheered, shouted and talked back to him throughout his 25-minute or so speech.
Read Johnson’s full speech below
You all ready for four more years, Chicago?
Are you all ready to make sure that Chicago stays on the path to be the safest, most affordable big city in America? Are you with me, Chicago?
Let me just hurry up because this is as long as a City Council meeting. I’m a little triggered here, and I hope you got your permits. And how long do we have this venue?
I am so grateful to be with you all this afternoon. Let me begin by thanking the labor leaders, the faith leaders, community organizations, the business leaders, advocates, young people, and organizers that have come together to make this day a reality. It brings me so much joy to see all of you out this afternoon.
So, OK, fine. Let me just get to it. My name is Brandon Johnson, and I’m running for re-election.
What we are witnessing here today is truly remarkable. This broad, multicultural, intergenerational movement represents the very best of Chicago, the very best of what public life can be when working people come together and take a purpose that is filled with love and dedication. Just take a moment to look around. This is what power looks like when working people organize. This is what becomes possible when we recognize that our struggles are connected and our futures are bound together. And let me be clear: we are building something that’s bigger than one organization. This is bigger than any one campaign, and certainly it’s bigger than any one individual. This is a movement, and it belongs to all of us, the people.
Our North Star has always been clear. Where our heart is, our treasure must also be. Government has a responsibility to work for the many and not for the few, and that belief has been built over generations by working people organizing in their neighborhoods, their block clubs, workplaces, schools, and houses of worship. Real transformation has never come from the top down, but from the bottom up, and while we’ve had some disagreements, and the road traveled has not always been smooth, we’ve always come back together because our strength has always come from our unity, our solidarity, and our clarity of what’s at stake. Democracy depends on active participation, organizing, and people willing to hold power accountable. This is how progress is won, and as I said, it doesn’t always have to be perfect. In fact, it doesn’t always have to be perfect in order for it to work. Trust me, I’ve been married for 28 years, and my wife will tell you that it is not always perfect, but somehow it still works. And with that, let’s celebrate the first Black First Lady in the history of Chicago, my lovely wife, Stacie Rencher-Johnson.
See, both of us were raised with a Black liberatory framework. I am a part of that radical tradition of shifting power and disrupting the status quo. And long before I held this office, I stood alongside working people and communities demanding for better investments, investments that we all deserve, and those same communities remain at the center of everything that I do today, because I come from this movement, I come from the intersection of labor and faith, and I learned from the late great Rev. Jesse L. Jackson, Sr. that when ordinary people organize around a righteous cause, we can transform what is possible for our city. And as we build power, we have to be clear about what the power is for, because power is not about a title. It is not about an office. Power is about what we are able to do for and with one another. It is about putting our love for people into practice, and what does that love look like? Love looks like fully funding our public schools and making sure that the state of Illinois lives up to its promise to make sure that the $1.6 billion dollars that belongs to the people of this city, that they finally pay up. That’s what love looks like. Love looks like good-paying jobs, affordable homes, and clean air. Love looks like making sure that our young people have somewhere safe to go and something meaningful to do. That is love in action. It is public policy, and that is what justice looks like in public. It is taking the things that generations before us prayed for, marched for, fought for, and putting them within reach of everyday working people. That is the act of love, and that’s what we’re going to do over the next four years, Chicago. That is the power that we are building together.
We most certainly have more work to do, and while it’s our responsibility to recommit to the work of building the safest, most affordable, most climate-resilient big city in America, it’s important to acknowledge that progress has been made because this city is better, stronger, and safer than what I inherited. And thanks to the organizing, coalition building, and sustained pressure, we have elected working class champions who have come directly from our communities and our movements. We have built independent political power that has shifted elections and has organized spaces well beyond today. We have expanded protections for Black Chicagoans, working class communities, and our immigrant communities. And we refuse, as a movement, to allow authoritarianism to separate us across race. We are united by class and through solidarity, through the mass organizing of everyday people, through our collective fight to put power where it belongs — in the hands of the people. We are standing shoulder to shoulder today to build the Chicago that we know is possible by 2031. A Chicago that lives up to the wildest dreams of our ancestors. By 2031, I want Chicago to be a city where a job pays enough to raise a family in this city. I’m talking about a city where the schools that were closed are transformed into assets for the communities that were harmed when they closed them in the first place.
These are not just dreams, you all. This is what our organizing is for. This is what we are building for, and together this is what we are going to deliver. In this political moment, as the federal government has turned its power against immigrant communities and working families, Chicago made a different choice, though. We used every tool available to us: executive action, the courts, and the power of local government to protect our people and challenge federal overreach. Chicago developed the national playbook with cities across this country looking to us as they develop their own protections. Because government should not be used to terrorize people. Government should be used to care for people. The consequences of the Trump Administration’s policies reach far beyond immigration enforcement. Communities that have been pushed to the margins for generations are also confronting cuts to health care, food assistance, affordable housing, and the basic supports that make stability and dignity possible, and these attacks are not happening in isolation. They are part of a much longer history in which wealth has been extracted from opportunities. Government has too often protected the interests of the wealthy and the well-connected few. But that day is over for Chicago.
Corporate media and billionaire-sponsored ads attempting to reduce my first term to a series of overlapping crises from historic influx of migrants and asylum seekers being centered at Trump’s ire. But here’s the truth, you all. He couldn’t break us. We’re still standing, and we are stronger than we’ve ever been before. I’m talking about Black, brown, white, Asian. No matter who you are, this is a Welcoming City and there is more than enough for everybody.
Here’s the truth. I’ve proven that cities can serve as transformative systems of support. Keeping real progressives in power at the local level is critical for our communities, not just for survival, but I’m talking about making sure that people can thrive in our city. We also have to help our people identify the difference between real progressives and posers.
Because to me, progressive politics has always come down to a simple question: Who has the power? It is not enough to manage inequality or make an unjust system a little easier to survive. The work is to change the condition that created the inequality in the first place. That means investing in public schools and public goods, strengthening organized labor, making corporations and their ultra wealthy pay their fair share in taxes, and putting working people at the center of our decisions. Because the measure of our progress is not simply how many people we help survive the system; it’s whether we are building a system in which working people have the power to thrive. And so, when you hear that someone wants to be your mayor and they claim to be progressive, but they take money from AIPAC (American Israel Public Affairs Committee) and Michael Sacks and corporate interests and shell PACs, you know who has the power. It’s not you. It’s not our coalition. It’s not working people, and it’s not our communities who haven’t seen themselves reflected in their own leadership since the days of Mayor Harold Washington.
In the last three years, we have accomplished so much. We accomplished more than what we even thought was possible. We’ve accomplished so much, the press has a hard time even writing about it. Oh, but they got the story today, Chicago. And here’s the thing: the results are so powerful that the ultra rich and elected officials who protect the ultra rich have gone through great risks to distort our records, but to get to the people, to convince the people, they’re going to have to come through me and our movement in order to take this work apart. And while the road has been full of bumps and bruises, if you indulge me for a moment, I want to name some of the things that we have done over these last three years. Do I have a few more minutes, Chicago?
Since my inauguration, they said that if you elect Mayor Brandon Johnson, that there will be blood in the streets and violence will run amok. Well, Chicago has seen historic declines in violence — last year, a 60-year low — and we are on pace to continue to break the record to make sure that we have safe communities across the city of Chicago. We’ve invested in community violence intervention and programs like Peacebook, and we’ve hired tens of thousands of young people, put hundreds of millions of dollars into our small businesses, and we release more than $1 billion dollars into our public schools through TIF (Tax Increment Financing) surplus. We have given more to the public good in three years than administrations combined. Hold on! I’m not finished. We’ve reopened public mental health clinics. We brought back to the Department of the Environment, used executive authority to confront data centers, and when the federal government challenged the authority of cities to protect the residents, Chicago used the tools of local government to defend our communities. And through it all, we have held firm to the values that brought us here. When times get hard, we do not balance the budget off the backs of working people. We stand with working people. We invest in their families, their communities, and their futures. And because working people built Chicago, working people will keep moving Chicago forward. No vision for the future of this city can be called progress if working people are left behind.
And now, we have not gotten everything right. There have been moments when we moved with urgency, and people felt that they were not at the table. And I hear that. I learn from that. I’m not just a better mayor because of it. I’m a better person because of it. But I will say it again, though. Chicago has experienced a decrease in violence in our city. We are ranked first, and the only city in America prepared for climate disaster. We have built a model for creating housing that does not wait on Washington to save us. And has it been messy? Yes, but just because there’s noise doesn’t mean that there’s progress. I remember a time in this city when it was extra quiet and our communities were being destroyed. In fact, in my household, if it was too quiet in our household, my parents just figured we were up to no good. Doesn’t it feel good to be in a progressive, noisy city that’s transforming neighborhood and folk city?
Ask yourself, though, this question. This is how I know how powerful we are. So you don’t have to believe me. Just look at what the billionaires are doing. If we were that weak, why are they consolidating and raising so much money just to beat me? If I wasn’t that powerful, why do they have to get money from Michael Sacks and corporate interests and billionaires and millionaires? Because they want the fifth floor Black — I’m sorry, that was a Freudian. Let me get that right. We’re OK with the fifth floor being Black, but they want it back. And ask yourself why we are entering this race, and people are fighting us so viciously.
And see, here’s the thing: they want the language of our movement without the struggle. They want the victories without having taken any risks, but we know who was there when our community needed us the most. We know who stood up when standing up came at a cost, and we know what is at stake if we allow them to take us backwards. We can’t always move at a speed of responding to false talking points. These billionaires have the money. They got hurt pride. Time to circulate on TV and cell phones and social media. But we believe that we move at the speed of the people and the pace that justice is calling for. And it’s why we are on pace to make Chicago the safest, most affordable big city in America. We passed paid time off, and we made sure that One Fair Wage became a reality. We stood up for the Black trans women in our city who faced unacceptable levels of violence. We declared trans femicide an emergency and brought community voices together to build a safer Chicago for our transgender and gender diverse community. Because in Chicago, we don’t segregate and separate our love. Whoever you are, you deserve to be in a safe city that sees you for who you are.
Now, I feel like I gotta close here. So you know there’s two more coming. The same people who close our schools and mental health centers to save money spend millions of dollars lying about what we have been doing, because when you force the powerful to choose between protecting their wealth and investing in working people, you find out very quickly whose side everyone is on. And we did that. I want you to imagine for a moment: what could we do with four more years together? Ask yourself what an individual stands to benefit from taxing the rich and addressing the root causes of harm. Now ask yourself what individuals stand to gain if they bring ShotSpotter back, whose stock crashed, by the way, when I got elected. Ask yourself the same people who want the fifth floor back, what they stand to gain if the forces that hid the murder of Laquan McDonald had their hand-picked candidate in office.
But here’s the thing. Here’s the good news, Chicago. We’re not going back to the failed policies that produce more violence, devastated Black and brown communities, and doubled down on their racist and abusive policy and policing. We already know what that story looks like. We know the ending because we’re the ones who had to live through that last chapter.
We know what works. It’s my executive order that created an Office of Gun Violence Prevention. It’s the strategic deployment of our first responders and the promotion of 200 detectives, resulting in a clearance rate that has been higher than its been in decades. It’s investing in youth employment, violence prevention programs, and addressing the root causes of crime.
Here’s what else we have finished, and what we have done. There is still more work to do. People in Chicago are living longer, and the life expectancy gap between white folks and non-white folks has closed. The largest gap closed between white folks and Black men. We’re not going back.
That is why I refuse to accept the idea that the best of Chicago can offer working people is simply survival. We deserve so much more. We’ve come so far. We have spent these last four years mobilizing, but they know this is a movement that’s bigger than one election. They know that they can’t take the victory away from the childcare workers that got a raise under my administration. For the first time in the city’s history. We have already funded universal pre-K.
So while people are talking about what they will do, I’m talking about what I’ve already done. Can I get a witness, Chicago?
They can’t take this victory away from the West Siders who fought to make sure that we saw investments to respond to the biblical floods. They can’t take the victory away from the survivors of police torture who demand your reparations and won a memorial, so that we never forget their names. We are creating a city where people expect more from their government, and they should. And most of the folks in this race, quite frankly, have been complicit in the very conditions that I inherited. Where were they when we fought to make sure that Chicago paid and made sure that we raise the wages of the workers? Where were they when we fought to make sure that we have equitable state funding? Where were they when we fought and challenged the millionaires to pay more? Where were they when we fought to Bring Chicago Home? And now, all of a sudden, they want to show up and use the language of our very fights that they were missing from. Oh no, Chicago! Oh no!
Here’s my second to final point. Despite everything that has been thrown at us, we have moved this city closer to justice. We have bent the moral arc that Dr. King talked about, and we did it the very way that lasting movements for justice have done it. We’ve done it with courage, with conviction, with a deep abiding love of people. We are righting the wrongs of generations of harm. We do this in the name of the grandmother trying to stay in her home that she spent a lifetime paying for. We do it in the name of the organizer who fought to keep mental health clinics open. We do it for the parent coming home from work, making dinner for their kids, and then heading to a community meeting because they still believe their neighborhood can be better. We do it for one another. This movement that I come from, we do it for each other. And this movement that brought us here is still strong.
Years ago, I took an arrest outside of the elevators at City Hall, demanding that government listens to working people. And today, I walk past those very elevators on my way to the fifth floor. I have never forgotten who sent me here, and I’ve never forgotten who the city belongs to. It belongs to the people of Chicago. Our work is not done. We are just getting started. So today, I’m asking you to continue to organize, organize again, believe again, fight again. It’s time that we un-reroute the river and let the damn water free. I hear that there are some people on the West side and the South side that are still thirsty. Wait till you see what happens when the people get wind and the rivers begin to break and hit the face of the dry land.
Chicago, we are not done. We have more work to do. We will not be satisfied until we build an economy that works for everyone. I’m talking about the $2.6 billion dollars on the South Side already. The $2 billion on the West Side already. But we’re not done. We’re building safe, affordable communities. We’re gonna make sure that we reopen every single closed school and turn it back over to the people. We will not be satisfied until every mental health clinic is reopened. We will not be satisfied until the ultra rich finally pay their fair share in taxes, and we will not be satisfied until you send me back to the fifth floor for four more years.
God bless you, Chicago.
