Chicago Politics

Press Availability Presentation 7.8.25

Description

Opening presentation from Mayor Brandon Johnson’s 7.8.25 press availability

Transcript

0:03 Hey, good morning, everyone. This reminds me when I was in the classroom how the students would just automatically just stop talking once I walked in. So I hope all your conversations were productive before we started. But I am appreciative of you all joining me this morning. Today I have our corporate counsel, Mary Richardson-Laurie. You all are familiar with her. You know our deputy mayor. Both our deputy mayors, one for community safety, Gary and Gatewood, and for education and young people, Kahari Humphreys. So we're going to talk a little bit about a couple of things today, but we're going to start with community safety and what we've experienced, what we experienced over the weekend.

0:43 And then we're going to talk about the potential impacts of Trump's OBBA bill that was signed into law over the weekend as well. This weekend, I had a chance to interact with some of our police officers who were on the ground working hard to keep Chicago and safe. I stopped by the 12th District and met with Commander Baer and had the opportunity to engage with the 12th District.

1:14 And what we've seen in the 12th District, much like what we've seen around the city, there's been a decline in homicides, decline in shooting victims as well, certainly compared to last year. Our officers are working hard to make our city safer, and I just want to take this opportunity to thank the 12th District officers and police officers really across our city who are working hard to manage large-scale events while also keeping people safe. I also had the opportunity to stop by, again, the headquarters at OEMC,

1:49 met with some of the dispatchers to get a better understanding of the resources that are needed and how we can make their jobs easier. Our 911 operators, our dispatchers, and our emergency managers were in constant communication with our first responders and law enforcement throughout the weekend, making sure that resources were in the right place at the right time. So I want to thank, again, all of our city workers, but particularly the team at OEMC who exemplify the professionalism and excellence of city government.

2:22 I also had the opportunity to stop by and sit down and engage with the community violence intervention workers, particularly at the Institute for Nonviolence Chicago. These are the Chicagoans on the front lines, and they are de-escalating conflicts, trying to interrupt cycles of escalating conflicts, as well as working to interrupt the overall cycles of violence, particularly at a time in which we know that retaliation has been the normal form of response

2:53 in preventing these retaliations from occurring and eliminating the tragedy that too many people experience in the city of Chicago. It was really good to hear again firsthand from the folks who are on the ground about the challenges that they are experiencing and how we as a city can come together to better support their work. So I want to give a special thanks to the Institute for Nonviolence and all of the CBI groups, really, who were out in force this weekend with extended hours, putting their lives on the line to stop violence from erupting.

3:29 And then finally, I had the chance to stop by another late-night ball session. We expanded late-night ball to four locations, Truman College with Project Education Plus and One Northside. We were also at Malcolm X with Operation Basketball and Together Chicago, Lindblom Park with Denar Bros and also with Think Blue Foundation, where I happened to have the opportunity to stop by, and then, of course, Washington Park with Project Swish and Aclavis.

4:00 We brought together dozens of young people for safe, productive interactions, and I'm grateful for all the folks who have volunteered to help make these events productive. Thank you to all of our community partners and the support that we receive from CVI and to all of our young people who came out. You may have read the Sun-Times reported yesterday that this was the least violent Fourth of July in at least six years. This is a quote from the article.

4:30 The weekend continues a recent trend after Chicago saw the least violent Memorial Day in at least 16 years. Last year, we also saw the first since 2019 with fewer than 600 homicides and nearly a three-year upswing in robberies. It ended last summer. A double-digit reduction in homicides and shootings left the city with fewer than 200 deaths during the first six. six months of the year. And so now let me just be absolutely clear. Are we satisfied

5:07 with what we saw this weekend? Absolutely not. The responsibility of keeping our city safe is a job that is never finished. We have a long way to go and even with our officers working hard, our dispatchers and first responders digging in, our CVI groups working deep into the night and our community partners who are showing up every single day, we still saw levels of violence that are completely unacceptable. And these visits and interactions throughout the weekend were more about listening and

5:37 engaging than just simply talking. There's always more that we can do. There are always new strategies that we can try. And there are always ways in which we can refine our tactics. It is the Chicagoans on the front lines who have the answers, so we will continue to meet with anyone from across the city who is willing to work with us to make our city safer. That should be the goal that we all share, quite frankly, regardless of which neighborhood

6:09 you live in or even your political beliefs or your orientation. We all need to work together to make our city the safest big city in America. And we will not stop working until we get there. And so now I'll just shift briefly to talk about the OBBA bill. I'm sure all of you are aware the president signed the OBBA over the weekend. And while we are still conducting a full analysis, we want to briefly just talk to you about some of the potential implications of this piece of legislation.

6:47 Economists and analysts all agree that this bill essentially represents the largest upward transfer of wealth in our nation's history. This bill literally takes from the poor to give to the rich. You often hear me quote Matthew 6, 21, where your heart is there, your treasure will be also. and that Jesus the Christ, my Lord and Savior, follow the tenets that when you do for the least of these, you do unto me.

7:19 This is the opposite of what my faith requires and what my faith calls for it. And the primary way in which this bill has found so-called savings, if you can even call them that, is through cutting health care for poor and working people. This bill is the deepest rollback of Medicaid in the history of our country. Our state could lose almost $50 billion over the next decade in Medicaid cuts alone.

7:53 Roughly a million Chicagoans rely on Medicaid, half of which are children. On top of these cuts to health care, we will see devastating cuts to food programs At a time in which one in five households in Chicago are food insecure, these cuts will cause even more hardship for those most in need. We have roughly 600,000 Chicagoans who rely on SNAP, and this bill is a direct assault on their ability to survive.

8:26 I want to be clear. When we talk about community safety, it's no secret that poverty is a major driving factor in crime and violence. So these cuts not only continue to exacerbate neighborhoods that are riddled in poverty, this will put America at risk, particularly as we work to build public safety as a reality for people across this country. We are also seeing dramatic cuts to public education.

9:00 Changes to the student loan programs will make the dream of attending college unattainable for poor and working families and will drive up the cost for middle-class students. They've also snuck in another scam voucher program which subsidizes private education for wealthy parents. The so-called Qualified Elementary and Secondary Education Scholarship could cost up to $51 billion. Thank you. a year. That's more than the federal government invests in public education for students with

9:32 disabilities and high poverty schools combined. This is on top of the Trump administration freezing nearly seven billion dollars in federal education funding that had been allocated by Congress primarily to support after school programs. And so what do all these cuts pay for? There are two main things. First, it's the largest upward transfer of wealth in our nation's history. Cutting food, health care, and education for poor and working Americans

10:03 is how they are paying for a $1 trillion tax cut for the ultra-rich. This is an abomination. This is sinful. It's unholy. But it reminds me of a quote by the Supreme Court Justice Brandeis when he said, we must make our choice. We may have a democracy or we may have wealth concentrated in the hands of a few, but we cannot

10:34 have both. This bill is a fundamental attack on our democracy and our way of life. The other things and all the other cuts pays for a massive increase in the masked secret police that are terrorizing our communities. ICE. ICE will now have a larger budget than all but 15 of the world's militaries.

11:04 It's a four-year total. Its four-year total is more than every military except for the United States and China. This is a direct assault on the civil liberties of all Americans and will fundamentally undermine our rights. As our budget and finance team continue to analyze the impacts of this bill, we will provide you with more updates on the impacts on Chicagoans and how we are going to fight back to protect our people.

11:35 So thank you for indulging, and with that, I'm happy to answer any of your questions.

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