What will Mayor Brandon Johnson’s legacy be when it comes to dissenters?

By Grace Del Vecchio

Chicago Public Schools students stage a sit-in at City Hall after walking out of high schools across the city Jan. 30, 2024. (Photo: Grace Del Vecchio/City Bureau)

On Nov. 29, WBEZ broke the news that Chicago City Council would be restricting access to its public meetings. In the report, multiple council members noted the “scary” increase in constituents’ violent threats toward alders as they hammered out contentious policies.

The new rules required members of the public to register to attend meetings two days in advance. They would only be allowed to sit in the 70-seat, third-floor balcony, which is closed off by a glass barrier. Seats nearer to council members would only be accessible to special guests and staffers.

Questions over the legality of the change arose almost immediately. Groups like the ACLU of Illinois and the Better Government Association opposed the new rule, saying it likely violated the state’s Open Meetings Act, which ensures the public’s right to know. 

“The Act guards the public’s rights to attend, record and address public officials face-to-face during meetings of governmental bodies,” wrote the Better Government Association. 

Our team of Chicago Documenters, who are paid and trained to attend and document such meetings, wanted to see how the new policy was playing out as 2023 came to a close. (Want to learn more about becoming a Documenter? Get more details here.)


👀 WHAT HAPPENED WHEN DOCUMENTERS TRIED TO ACCESS CITY COUNCIL MEETINGS

In December, we sent some Documenters to scope out the situation and see how the rules were being implemented.

On Dec. 8, one day after the Rules Committee released written rules for public attendance, a Documenter attended a string of meetings without any trouble — and without registering ahead of time. When the Documenter asked on-duty security guards about the new rule, they claimed they hadn’t heard about it. 

More Documenters returned to City Hall the following week, when members of the public were expected to comment on 33rd Ward Ald. Rossana Rodriguez Sanchez’s resolution calling for a permanent cease-fire in Gaza.

The day before the Dec. 13 meeting, the council announced it had suspended the rule, nullifying need to pre-register to attend. But a swell of Chicagoans looking to get in led to a bottleneck outside City Council chambers and a heavy police presence. 

Despite waiting over an hour in line, our Documenters were among the many people unable to attend the supposedly public meeting..
 

🔎 WE’VE SEEN THIS BEFORE FROM CHICAGO’S POLITICIANS 

Over the decades, Chicago’s mayoral administrations have devised multiple ways to suppress dissent.

As recently as summer 2020, Chicagoans took to the streets in droves to protest the murder of George Floyd at the hands of Minneapolis police. Then-Mayor Lori Lightfoot weaponized the city’s infrastructure against them. 

For the first time since 1855, the city raised all but two of the bridges that led to the Loop. With only a half-hour warning, and while many had inconsistent cellphone service, Lightfoot issued a 9 p.m. curfew and ordered all CTA lines be shut down. Most of Lake Shore Drive and highway entrances and exits were blocked, as were many main roads. 

The move provided virtually no access for those who lived, worked or wanted to assemble fromin large swaths of the city’s epicenter. Throughout the summer and into the fall, the same tactics would be repeated. 

Decades before, in 1968, then-Mayor Richard J. Daley experienced another wave of historic uprisings. The first was in response to the murder of Martin Luther King Jr. in April of that year. Daley was recorded ordering then-Police Superintendent James Conslik to "shoot to kill" arsonists and "shoot to maim or cripple" looters — hardly the lawful punishment for such crimes.

The uprisings continued leading up to the 1968 Democratic National Conference (which will be making its return to Chicago this summer 👀). 

While the bridges were not raised, space and infrastructure played a big role in dissent and how the city responded to it. The city enacted a strict and highly political permit code system. Because of this, dissenters often acted without permits and, in turn, were subject to forcible removal by police.

“Chicago's record in regard to right of assembly and use of streets and parks is a discriminatory one,” wrote zoning and land use attorney Richard L. Wexler in his journal article “Dissent, the Streets and Permits: Chicago as Microcosm,” published in 1970. 

Along with the City Hall meeting debacle, 2023 was marked by constant disagreements over the city’s handling of incoming migrants and unrest over violence in Palestine. Now, as we are looking ahead to hosting the DNC this summer, it begs the question: When it comes to responding to public dissent in Chicago, what will Mayor Brandon Johnson’s legacy be?

A version of this story was first published in the Jan. 12, 2024 edition of Newswire, a newsletter filled with civic knowledge and opportunities designed for Chicagoans who want to make a difference in the life of their communities by connecting them with civic knowledge and opportunities.

This story is available to republish under a Creative Commons license. Read City Bureau’s guidelines here.

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