Chicago’s self-professed “progressive” mayor, Brandon Johnson, and his allies on the Chicago City Council successfully blocked a move Tuesday to give voters a choice with a question on the next ballot asking if they want to maintain or put an end to Chicago’s sanctuary city policies.
During a November 7 meeting of the Rules Committee, Alderman Anthony Beale (9th Ward) had attempted to get approval for the ballot measure asking voters to choose their preferred sanctuary status and to have the referendum added to Chicago’s next primary election in March. However, the mayor’s allies successfully scuttled Beale’s attempt, according to CBS 2 Chicago.
Instead, the mayor tried to get a different measure on the ballot that would preclude the possibility voters could opt to cancel the city’s sanctuary policies and give the voters fewer options, while still trying to make it look like they were asking for the voters to weigh in.
The language the sanctuary policy supporters wanted only gave the voters the option to place more limits on sanctuary policies, but not end them.
The “yes or no” referendum question the mayor’s allies tried to push through reads as follows: “Should the city of Chicago impose reasonable limits on the city’s providing resources for migrant sheltering, such as funding caps and shelter occupancy time limits, if necessary to prevent a substantial negative impact on Chicago’s current residents?”
This question was submitted to the alderman to begin debating the issue after Ald. Michelle Harris (8th), who chairs the Rules Committee, ruled that Beale’s question was a non-starter. However, local residents who flooded City Hall and the council chambers were less than amused at both Beale’s defeat and the new ballot question Mayor Johnson tried to have rammed through.
The crowd watching the proceedings became extremely loud and began drowning out the aldermen as they tried to discuss the new ballot question.
Harris tried to order the council’s sergeant-at-arms to clear the gallery, but to no avail. The noise from the unhappy crowd in the gallery became so loud that Harris eventually ended the meeting and rescheduled the debate for Thursday.
Beale blasted the mayor and his lackeys for refusing to let the people of Chicago to have their say on whether the city should continue spending “up to $40 million a month” on the migrant crisis.
“When you don’t want the people to hear you — when you don’t want the people to have a voice — you have chaos,” Beale said, according to CBS 2. “That’s why you’re seeing the chaos in this city, because you’re trying to silence the voice of certain people who just want to be heard.”
Ald. Raymond Lopez (15th) was equally dismissive of the mayor’s altered ballot question and called the language a “fake option.”
“The real question voters want to be able to answer is shall Chicago remain a sanctuary city?” Lopez said. “The fact that so many people are afraid to allow the citizens to have their voice heard through a Democratic election is remarkable.”
Lopez added that the new question is absurd.
“Should we limit what we spend?” he asked, according to the Chicago Sun-Times. “What happens when you reach the limit? What are you going to do when you say, we’ve spent all the money we’re willing to spend and you still have buses arriving here?”
“This question does not answer the issue as to why people continue to be shipped to the city of Chicago,” Lopez continued. “And they are shipped here because we remain unabashed in saying a welcoming city, a sanctuary city. Even though Republicans and Democrats are now taking full advantage of that.”
Lopez added that he opposes the “fake option,” and said, “I, too, do not support this resolution because it automatically sets the city of Chicago up for failure. We need to vote this down. We need a clean referendum that simply puts the question to all of Chicago: ‘Shall we remain a sanctuary city?’ Because what we know and what so many in this room fear is that the true coalition between the African American and Latino communities does exist around this question, because both communities want an end to it.”
Beale also said during the debate that the mayor was trying to “shut people out from having a voice.”
“Give the people of Chicago a voice, you all. Give the people a chance to say `yes’ or `no.’ We don’t want people to be disenfranchised. That’s what this is doing. This is really throwing fuel on the fire,” Beale said.
Tuesday’s ballot measure fiasco came on the heels of a major loss for Mayor Johnson. The mayor lost a key ally when his hand-picked floor leader, Ald. Carlos Rosa (35th Ward), was forced to resign from his key positions on Monday after being accused of laying hands on a black alderwoman in an attempt to stop her from voting against Johnson’s support for illegals. Ramos was responsible for ramrodding Johnson’s agenda through the city council. But with his resignation, he is no long in that key position to push through the mayor’s agenda.
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