Let's face it: Mayor Brandon Johnson is a bigot
With Chicago staring down a massive budget shortfall, deteriorating city services, and rising taxes, the mayor might treat public dollars with at least a modicum of care. But Brandon Johnson had other plans for Juneteenth. He didn’t just pander — he dropped a double whammy of race-driven spending priorities that stunned many Chicagoans.
Whammy one: A $4.11 million “Wealth Our Way” giveaway
In a city where basic infrastructure is crumbling and the police department is under-resourced, Mayor Johnson chose Juneteenth to announce a $4.11 million “Wealth Our Way” capital grant initiative. Styled with the acronym “W.O.W.” for maximum optics, the program is branded as a tool of “community wealth-building.” But the devil — as always — is in the details.
The mayor said the quiet part out loud. The money, he explained, is for “Black residents” to “reclaim ownership.” His exact words: “Wealth Our Way will bring investment to Black residents in reclaiming ownership and prosperity in their neighborhoods.” That kind of rhetoric suggests a race-based distribution scheme — an eyebrow-raising proposition for a public program funded by taxpayers of every race and background.
So is this actually a race-exclusive program? Time will tell.
Despite the mayor’s overtly racial framing, the official guidelines for the W.O.W. grants don’t explicitly restrict eligibility to Black residents. Instead, the money is designated for projects in low- and moderate-income neighborhoods — particularly the South and West Sides. That’s a meaningful distinction. In other words, while the mayor’s political messaging is steeped in reparations-style language, the legal structure of the program appears to be income- and geography-based rather than race-restricted.
Whether these are weasel words to shield the program from constitutional challenges remains to be seen, but Johnson’s racial pandering certainly undermines trust and raises suspicions.
That hasn’t stopped the confusion — and it may be by design. This is, after all, an administration that governs through symbolism and grievance more than clarity and competence. Johnson’s Juneteenth messaging leaned hard into the theme of racial reparations. It’s no stretch to say he wants people — especially his progressive base — to interpret this as Chicago’s first step toward financial redress for slavery. Whether or not the program’s mechanics deliver on that vision is secondary.
But even if the W.O.W. grants are technically race-neutral, the mayor’s messaging sends a dangerous signal: that in Johnson’s Chicago, public resources should be allocated based on identity, not need.
Even on the merits, the program is ripe for criticism. Grants of up to $500,000 will fund worker cooperatives and so-called “community investment vehicles,” most of which are theoretical at best and politically connected at worst. Projects don’t need to show profitability or long-term sustainability — just alignment with “shared ownership” ideals. It’s not economic development. It’s taxpayer-funded utopianism.
Whammy two: Half a million dollars for a reparations study
As if the mayor’s $4.11 million wealth redistribution scheme weren’t enough, Johnson added insult to injury by throwing an additional $500,000 into a pot for “reparations study planning.” Yes, Chicago’s in fiscal freefall. Yes, violent crime is rising. Yes, hundreds of millions are being burned on illegal migrant care. But let’s earmark half a million dollars to figure out how much more we can hand out — based on skin color.
According to the city’s announcement, the funds will be used to develop an “actionable roadmap for reparations,” which could mean anything from cash transfers to housing subsidies to debt forgiveness. And if the city’s recent track record with consultant contracts is any indicator, a good chunk of that money will be gobbled up by administrative overhead and politically connected “equity advisors.”
This isn’t a study. It’s a stalking horse. Once that plan is written, the activists and aldermen will treat it as gospel — and demand billions more in follow-up action. The half-million-dollar line item is just a down payment.
Make no mistake about it: the reparations program could make W.O.W. look like a rounding error. The study while exorbitantly expensive is just the tip of an enormous iceberg that could bring this Titanic of a city crashing to the bottom of the ocean of debt.
A city governed by symbolism
Together, these announcements form a tidy Juneteenth package of fiscal recklessness and racialist policy signaling. They also reinforce what many Chicagoans already fear: Brandon Johnson isn’t interested in uniting the city, restoring public order, or stabilizing the budget. He is interested in posturing — preferably in front of a cheering crowd holding up clenched fists and chanting slogans about “liberation.”
It’s not just the spending. It’s the governing philosophy behind it. Johnson’s worldview is rooted in the idea that America is irredeemably racist and that every system, from property ownership to policing, must be dismantled and rebuilt to favor those deemed historically oppressed.
This isn’t just morally corrosive. It’s practically unworkable. You cannot build a functioning city around grievance-based redistribution. You cannot deliver safe streets and decent schools while simultaneously undermining every institution that holds those systems together. You cannot fix the problems of Chicago — violent crime, failing infrastructure, public school decline — by handing out cash and calling it justice.
The reparations pipeline is real
The reparations study isn’t a one-off. Johnson has surrounded himself with advisors, appointees, and nonprofit allies who view cash reparations as the ultimate goal. Their model isn’t civic renewal — it’s payback. Their blueprint is San Francisco’s proposed reparations plan, which included $5 million per recipient and guaranteed incomes for life. That plan failed only because even California couldn’t afford it.
And yet Johnson seems to believe he can thread the needle — sell a racially targeted agenda to the progressive left while avoiding lawsuits and backlash by cloaking it in language about “equity” and “shared prosperity.” But eventually, the lawsuits will come. And if the grants are administered in a way that disproportionately excludes applicants based on race — as the mayor’s own words suggest — then the city will likely find itself on the losing end of a federal civil rights case.
A mayor of the base, not the city-representing just some of the people all of the time
Brandon Johnson didn’t campaign as a uniter. He campaigned as an activist, and now he governs like one. The rest of the city — everyone who isn’t in his narrow progressive coalition — is being told to sit down, shut up, and pay up.
He talks about building community wealth, but what he’s really building is resentment: Resentment from taxpayers who see their money funneled into ideologically driven giveaways; resentment from small business owners who get none of the benefits; resentment from law-abiding citizens who watch city resources diverted to experiments in “economic justice” while their own blocks remain plagued by crime and dysfunction.
Chicago deserves a mayor, not a movement leader. Someone who sees the whole city, not just the voting bloc that got him elected. Someone who governs from principle, not identity.
Instead, we have a man who thinks handing out grants and half-million-dollar studies on Juneteenth makes him a visionary.
To everyone else, it looks like failure — wrapped in feel-good slogans and paid for with borrowed money.
