The Red Dawn of Realism: Why Brandon Johnson’s Base Is Fleeing Chicago's Progressive Circus

By trading basic public safety for performative left-wing theater, Mayor 6.6 has achieved what was heretofore thought impossible: Alienating his identity politics base

Let us sing the praises of Chicago Flips Red!

Hallelujah! Common sense is finally emerging directly from Mayor 6.6’s own base.

For months, the local political establishment has watched in collective, tight-lipped panic as the cracks in their progressive coalition hardened into permanent fissures. I have written many times before about the fundamental irony defining the administration of Mayor 6.6, a democratic socialist in all respects except being an actual but card-carrying member of the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA). He continuously claims to be a man of his people, loudly validating his mandate on a rigid framework of identity politics.

But nothing exposes the grotesque hypocrisy of this administration quite like the math of municipal protection.

Consider the raw data of how our police force is allocated. Chicago has roughly 8,000 active patrolmen on the streets. Out of that total, a staggering 150 officers are personally devoted to Brandon Johnson’s private security detail.

Let that sink in. He’s built his entire political brand on castigating law enforcement, defunding rhetoric, and coddling anti-police activists — yet the personal ratio of cops protecting him is an astronomical 150-to-1.

Meanwhile, what about the rest of us? There are 2.7 million other Chicagoans living, working, and trying to survive in this city. If you do the math and subtract his personal palace guard, that leaves just 7,850 patrolmen to protect the entire remaining population. That shakes out to roughly one single officer for every 344 citizens.

If you are a working-class resident in a high-crime neighborhood or a high taxpayer on the North Side, your life protection is rationed out to a tiny fraction of a cop, while the Socialist in Chief commands a small army to walk him to his motorcade.

The reality on the ground tells a radically different story than his press conferences: His base hates him for exactly this kind of behavior.

The reasons for this shift are not complex. The working class communities local leaders took for granted have grown exhausted by the pretzel logic of the modern academic left. City Hall operates under the delusion that it is a moral imperative to allow thousands of illegal immigrants and fraudulent asylum seekers into Chicago's neighborhoods. Worse, they believe local taxpayers should directly subsidize this influx, which attracts even more, like feeding the pigeons, at the expense of citizens with roots in this country going back to 1619.

Why? Because we’re a sanctuary city. A sanctuary for whom? Not for American citizens. That’s for sure!

To compound this mismanagement, the administration actively refuses to cooperate with federal law enforcement efforts to deport criminal illegal aliens — even those who have committed violent felonies. Instead, our mayor and our equally goofy governor choose to treat public safety as a stage for political theater, explicitly designed to show spite toward a conservative federal administration.

This is the literal definition of cutting your nose off to spite your face. Alienating the federal government — the historic source of the massive cornucopia of dollars showered on our city — is an incredibly stupid strategy. The consequences of this ongoing political tantrum do not hurt the wealthy progressive elites hiding in protected enclaves. They fall squarely on Mayor 6.6's core constituents.

That’s exactly why a courageous group of Black Chicagoans has stepped up to lead the charge to flip Chicago red. When you look past the media blackout and read what these community organizers actually write, their arguments possess an eminent, undeniable contrarian sense.

Consider how these systemic failures manifest on our streets, uniting disparate corners of the city in shared frustration. Take the recent, outrageous shooting at a popular nightlife venue in Lincoln Park called The Dime. I used to live just around the corner from that joint. Over the past few years, that specific stretch has degenerated into a predictable haven for late-night evildoers.

While no one is currently being prosecuted for this latest gun fatality, the Chicago Police Department wisely used its administrative authority to shut the venue down.

A summary closure order can last for up to six months. That represents a half-year of relative public safety, peace and quiet returning to the heart of one of Chicago's most upscale neighborhoods. That temporary reprieve is a good thing. However, the underlying timeline of that fatal night exposes a terrifying structural rot within our municipal infrastructure.

This is how Chicago Flips Red sees it:

"911 CALLS. NO AVAILABLE OFFICERS. THEN CAME THE GUNFIRE: THE TIMELINE BEFORE THE LINCOLN PARK MURDER (43rd Ward)."

The tragic death of 30-year-old Malik McCorkle in Lincoln Park was not an isolated event. It occurred after weeks of public safety concerns in the same nightlife corridor and after multiple 911 calls reportedly warned of escalating danger before the fatal shooting.

According to police, a fight that began inside The Dime bar spilled onto North Lincoln Avenue around 11:43 p.m., where McCorkle was shot multiple times and later died at the hospital.

A firearm was recovered, one person was taken into custody, and detectives continue investigating the shooting.

Following the homicide, the City of Chicago issued a Summary Closure Order shutting down The Dime, and Ald. Timmy Knudsen announced he would pursue permanent action against the establishment’s liquor license.

This was also the second shooting connected to the same nightlife corridor in just over a month. In June, a 39-year-old woman was critically wounded outside a nearby bar, prompting neighborhood concerns and calls for stronger safety measures.

Then came the reporting that raises even more questions.

CWB Chicago reported that before the fatal shooting, the 18th District was operating in Radio Assignment Pending (RAP) status for nearly two hours.

RAP means there are more emergency calls than available patrol officers to respond.

According to CWB’s review of police radio traffic:

• A caller reported suspicious activity approximately 38 minutes before the shooting.
• Another 911 caller later reported a fight involving 40 to 50 people.
• A subsequent caller reported a man with a gun and provided a description.
• According to CWB, those calls went unassigned because no patrol officers were immediately available.
• About four minutes later, multiple callers reported shots fired.

Chicago Flips Red’s input:

This should not be a partisan issue. Chicago residents pay taxes expecting that when they call 911, someone is available to respond before violence turns deadly. If a district has no officers available to investigate reports of a large fight and an armed individual, city leaders owe the public an explanation. We believe the City of Chicago should answer: How often are police districts operating in RAP status?

The breakdown in the 18th District is a direct symptom of prioritizing political theater over core municipal functions. When an affluent North Side neighborhood experiences a two-hour window where zero police units are available to respond to an active, 50-person brawl, the social contract is completely broken.

For years, Chicago's progressive leadership has operated on a cynical "divide and conquer" strategy. They calculated that they could starve working-class Black and Hispanic neighborhoods of resources to fund pet ideological projects, while keeping North Side liberals compliant through performative virtue signaling. But their math failed to account for a basic human reality: everyone, regardless of zip code, wants their children to walk down a safe street.

Bad RAP

By allowing our police districts to consistently fall into RAP status, the current administration has achieved something historic. They have bridged the traditional divides of Chicago geography. The South Side mother tired of local community centers being converted into unvetted migrant shelters now shares the exact same grievance as the Lincoln Park resident watching businesses shut down due to unchecked violence. They are both looking at a government that takes more and more of their money and, with property and other taxes, gives them more and more lawlessness in return.

The rise of grassroots movements like Chicago Flips Red signifies the old political playbook is losing its power. For decades, the local machine deflected criticism by labeling any call for law, order, and fiscal sanity as partisan fear-mongering and fascism. That defense is crumbling. When working-class minorities — the very group progressives claim to champion — stand up and demand basic accountability, the identity politics shield shatters.

It turns out common sense is a remarkably stubborn thing. You can try to bury it under progressive jargon, and you can try to distract the public with anti-Washington grandstanding. But when a citizen dials 911 because a man is waving a gun on a crowded sidewalk, and the phone call sits unassigned on a dispatcher's desk for 38 minutes because there are literally no cops available to roll to the scene, the rhetoric stops mattering.

Chicagoans are waking up to a simple, contrarian truth: Ideological posturing and platitudes cannot run a world-class city. If City Hall continues to alienate federal funding, exhaust our municipal budget on non-citizens and ghost schools, and hamstring the police force to appease a radical fringe, the city will continue its slide.

The emerging alliance between disillusioned neighborhood bases and fed-up taxpayers isn't just a political shift — it's a necessary act of civic self-preservation.