On Dec. 14, Mayor Brandon Johnson’s administration unveiled “The People’s Plan for Public Safety” at King-Kennedy College. It marked the third major mayoral presentation of a city plan to mitigate violence in only four years. The release and fanfare beg the question: What is new here?
For the past seven years, our committed group of Chicago clergy has been working with three consecutive administrations and councils to create a more effective, long-standing solution to Chicago’s violence. In a frustrating process of starts and stops, one with real-world consequences of life and death, we have seen plan after plan created with little implementation or oversight. Now is the time to analyze and set accountability standards regarding Johnson’s plan.
First, a little history is in order. Our coalition united in 2016, met with national experts who had made major reductions in homicides and learned of the effectiveness of established corporate centers for cities to counter violence. Thus, in 2017, we advocated for creating, by ordinance, an Office of Gun Violence Prevention, with guaranteed funding of at least $10 million.
In 2018, we were consulted by then-Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s lead, Walter Katz, in the creation of a plan for the Office of Violence Prevention. That plan was shelved by Mayor Lori Lightfoot, who undertook a lengthy violence prevention planning process, culminating in the 2020 “Our City, Our Safety” plan of 103 pages. The Lightfoot administration then put millions in city funding toward violence prevention (soon expanded by $150 million in American Rescue Plan dollars).
The need for an Office of Gun Violence Prevention — established and funded by ordinance — became clear when Lightfoot created the Community Safety Coordination Center, a new body that effectively jettisoned the Office of Gun Violence Prevention and many recommendations of “Our City, Our Safety.” After one formal meeting, this new agency ceased to function in any visible fashion.
This history was behind the December launch of yet another Chicago mayor’s plan to counter gun violence, the fourth major policy change — advised by similar experts and consuming costly public funds — enacted over six years. We note that we have continually sought to meet with Johnson to develop this plan and have been heard by Deputy Mayor Garien Gatewood and his staff in two receptive meetings. However, despite our requests, we were excluded from the core leadership convened to create this new plan.
On Dec. 14, we watched the announcement — from the perspective of support, yes, and also one of resolve to ensure the city sees a new era in the eradication of gun violence in which leaders adopt a public health outlook and a whole-of-government approach.
To begin with, the launch of “The People’s Plan” was little more than a news release of a one-page outline of a plan that — six weeks later — has yet to be released. Even this brief sketch displays tension between Johnson’s claim that his administration is going “to solve decadeslong problems in a new and bold way” and Gatewood’s more modest admission that, in Chicago, “We don’t need to reinvent the wheel.”
To date, we see very little new in “The People’s Plan,” other than the coordinated participation of the Civic Committee, coded repeatedly as “the business community.” The pledge of $100 million — a very specific amount in a completely unspecified time range — does not even cover the gap of the American Rescue Plan funds from the pandemic that are about to disappear. Even as we applaud the participation of “the business community,” we still face less funding for gun violence prevention in Chicago in 2024 than in previous years.
In this way, “The People’s Plan” perpetuates the major mistakes of its predecessors: There is no guaranteed civic line of funding (or oversight), no procurement power for the Office of Community Safety, and no guarantee — which can only happen by ordinance — that this important office (and its deputy mayor) will remain part of the city’s infrastructure. Likewise, despite a thorough listening tour and wider civic cooperation, there is no established community board for participation or, more importantly, oversight. “The People’s Plan” continues the Chicago way of a mayor claiming to prioritize violence reduction without guaranteeing funding, formal avenues for community participation, or safeguards of transparency and accountability.
Despite these major disappointments, “The People’s Plan” should be applauded for continuing the arc of preceding plans by widening space for victim services, youth programs, job creation and safe spaces. Furthermore, this plan makes two important advances — namely, establishing a deputy mayor to oversee this process and naming police reform as a needed aspect of the plan. If only those commitments were made permanent through the City Council enacting an ordinance.
There is much we need to wait for regarding “The People’s Plan.” While the most glaring absence is any detail about how this plan will be executed, the plan also makes major claims that need to be tested over time. There is the question of funding: whether “the business community” lives up to its obligation and how the city plans to allocate corporate dollars. Mechanisms for transparency, accountability, community participation and more have not yet been revealed.
Ultimately, this purportedly “bold” new plan looks a lot like its predecessors. We await the day when the Johnson administration is forthcoming with important and robust details so that “The People’s Plan” might be evaluated properly by the residents of Chicago.
The plan lacks needed transparency. This is unfortunate, given how many in the city are eager to learn about the depths of this effort and how we can contribute to its success. The people are watching, and waiting. And the people are ready to hold our leaders to account for changing gun violence in Chicago.
Chicago faith leaders Rabbi Seth Limmer and the Revs. Otis Moss III, Ciera Bates-Chamberlain and Michael Pfleger joined the Tribune’s opinion section in summer 2022 for a series of columns on potential solutions to Chicago’s chronic gun violence problem. The column continues on an occasional basis.
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