CV NEWS FEED // A coalition of black Chicago Democrats is suing the city government for placing migrant facilities in their neighborhoods.
“For the past year, anger has been mounting in black communities across Chicago as residents watch resources they say they desperately need go to the newly arrived migrants instead,” Olivia Reingold of The Free Press said in a video posted to X (formerly Twitter).
West Side, Chicago resident Cata Truss described her current feelings as “buyer’s remorse.”
“I supported [Chicago] Mayor Brandon Johnson,” said the black Democrat and mother of five sons. “I feel like a fool right now. You can slap us in the face by ignoring us today, but we are punching you in the face by ignoring you at the polling places tomorrow.”
Reingold later recounted: “Last fall when the city told [Truss] that her beloved local park was going to become a migrant shelter, she essentially said, ‘Not on my watch.’”
In a Tuesday article, Reingold explained:
There was no way [Truss] was going to let Amundsen Park—what she calls ‘the crown jewel of the community’—go to the newly arrived migrants from the Mexican border. Especially not when there were black Chicagoans who needed the space, which she says kept her five sons ‘out of trouble’ and busy playing football when they were young.
“The city of Chicago is now facing seven lawsuits, at least three of them filed by people of color, all bound by a concern that their leaders would rather serve the migrants than their own vulnerable citizens,” wrote Reingold.
Truss and four of her neighbors, all black, filed one of those suits.
“A second suit, in the South Side, has two black plaintiffs,” Reingold noted. “A third, in Chicago’s Brighton Park, is led by five Hispanic residents and one Asian American.”
“Critics often claim that only ‘extreme MAGA republicans’ are concerned about the record influx of migrants,” Reingold wrote on X Tuesday morning. “Tell that to the 18 black voters I recently met in Chicago … they’re all ‘lifelong Democrats’ who say they’re done with the party.”
“Extreme MAGA Republicans” is an epithet that President Joe Biden and his allies in the Democratic Party often use to dismiss people who dissent from their policies.
“Truss and other black residents told me that Chicago, which calls itself a ‘welcoming city,’ has been very welcoming—just not to them,” Reingold went on:
Since August 2022, Chicago has greeted nearly 35,000 new arrivals with resources like laundry services, mental health screenings, and $15,000 in rental support per person—all funds that Truss says could’ve gone a long way in Amundsen Park in Chicago’s Austin neighborhood, where nearly 28 percent of residents live below the poverty line.
According to the Chicago Metropolitan Agency for Planning (CMAP), Austin is 75.7% black, 17.1% Hispanic, and 5.3% white. It has a median household income of $38,407, which is just about half of the national median.
“They’re giving the migrants all the things we’ve been asking for since we came here in chains,” J. Darnell Jones, a black man suing Chicago told Reingold.
Jones explicitly blamed Biden for his city’s intensifying migrant crisis.
“What the Democratic Party doesn’t want black people to hear is that this is a Biden policy,” he said. “Biden is allowing the borders to remain open.”
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“[T]hese migrants couldn’t even be getting through if it weren’t for Biden,” Jones noted in response to members of his party who blamed the crisis on the busing policies of Republican Texas Gov. Greg Abbott.
As Reingold clarified, Jones is no conservative. In fact, he is a Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) consultant by trade, a “proponent of reparations,” and a former Democratic candidate for the U.S. House.
“And yet, he can’t help but place the blame on the Democrats for what’s unfolding in his city,” Reingold continued:
Polling shows that an increasing number of Americans agree: 68 percent of voters polled disapprove of the president’s handling of the U.S.–Mexico border. And less than a quarter say the recent influx of migrants would make American society “better in the long run.”)
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During a CNN appearance last month, Mayor Johnson asked for the Biden administration to provide Chicago with more funding so the city can deal with its uncontrollable population of migrants.
“Without real significant investment from our federal government, it won’t just be the city of Chicago that won’t be able to maintain this mission,” stated Johnson. “It’s the entire country that is now at stake.”
As CatholicVote reported at the time, Johnson “took a shot” at Abbott’s busing policy later on in the interview.
Readers can find Reingold’s full piece here.
