Matt Paprocki
As the Democratic National Convention descends on Chicago, delegates will be wined and dined, celebrating Mayor Brandon Johnson and the city’s reputation as a vanguard of progressive ideals.
But behind the glitz and glamor lies the truth — Chicago, once a beacon of Midwestern prosperity, has fallen behind.
One year into Johnson’s tenure, Chicago’s progressive vision is failing under real-world pressures. While the Democratic Party nationally seems eager to embrace these policies, the progressive agenda has failed in Chicago and even grown increasingly unpopular.
New polling from the Illinois Policy Institute shows nearly 2 in 3 voters disapprove of the job Johnson is doing as mayor.
Chicagoans are seeing the results of a socialist-supporting mayor who is backed by the most powerful teachers union in America: tent cities, thousands of migrants who get free city services while other communities go in need, boarded-up storefronts, a record-high office vacancy rate in the heart of the downtown Loop, public transportation in distress and rising violent crime that rarely ends in an arrest, let alone a conviction. High taxes, an unemployment rate that is highest among the nation’s cities, a debt that keeps increasing and city schools that keep getting more expensive with poorer outcomes.
Chicagoans are not pleased.
Political theater can only go so far to mask the realities festering in Chicago – progressive policies don’t work and are worsening life for city residents. Here are some of the most damaging aspects.
Education
Chicago Public Schools under the progressive leadership of Johnson’s former employer, the Chicago Teachers Union, continue to founder.
Citywide, just 26% of 3rd-8th graders are reading at grade level and a mere 18% are performing math proficiently. Chronic absenteeism plagues 40% of students, exacerbating the education crisis. More money for education has not been shown to turn out better results. District spending has nearly doubled since 2012 as academic proficiency has dropped.
That’s partially because the CTU functions more as the city’s strongest political machine to elect politicians and direct policy than as a vehicle for teachers’ rights.
CTU lobbied for and successfully ended Illinois’ only school choice program, the Invest in Kids scholarship program. They called the program racist despite it helping nearly 15,000 low-income and mostly minority students find educations that suited their unique needs when public schools did not.
CTU is negotiating its next contract by making over $10 billion in demands on subjects unrelated to benefits or salary, such as demanding electric buses, teacher housing stipends and money for migrant families. When they don’t get their way, they walk out on their students — five times in the past 10 years. Their forced gains have stressed the district budget: CPS faces at least a $505 million budget hole next year, and the district projects giving in to just 52 of over 700 new CTU contract demands will push that to $2.9 billion.
CTU has taken on championing other progressive initiatives such as pushing the Chicago Board of Education to cap attendance at charter schools, remove remaining police from schools and expand “sustainable community schools,” which have some of the worst educational outcomes in the city. They’ve even worked to limit teacher accountability, with CTU President Stacy Davis Gates calling standardized testing “rooted in white supremacy.” Their philosophy puts politics ahead of any notion of improving education. As a result, Chicago schools have lost 44,000 students since the pandemic.
Economy
While federal pandemic relief artificially stabilized things for a few years, the city’s finances are now struggling. Partially because of the Chicago Public School’s dropping bottom line and partially because of poor fiscal management, Chicago is facing a projected $986 million budget deficit next year. Rather than address the root cause — overspending — city political leaders backed pet projects such as a universal basic income pilot program that gave 5,000 families $500 a month.
The population has dropped by over 128,000 during nine consecutive years of loss because families are moving out, eroding the tax base. The city’s population now sits at its lowest level since 1920. Nine major corporations have moved their headquarters and offices out of the city in the past few years.
Chicago’s three-year COVID-19 shutdown, championed by progressive leaders, caused the shuttering of countless businesses. The city’s economic heart, the Loop, now has a record-high office vacancy rate of 25.8%. Notably, the area faced intense riots and loitering during summer 2020. Ultimately, these poor economic decisions cost former Mayor Lori Lightfoot reelection.
Crime
Under the progressive stewardship of Cook County State’s Attorney Kim Foxx, the city grew complacent about punishing criminals. Foxx dropped more serious felony cases, including murders, than her predecessor; she would not prosecute retail theft under $1,000 as a felony.
Violent offenses are up across the board – robberies have grown 21% year-over-year, the homicide arrest rate has hit a 24-year low, and school-based violent crimes have spiked 26%. Chicago remains an outlier, with violent crime higher than the national average and than other major cities.
Additionally, Chicago has become the car-crime capital of the Midwest, with elevated carjacking and record-high motor vehicle theft in recent years.
Where we are today
The city’s progressive experiment has exacerbated, rather than addressed, these underlying issues. The relentless pursuit of a left-wing agenda, driven by the demands of powerful special interests such as the CTU, has come at the expense of the city’s long-term stability and the wellbeing of its residents.
The parallels between Chicago today and the Chicago of 1968 are striking. Then, as now, the city was gripped by social unrest and racial tensions masked by overseas clashes. The 1968 Democratic National Convention was marred by violent riots — a stark reminder of the city’s deep-seated problems more than of a distant war.
This election, those race and economic problems remain the undercurrent.
Adding to the fire are radical progressive groups, such as Behind Enemy Lines that has openly declared its intent to disrupt the convention. They’ve called to “make 2024 like 1968” and to “turn bruises from the police into the new back-to-school fall fashion.”
At its best, this socialistic vision is Quixotic. At its worst, it’s corrosive.
The progressive experiment yields disastrous results for the very people it was meant to empower. And it’s a cautionary tale for the Harris-Walz ticket, whose own progressive agenda has drawn comparisons to Johnson’s.
When faced with the realities of governance, it can quickly crumble. It leaves a city that struggles to provide the basic services and reforms promised to residents despite rising costs, as we’ve seen in Chicago.
There are signs the progressive vision is dimming. CPS was unable to secure $1.1 billion in extra state funds. Johnson has failed to implement any of the $12 billion in new taxes he or his allies proposed during the election: his real estate transfer tax on the March 17 ballot was soundly defeated. Foxx declined to run for reelection, and her assumed successor lost his primary bid to a harder-on-crime candidate.
The people have had enough. It’s time city leaders listened to them, evolved past their failed progressive ideals and focused on Chicagoans’ main concerns: crime, affordability, high taxes and housing.
Democratic delegates may leave Chicago feeling invigorated by the party’s showy rhetoric and the spectacle of the convention. But if they spend time in Chicago’s neighborhoods, they will see the model of progressive governance is a cautionary tale for the nation.
Matt Paprocki is president and CEO of the Illinois Policy Institute.
The views and opinions expressed in this commentary are those of the author and do not reflect the official position of the Daily Caller News Foundation.
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