A Chicago resident cites a rampant crime wave and illegal immigration as just a few of his reasons for initiating an effort to recall Mayor Brandon Johnson.
He pointed to Alderman Bryon Sigcho-Lopez, an ally of Mr. Johnson—one of the six members of the Democratic Socialist Caucus block of the Chicago City Council—who appeared with pro-Palestinian protesters after they had burned an American flag.
These ideological pursuits—which include the recent Chicago City Council’s vote to approve the mayor’s request for $70 million to be doled out for illegal immigration—ignore Chicago residents who have lived in the city their whole lives, he said.
The local station also reported that by November 2023, the city was housing 5,000 illegal immigrants in decommissioned police stations and airports, with up to 12,000 migrant children enrolled in city schools since 2022.
According to a city press release, Chicago has taken in more than 39,000 illegal immigrants since August 2022 when Texas Gov. Greg Abbot began busing them to the city by the thousands.
‘Things Are Getting Out of Hand’
“There are a lot of people who have been waiting years and years for resources, including public safety resources to clean up their neighborhoods, and then these transient migrants come here and they’re given all kinds of benefits,” Mr. Boland said.Chicago residents feel they’re being neglected, he said.
“There are a lot of people who are just trying to get by,” he said. “Now these migrants are being handed everything but they can’t work right now because they don’t have work permits,” he said.
They could pick up garbage on the streets, but they don’t, he added.
“They make more of a mess than they clean up,” he said.
In some instances, they are getting in fights “like it’s a WWE cage match,” he said. “Things are getting out of hand.”
And it was already bad enough, he added.
‘A Wake-Up Call’
According to Mr. Boland, the Illinois Constitution sanctions any recall effort, which Mr. Boland said “allows us to have a binding referendum on the recall of public officials.”“It’s a two-step process that we have to go through,” he said. “Number one: you have to have a petition drive. In this case, we have to get 56,464 signatures on the petition. If we get on the fall ballot after having enough signatures, we‘ll have a binding referendum vote. And then we’ll only have to win by 50 percent plus one vote. So, that’s what we’re trying to do: get the mechanism in place.”
If this mechanism is approved, Chicago residents would have a path by which they could recall Mr. Johnson and any future mayors, he said.
“They would need to have a petition with 123,000, and then the earliest we could recall him would be March of 2026, when we have the primaries for the governor and state and county representatives,” he said.
Mr. Boland, who said he doesn’t side with Republicans or Democrats, called it a “wake-up call” for all city officials.
“This isn’t about one political party or the other,” he said, adding that he hoped the effort would bring Chicago residents together to vote for the power to change leadership when it’s not working for them.
“Hopefully, it will make this mayor more accountable and more transparent,” he said.
The Epoch Times contacted the mayor’s office for comment.