(RepublicanDaily.org) – As the city of Chicago continues to buckle under the weight of the thousands of migrants that have arrived over the past year and a half, the city’s mayor Brandon Johnson has continued to blame Texas Governor Greg Abbott for the influx of new arrivals. But the mayor’s fellow Democrats are beginning to turn their ire towards his own mishandling of Chicago’s migrant crisis.
According to a report by news outlet the National Review, a number of Democrats in the state say that the migrant crisis could “flip the state of Illinois purple.” The report cites a number of long-running problems within the state – that particularly affect poorer black communities – that have been ignored, especially with the city’s push to support the migrants that have arrived in the city. The city of Chicago alone has spent $156 million so far on migrant support, including the construction or refurbishment of infrastructure for migrant shelters. However, for many in the Black community, the support the city – and Mayor Johnson – has shown migrants is almost like a slap in the face given that many activists have been fighting for more funding for projects and initiatives for their communities for years.
Zerlina Smith-Members, who calls herself an independent Democrat and an activist on from Chicago’s West Side, says that the problem lies with the “sanctuary city” policies of Johnson, which only echo those of President Joe Biden and Illinois Governor JB Pritzker.
‘It’s a Biden thing. It’s a Pritzker thing. It’s a Brandon Johnson thing,” she told the National Review.
Smith-Members, who is a victim services advocate, has been fighting to secure more government support for victims of violence in the city, as well as more concrete initiatives to address issues in her community such as gun violence, the poor quality of education, bad health outcomes, homelessness, and the like. She bemoans the government’s seeming preference to serve “people who have come here illegally, who have jumped the line.”
She warns that the voters in the city and in the state have “woken up” and will not stand with the “old leadership” come election day.
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