Black Chicagoans slam Mayor Johnson for 'replacing' them with migrants, demanding 'REPARATIONS' carv
Chicago activists are bashing Mayor Brandon Johnson for trying to replace blacks with migrants, and demanding an exemption from the $6,000-per-year property taxes that other groups would still have to pay.
Howard Ray, a Chicago reparations activist, this week revived his Reconstruction Era Reparation Act Now campaign for carve-outs from property taxes for black households, saying Chicago's migrant surge was hurting African Americans.
Other black Chicagoans have taken to social media to slam Mayor Johnson over $9,000 payouts to migrants to cover their rent and help furnish their apartments, saying it is pricing them out of longstanding black neighborhoods.
The US has seen an influx of asylum seekers across its southern border in recent months, many heading to Chicago, straining social services as hundreds camp out in police stations and O'Hare Airport.
In a widely shared video post, which DailyMail.com could not independently verify, the Chicago woman complained of Latino migrants pricing people out of her neighborhood
'They're using our taxes to demise our communities,' Ray told Chicago's Morning Answer.
'They're using our taxes to support and advocate for the illegal immigrants. And in the meantime, we're getting pushed out.'
Howard Ray says blacks should not pay property taxes
Ray launched his campaign last year, saying black Chicagoans face much higher rates of evictions than others, and that letting them off property taxes would be a fair payback for the legacy of slavery.
Property taxes on a single-family home in Chicago and its suburbs average between $2,500 to $7,500 each year, according to the property website Virtuance. Taxes have jumped up in recent years, straining budgets in poorer households.
'We're losing a lot of the black culture in Chicago,' added Ray, a former candidate for Alderman.
'A lot of the blacks are moving out of Chicago because of crime and taxes … moving to the red states, the southern states. By not paying property taxes, (blacks) will be able to be saved.'
Tax relief for blacks would be payback for the injustices of slavery, Jim Crow, racial lynchings, 'redlining' policies to restrict black homeownership, and the mass incarceration of blacks for drug offenses, he added.
Chicago residents have held meetings against Mayor Johnson's migrant policy, including this event last year against his plans to turn a park district field house into a shelter for migrants
Arriving migrants were forced to sleep in Chicago police stations earlier on in the crisis
'We're trying to preserve the blacks to stay here' in Chicago, Ray added.
'We don't want our people to leave this city. We built this city.'
Black Chicago residents aired similar concerns about Mayor Johnson's support for asylum seekers, with shelters and $9,000 payouts, saying it was at the expense of the African Americans who helped elect him last year.
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'I don't understand how they can give these immigrants thousands of dollars in the state of Illinois, but look what they're doing to our own f******g people,' said a Chicago woman, in a video that's been viewed 59,000 times.
She described seeing 'Latinos' arriving in her neighborhood in a '12-foot box truck,' using government welfare checks to 'buy up everything' and effectively price black residents out of the neighborhood.
'The fact they are here, and our government is giving more to them than to the people who were born here, is really starting to p**s us off,' said the woman in the video, which DailyMail.com could not independently verify.
'Mayor Brandon, we are coming for your a**.'
The mayor's office did not answer DailyMail.com's request for comment.
The number of asylum seekers in city shelters appears to be falling after peaking at 15,000 in December, when officials warned that the system had 'reached capacity.'
A worrying 69 percent of Chicagoans disapprove of Johnson's handling of the migrant crisis
Johnson at the time joined the mayors of New York and Denver, which are also inundated with migrants, to call for the crisis to be declared a federal emergency, freeing up funds to bail out the struggling cities.
In recent days, Johnson, a Democrat, has walked back or rejected more than $300 million in extra funding for the migrant surge.
An Echelon Insights survey in January found that 69 percent of Chicagoans disapproved of Johnson's handling of the migrant crisis. Only 23 percent approved of the mayor's performance, 8 percent were not sure.
The surge in migrants has been a headache for Democrat-run northern cities and the administration of President Joe Biden, as it is front-of-mind for millions of voters and could swing the outcome of November's presidential election.
Arrests for illegal border crossings from Mexico reached an all-time high in December since monthly numbers have been released, authorities said last month, exposing a growing vulnerability for Biden in his campaign for a second term.
Arrests fell more than half in early January, in line with historic migrant trends.
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