It’s Monday morning. In a few hours, he will address thousands of Democrats gathered at the United Center and millions more tuning into the 2024 Democratic National Convention. But right now, Mayor Brandon Johnson is at Walter H.
Dyett High School for the Arts, at 555 E. 51st St., about to speak to a few dozen people.
He stands poised by the steps to small platform. “They’re coming for him!” Jitu Brown, national director of Journey for Justice, a coalition of grassroots educational organizations, tells the gathering. Brown, who led a 34-day hunger strike in 2015 to re-open Dyett, prowls the stage, invoking faceless forces set against the mayor.
“Because they want him to privatize. They want him to privatize,” Brown says. “They don’t want him to love Black and Brown children.
They were silent when they were closing over 160 schools in this city. ..
. They don’t get to decide no more. Kwame Nkrumah said this: ‘It is better to govern or misgovern yourself than to be governed by anybody else.
’” With that complicated compliment tossed out, the man trying to govern the sprawling city of Chicago as it welcomes one president, two candidates, thousands of delegates and protesters, not to forget all the other daily doings of a major city, takes the podium. “I’m grateful that we have come together to fortify our position as we push for sustainable community schools to be the model throughout our entire school district,” says Johnson, who joined the 2015 Dyet.