Would Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson Let his Daughter Ride the CTA?
By John Kass
June 4, 2023
This is a simple question really, a straightforward question from a father who once loved Chicago, to another father who is mayor of Chicago, yet who defends the violent lest they be “demonized” by those troublesome law-abiding taxpayers:
Mayor Johnson, would you let your daughter ride unaccompanied on the CTA?
I don’t mean riding with an escort of armed Chicago police bodyguards with those cop faces that tell everyone thinking about approaching to stay away. Or a city limousine ride with the mayor’s ample bodyguard detail.
I mean alone on the rapid transit, with no advance warning to the CTA, just like thousands of poor women and girls must do so every day and night. They ride CTA rapid transit and the buses to get to and from work and school. Ridership plummets, even as crime increases. And women and girls are constantly subject to the threat of violence and real violence of beatings and robbery, of sexual assault.
Many thousands of poor women and girls are forced to run the gauntlet to get to school and work. No one rides the CTA if they don’t have to. No woman rides unless she must. The poor have no choice. They are constantly subject to violence and the threat of violence, of beatings, robbery, sexual assault. And violent men know that women and girls are soft targets.
In his inaugural speech even the mayor himself has said the CTA is not safe.
“Too many Chicagoans fear for their safety…when they walk down the streets, to get groceries or drive to the gas station, because our city’s homicide and violent crime rates have consistently outpace our peer cities,” said Johnson. “Our public transit is unreliable and unsafe. So much so, that many parents refuse to let their children ride even when the CTA could be the pathway to opportunity and enrichment.”
The reason I bring this up involves something the newspapers avoid for political reasons: Women and girls being assaulted on the CTA. There are two stories I want you to think about from the all-important crime website CWB Chicago. One involves Lorenzo Jones. Another involves Marvin Bugg, who was arrested 76 times since 2014.
If it wasn’t for CWB Chicago, with the newspapers having gone squishy and politically correct, we wouldn’t know enough about crime and the way the court system keeps failing taxpayers. I am a paid supporter of CWB Chicago. The work they do is worth it.
Jones, 34, was charged the other day with repeatedly punching a woman during an alleged rape on a CTA Blue-line train and touching another woman on the train hours later while pleasuring himself. According to CWB Chicago, Jones sat next to a woman Sunday afternoon on an O’Hare-bound blue-line train near Irving Park station. According to Assistant State’s Attorney Domenica Devitt, Jones said:
“You need to s*** my d***”
“Absolutely not” the woman reportedly responded, and Jones punched her in the face.
“You need to s*** my d*** or I’ll hit you again,” Jones said, according to the assistant prosecutor.
The woman refused and so Jones punched her in the face again. And feminist groups didn’t make a sound in the media.
Then, the next day after 8 p.m. Monday, a woman boarded a Blue Line train. Jones began commentating about her legs and her private parts. He reached between her legs. She pushed him away.
“You better give me that p**** or I’ll f*** you up.
He charged at the woman, tried to grab her private area but she fought him off, exited the train and called police.
And Marvin Bragg, 32, starring in his own story—arrested 76 times since 2014, finally received five years for trying to sexually assault a woman at the Roosevelt station.
CWB Chicago reported that habitual criminal Marvin Bragg, 45, grabbed a woman who suffered from cerebral palsy. He said she was pretty, then he grabbed her.
As he grabbed her, prosecutors said he was touching his privates with his other hand. She pushed back trying to get away.
Why was he allowed to harass women for so long? Why was Jones allowed to assault other women and not land in prison? His lawyers said years ago, after another arrest, that he had mental health issues. That’s terrible, but I really don’t care. Get him help if that makes you feel better, but first get him and and all others like him off the street. That’s what jail is for.
Women read newspapers, too. But why don’t the newspapers cover crime as they once did? I suppose it’s a hassle for them. Mayor Johnson’s activists will call and complain, as will others.
They’ll complain that the lack of middle-class white men and women from Wilmette and Hinsdale who were not listed among the alleged offenders. Some will complain about the use of mug shots depicting troubled men. They’ll complain about the lack of “solutions.” One solution might be to have strong prosecutors, and strong editors to stand up to the leftists of the CTU.
But they’ve all gone squishy.
You know who won’t complain much? The victims. They’re ignored by media that does not want them to voice grievances they can’t handle.
Broken Chicago corporate media that has ceded editorial control to Marxist billionaire George Soros won’t want to focus on women challenging the most progressive black mayor Chicago has had in years.
But there is one solution: Lock up those arrested for CTA violence. And if you want to help them, then get a group of helpers together and go visit them, in the Cook County Jail.
Put them in the Cook County Jail that Mayor Johnson’s political boss—Cook County Board President Toni Preckwinkle along with Cook County State’s Attorney Kim Foxx have been emptying. The vibe Chicago gets from them is that they don’t want to prosecute racial minorities. There’s enough room in the jail now thanks to Boss Toni, State’s Atty. Kim Foxx, and their servile Chief Judge Tim Evans.
Get the offenders off the CTA and off the street have them stand trial before a judge. If they’re found guilty, lock them up.
You think I’m cruel or lacking in compassion? So be it. I’m thinking of the victims. All those women who aren’t given a voice, women who’ve been abandoned by the criminal justice system, and abandoned by feminists who fear being called racists. Every woman who has to run that gauntlet because she doesn’t have the money to drive and pay for parking.
Those white feminists who keep their mouths shut rather than demand prison? The silence shouldn’t be surprising to anyone who’s followed urban Democratic politics. That’s identity politics for you, and that’s how cities will die, with a whimper.
Because if you don’t have safe streets or a safe public transportation system, you don’t really have a city, do you?
Democrat Paul Vallas warned you, but perhaps he was too white for many of you to listen to. It really doesn’t matter now, does it? Johnson, backed by Preckwinkle, Foxx and the rest of the Soros Criminal Justice crew is the mayor now.
I’ve been doing this a long time, and just as I know about the cowardly corporate Chicago media ignoring the roots of the Chicago crime issue and why, I also sense political sacrifices coming at CTA. But burning embattled CTA president Dorval Carter only buys a short bit of time before Johnson begins to play Identity Musical Chairs and sits a hard-left Latino or Latina in Carter’s spot when the music stops.
What would that do to address assaults on the CTA? Not much. All that is identity politics.
Without demanding justice and criminal trials, without loudly demanding that Foxx, Preckwinkle, Evans and their token white guy and resident weakling Democrat Cook County Sheriff Tom Dart do their jobs and maintain law and order nothing will change. Sloppy sentimental hugs won’t change things. And without change, the city will die if it’s not dead already.
The crime is bad enough. The silence is worse. Women are ignored. The papers won’t run the mug shots of habitual offenders lest they be accused of racism by the race hustlers. You know the drill.
The feminists who built careers on saying they were independent keep their mouths shut rather than stand up to habitual assaulters who are routinely excused by prosecutors, time after time. Yeah, the Intersectionality Highway can be a heartbreaker. It is the scene of many crashes, although race trumps gender almost every time.
This is how a great city commits suicide.
And women and girls remain as silent victims in the city that is quickly dying, as broken corporate media sodden with corruption ignore the victims and their families to curry political favor with other constituencies.
It isn’t just happening in Chicago. It is happening in every major city, every place where Soros’s billions have funded his cadre of left-wing prosecutors who decide for themselves what laws they will follow and what laws to ignore. And those civilians who stand up against the thugs run the real risk of being sent to prison, like that U.S. Marine veteran in New York, dealing with another Soros-backed prosecutor, the unctuous Alvin Bragg.
That is how American cities are demoralized, as it were all set forth in some twisted Saul Alinsky Bolshevik playbook. This is how urban suicide is accomplished and all taxpayers with the means to leave are long gone. The spine of the city has already been removed.
The wealthy, with the mobility of wealth, play at virtue signaling and hire private security for their neighborhoods. They come up with grandiose anti-crime plans that involve paying off the tough guys in exchange for temporary peace. Their drivers drive their daughters to school. Their wives aren’t subject to groping demands that they satisfy sexual urges or have their faces beaten to a pulp. And when their grandiose peace plans fail–and buying off the violent always fails–they’ll leave too and hide out in Naples or Napa Valley, perhaps even the Greek Islands.
And Mayor Brandon Johnson?
He keeps doing what he’s been doing, talking and talking, and making excuses lest the violent youth are themselves demonized. And we can’t have that, can we? Their feelings matter, don’t they? He keeps avoiding the issue of maintaining law and order as public transportation, like public safety and public schools keep failing those who need them the most.
And those remaining middle class taxpayers–if they can afford to leave–well, they’re gone, too.
Urban suicide takes time. But you have eyes. You can see.
Time for the great cities is running out.
