Meet Mayor Brandon Johnson

Mayor Brandon Johnson speaking at a podium bearing the City of Chicago seal

Brandon Johnson was sworn in as the 57th Mayor of the City of Chicago on May 15, 2023, driving one of the nation’s most ambitious progressive municipal agendas.

Mayor Johnson began his career as a public school teacher at Jenner Academy in Cabrini-Green and Westinghouse College Prep on the West Side, experiencing firsthand how school closures, unemployment, and gun violence impacted his students. As an organizer with the Chicago Teachers Union, he built multiracial coalitions to defend neighborhood schools from privatization, reduce high-stakes standardized testing, and expand state education funding.

Elected Cook County Commissioner of the 1st District in 2018, he spearheaded the landmark Just Housing Ordinance to eliminate housing discrimination against formerly incarcerated individuals, championed the "Budget for Black Lives" to direct funding into healthcare and affordable housing, eliminated the gang database, secured legal representation for immigrants, and expanded COVID-19 relief for low-income seniors.

As mayor, Johnson has targeted the root causes of crime, driving steep declines in violence by pairing constitutional policing with historic investments in neighborhood Community Violence Intervention (CVI) and establishing the Office of Gun Violence Reduction.

Under his leadership, Chicago has:

Reopened public mental health clinics and expanded the Crisis Assistance Response and Engagement Program (CARE) citywide as an alternative emergency response system
Recreated the Department of Environment and transitioned all City operations to 100% renewable energy, earning recognition as the world's most resilient city for climate risk
Established the City’s first Black Reparations Agenda
Expanded public transit safety, built over 100 new miles of bikeways, and strengthened Complete Streets infrastructure

Mayor Johnson has advanced historic labor rights — eliminating the subminimum tipped wage, expanding Paid Leave and Paid Sick Leave, and raising pay for early childhood workers. To fund transformative community growth without displacement, his administration launched a $1.25 billion Housing and Economic Development (HED) Bond, created a first-of-its-kind Green Social Housing program, and streamlined small business growth through the "Cut the Tape" initiative.

These investments have yielded record-setting economic momentum for Chicago:

Employed nearly 120,000 young people through Chicago Youth Works and My CHI. My Future., directed the largest TIF (Tax Increment Financing) surplus in Chicago history to Chicago Public Schools, and granted automatic library access to 315,000 students
Named the top U.S. metro for corporate relocation for 13 consecutive years, saw O’Hare reclaim its rank as the world's busiest airfield, and drove double-digit annual growth in tourism receipts
Closed inherited multimillion-dollar budget deficits through City efficiencies and progressive revenue streams like the Social Media and Responsibility Amusement (SMART) Tax

Positioning Chicago as a national beacon for immigrant protections and civil rights, Mayor Johnson has filed dozens of legal actions against federal overreach. His landmark executive orders — including establishing Chicago as an ICE-Free Zone — created a national blueprint for local sovereignty adopted by municipalities covering over 10% of the U.S. population.

Mayor Johnson and his wife, First Lady Stacie Johnson, live in the Austin community on Chicago's West Side, where they are raising their three children: Owen, Ethan, and Braedyn.