Nothing quite says a city is safe like having to reroute a holiday parade to avoid reported violence in the area.
Prior to last year, Chicago hadn’t held a Cinco de Mayo parade since 2017. This year’s parade should have signaled a truly triumphant return to normalcy but turned out to be more of a black eye than a shining moment, being rerouted and/or canceled, depending on who you ask, because of what was reported as gang activity on the parade route. Chicago police ended up arresting 27 people.
While Chicago tried to bring back that Cinco de Mayo parade tradition, its more grim holiday tradition stayed intact. The city saw at least 31 people shot, with seven killed, over Cinco de Mayo weekend. Holiday weekend homicide counters are a Chicago tradition unlike any other, with last Thanksgiving weekend recording 29 shootings, Labor Day weekend recording 42, Memorial Day weekend reaching 53, and Father’s Day weekend recording 75. Between those four holiday weekends alone, 32 people were killed.
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You would think these embarrassing headlines would be enough to convince Chicago leaders to change course (you know, if the murders themselves didn’t do it), and yet here we are. Chicago can’t even hold a parade on a safe route without having to change it at the last minute.
Despite all this, Mayor Brandon Johnson will inevitably continue to focus on how he can help keep criminals out of jail or restrict police from being able to do their jobs proactively. After all, Chicago earned its reputation for mindless holiday violence. If it can’t keep parades running popular, it may as well hang on to its most well-known tradition.
