Memorial Day weekend ended the way too many Chicago weekends end now — with flashing squad car lights on the lakefront and a city struggling to explain itself.
On May 25, hundreds of young people descended on 57th Street Beach in Hyde Park as Chicago police moved in to disperse them. People climbed over a concrete wall as officers warned them back, a helicopter circled overhead and police cars lined the waterfront. DuSable Lake Shore Drive was shut down in both directions, and at least one officer was helped into an ambulance. Simultaneously, a second scene unfolded at North Avenue Beach, where another large crowd snarled traffic on the road.
The University of Chicago Police Department had issued an alert about the planned gathering in Hyde Park four days before it happened. Four days of advance notice, and the response was still helicopters, a closed highway and an injured officer. This is the fourth consecutive spring that some version of this scene has played out on Chicago’s lakefront. At some point, a recurring crisis with an inadequate response stops being a management problem and becomes a leadership question.
This crisis will not yield to anyone who holds only half the truth.
These teenagers are our children — overwhelmingly from the South and West sides, communities that are increasingly drained of safe places for them, like recreation centers, after-school programs, mental health resources and jobs. When a city strips those things and then is outraged by what fills the void, it is not being honest about its own role in the problem.
The other half of the truth is equally real: Chicagoans — including and especially Black and brown residents of these neighborhoods — have a right to a safe lakefront. Safety is not a political talking point. Its absence lands hardest on the communities with the least power to demand it. Chicago’s politics keeps forcing a choice between them, and that false choice is costing us. However, both are simultaneously true.
The snap curfew debate has consumed more than a year of political energy and produced neither a workable tool nor an agreed alternative.
The objections were genuine. The ACLU documented that Chicago police disproportionately arrested Black people during the 2020 curfew and cited evidence that curfews do not reduce youth violence. The police superintendent himself never requested this authority and indicated he would not use it on short notice, even if granted.
These concerns called for better legislation — tighter triggers, mandatory dual authorization, explicit anti-profiling protections. What they did not justify was the conversation’s complete collapse. The ordinance passed the City Council last year 27-22. It was vetoed, the override failed, and Chicago entered another summer with the same insufficient tools as the last. Somewhere between a flawed ordinance and no ordinance at all lies a workable policy. The city has not found the will to get there.
Mayor Brandon Johnson came to this office with something genuinely rare — authentic credibility in the communities most affected by this crisis. That connection is real, which makes the gap between his instincts and his execution all the more frustrating.
His 2026 summer safety strategy centers on youth engagement, summer jobs and community partnerships. These are the right elements. But summer jobs that begin in late May do not help restless teenagers in March. A safety strategy announced after the holiday mayhem it was meant to prevent reflects a persistent tendency to treat youth investment as a warm-weather program rather than the year-round emergency it needs to be.
The snap curfew veto had defensible grounds. But a veto without an alternative is a position, not a solution. The mayor has the standing to drive this conversation toward a better-crafted ordinance, one that takes civil liberties seriously while giving the city real capacity to manage dangerous crowds. He has not done that, and the absence is conspicuous.
Mayor Johnson has urged parents to “please not allow your child to attend any of these trends,” warning they “are unsafe and can turn deadly.” He is right. But asking parents to carry the full weight of a problem that city policy helped create, without matching that request with urgency and resources, is not a governing response. The mayor is capable of more.
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That said, so are parents. A teenager does not arrive at 57th Street Beach by accident during a planned takeover. That child left a home where a decision — conscious or not — was made. Structural pressures on families in underserved communities are real. But they are not the whole story. Pretending otherwise does a disservice to the many parents in these same communities raising children well under similarly difficult circumstances. Children need adults who are present and who hold expectations. No program substitutes for that.
Youth programming must be operational in April, not June. Recreation centers must be open on weekend nights. The curfew impasse must be resolved with the civil liberties community at the table, not in opposition. Community prevention work must be funded year-round, not deployed seasonally when headlines demand it.
Mayor Johnson’s instincts — investment over punishment, community first, these are children, not enemies — are right. What Chicago needs now is for those instincts to be executed with the speed and seriousness this moment demands.
Four days’ warning. A city still unprepared. That is the story of this spring. Whether it becomes the story of this summer is still, just barely, an open question.
Ald. Desmon Yancy represents the 5th Ward.
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