Mayor Brandon Johnson’s pick to head Chicago’s Commission on Human Relations pledged Tuesday to repair the mayor’s strained ties with mainstream Jewish leaders.
Kenneth Gunn, a civil rights attorney who has spent more than three decades with the Commission on Human Relations, replaces Nancy Andrade, who resigned in March to protest what critics contend was an attempt by Johnson’s administration to whitewash a long-awaited report that was supposed to focus solely on antisemitism.
Gunn said he has “good friends” in the Jewish community who “know me and know what I stand for” because he’s worked with many of them for years.
The mayor’s relationship with leaders of the mainstream Jewish community has been frayed ever since Johnson cast the tie-breaking vote in favor of a nonbinding resolution demanding a ceasefire in the Israel-Hamas conflict.
But Gunn said he’s determined to ease that tension with Johnson’s support.
“Everything I’ve heard from the mayor is super-positive. He really, really wants to engage the Jewish community. And he wants me to make sure that we’re doing all we can…to address anti-Jewish hate,” Gunn said.
“He has made it clear to me he wants me to work with the Jewish community,” he said. “When we start to take action on this report, the first thing he wants to do is to address Jewish hate.”
Last week, Johnson unveiled a strategy to combat all manner of hate crimes that Jewish leaders condemned as an insensitive and inadequate response to the surge in anti-Jewish hate crimes.
Johnson’s plan called for creating a “Jewish Engagement Council to serve as a direct bridge for dialogue” between residents, community leaders and the mayor’s office, and an “Interconnected Chicago Council” to address “fragmentation between communities.”
The commission-approved report—triggered by a 58% rise in reported anti-Jewish hate crimes from 2023 to 2024—recommended a dedicated task force to combat anti-Jewish hate, mandatory training on antisemitism for city employees, teachers and students in Chicago Public Schools, and a dedicated unit within the Chicago Police Department to combat hate crimes.
Gunn said he favors the mayor’s version of the report because “hate fluctuates in terms of the targets.
“We’ve seen it against the LGBT community. During COVID, we saw the Asian community attacked. During the Gulf War and after 9/11, the Muslim-Arab community were most often victimized,” Gunn said.
“It does make sense to have a group of leaders in these communities working together to address hate because hate affects all of us.”
Gunn further argued that the proposed “Jewish Engagement Council” will give a lot of power and a lot of influence for the Jewish community to address issues that impact them.”
Ald. Debra Silverstein (50th), the City Council’s lone Jewish member, urged Gunn to implement and enforce the stronger recommendations to combat anti-Jewish hate.
Human Relations Commission member Dan Goldwin said he has high hopes for Gunn, whom Goldwin called a Human Relations Commission “lifer” who “showed up for the Jewish community when we asked him to.”
“I would love to see the full report that we submitted implemented. There’s a lot of work to be done. I hope that Ken is the right guy to do it. I hope he can be,” said Goldwin, who serves as chief public affairs officer for the Jewish United Fund.
Rebecca Weininger, senior regional director for the Anti-Defamation League Midwest, has accused Johnson of “cherry-picking Jewish voices that are acceptable to him — either because they are anti-Zionist or because they are willing to go along with any crumbs that he is willing to feed them.”
But given what she called Gunn’s “nuanced understanding of the way that anti-Semitism shows up in Chicago,” Weininger said she is hopeful that the new commissioner will “stay true to the work that the commission has already done.”
“I want him to take the sophisticated understanding that he is inheriting from the commission and use his influence for good on the council to ensure that this is not something that is vacuous, but has substance,” she said.
Johnson’s relationship with mainstream Jewish leaders was further strained by the mayor’s refusal to fire his chief lobbyist, Kennedy Bartley, and remove 33rd Ward Ald. Rossana Rodriguez-Sanchez as chair of the City Council’s Committee on Health and Human Relations for their social media posts viewed by Jewish leaders as antisemitic.
The mayor initially defended his appointment of the Rev. Mitchell Johnson as president of the Chicago Board of Education, only to have Johnson resign the following day after antisemitic comments were found on his social media pages.
Johnson also refused to remove artwork on display at the Cultural Center that a City Council majority viewed as antisemitic.
Gunn’s goal is to ease the strain going forward.
“If people come together with open minds, we can do that,” he said.