Clarence Page

It’s summertime, and the living is queasy.

That’s the best I can say for the continuing sense of foreboding and possible catastrophe that remains in the wake of Chicago’s recent mayoral election. And please let me also say this:

Congratulations, Mayor-elect Brandon Johnson. Now it’s time to stop campaigning and get to governing.

I say this in response to his weak, ill-inspired response to the mayhem some goons, hoodlums and other troublemakers brought to the esteemed streets of Chicago this past weekend.

I’m responding to the mayor-elect’s comments after two incidents made very unwanted headlines last weekend in Chicago.

Several large groups of young adults and juveniles swarmed parts of Chicago last Friday and Saturday nights. As a video posted online later revealed, a large meet-up of teens Friday night near 31st Street Beach led to the shooting of a 14-year-old boy.

In a shooting downtown on Saturday night, two teens were wounded. The swarming, violence and destruction resulted in 16 related arrests and, ultimately, new rounds of hand-wringing similar to what we endured in the speeches and debates during the recent mayoral campaign.

I thought everyone, particularly the new African American mayor-elect, would agree that crime and education were the premier issues and that we need a no-nonsense effort to strengthen both.

Yet Johnson disappointed me by responding to the rioters as if they were the Jets gang in “West Side Story.” (“I’m depraved on account of I’m deprived.”)

To wit, in a Sunday statement he posted on social media, he allowed that “in no way do I condone the destructive activity we saw in the Loop and lakefront this weekend. It is unacceptable and has no place in our city.”

Fair enough. But then he followed that with: “However, it is not constructive to demonize youth who have otherwise been starved of opportunities in their own communities.”

The man has a heart. But when people are frightened by a rise in crime, you don’t criticize those who are afraid.

Quite the contrary. Crime in particular, and her failure to get much of a grip on it, probably did in incumbent Mayor Lori Lightfoot more than any other issue, helping her fail in her reelection bid so badly that she did not even make it to the second ballot.

And Johnson, a former teacher and paid Chicago Teachers Union organizer, was knocked into such a defensive posture that, to his great frustration, he was required to profess, “I do not want to defund the police” at almost every stop, after calling in the past for rechanneling some police funding to social services purposes.

After I interviewed Johnson and fellow mayoral runoff candidate Paul Vallas — former chief executive for Chicago Public Schools and an experienced Mr. Fix-It for some other cities’ police, school and housing problems — I thought they both presented admirable ideas. That is refreshing when compared with the mudslinging that makes up so many other high-profile campaigns these days.

Sharpening the contrasts between the two, Johnson was endorsed by the progressive teachers union while Vallas was endorsed by the very conservative Fraternal Order of Police, whose firebrand president, John Catanzara, is a vocal Donald Trump supporter who enjoys triggering liberals.

“You have Vallas being called a Republican and Johnson being called a socialist. Those issues are designed, of course, to get a more reptilian brain response from voters, but they don’t tell us exactly where both campaigns are on the major issues rather than a broad brush,” said Arthur Lurigio, a criminologist at Loyola University Chicago. “Being extreme is in their interest.”

While Vallas took on a bit of a “Great White Hope” image as the conservative alternative to Johnson, I don’t believe he ever overtly sought it. Quite the opposite, always the Idea Man, Vallas was quite constructive and gracious in accepting defeat at the end of the close race by offering to work with Johnson in solving the city’s many complex problems, a sentiment with which Johnson showed some agreement.

Sure, I know that sounds corny to folks who love bare-knuckle politics, but I hope they do find ways to share ideas for the good of the city and its people who need help the most. A strict lock-’em-up, law-and-order approach has its place, but so does the helping-hand, summer jobs approach that tackles the root causes of crime and aimlessness among young people most likely to slip over the edge into crime.

There should be no conflict here. Why not have both?

E-mail Clarence Page at cpage@chicagotribune.com.