Firefighters union denied permit to protest during Democratic National Convention

Mayor Brandon Johnson’s administration has denied a permit that would have allowed Chicago firefighters and paramedics to hold a two-hour march near the United Center on day two of the Democratic National Convention to press their three-year-long demand for a new contract that would include adding 20 ambulances.

“They said it was too close to the United Center, but it’s not. That's b.s. They have a perimeter and it’s outside the perimeter,” Pat Cleary, president of the Chicago Fire Fighters Union Local 2, said Tuesday of his request for a permit.

The real reason, he said? “They don’t want the embarrassment.”

His plan is to march back and forth on Madison Street, between Loomis Street and Ashland Avenue, from 5 p.m. to 7 p.m. on Aug. 20.

Erica Schroeder, a spokesperson for the Illinois Department of Transportation, said the city’s municipal code requires permit applications to be “reviewed by multiple city departments to identify any potential conflicts, safety issues, and assess the availability of resources necessary to support the gathering.”

“Each application … is evaluated based on the specific details of the proposed routes and concurrent events happening in the city. … Whenever a permit is denied, the applicant is offered an alternative route … that allows the parade to proceed while accounting for police resources, security, safety, and other additional factors,” Schroeder wrote in an email to the Sun-times.

Schroeder stressed the city “fully supports" the right to "safely exercise" the "First Amendment right to protest” during the DNC and that demonstrators will be free to do so "within sight and sound of the United Center."

Cleary isn’t taking any chances. He’s applied for a second permit to march back and forth along a two-block stretch of Madison Street that spans the Kennedy Expressway.

The march will include Chicago police officers furious with Johnson for persuading the City Council to twice reject an independent arbitrator’s ruling on police discipline hearings. A similar march was held during the NASCAR race along the lakefront earlier this month.

“I’ll be right above the highway waving to people,” Cleary said.

Local 2 also plans to put up at least three billboards — one at Grand Avenue and LaSalle Street, the others within a block of the United Center — and rent a truck to “drive around the neighborhood” counting the number of days (over 1,000 now, and counting) Chicago firefighters and paramedics have been waiting for a contract and the pay raise that comes with it.

Former Mayor Lori Lightfoot settled for a one-year deal. It included $95 million in back pay but nearly doubled employee health care contributions. That deal expired in June 2021.

One way or another, Cleary is determined to light a political fire under Johnson, a former teacher and paid organizer for the Chicago Teachers Union who has managed to alienate two of the city’s most important unions during his first year in office.

“He’s doing to us what he did to the police. He doesn’t respect us,” Cleary said.

Former Mayor Rahm Emanuel added five more ambulances — for a total of 80.

The DNC workload will underscore the union's demand for 20 more ambulances, along with more paramedics to staff new ambulances and reduce the grueling workload on existing paramedics, Cleary said.

“They will be running night and day,” he said.

Cleary pointed to Johnson’s response to a written pre-election questionnaire about ambulance service.

“He was in complete agreement that we need at least 100 ambulances. … He’s not standing up to his word,” Cleary said.

“What changed? We’re only busier. It’s only hotter outside. He also said we should be fully manned on all of our rigs and that deputy district chiefs should be in the union, which I’m currently arbitrating as we speak.”

Emanuel tried and failed to alter a requirement that every piece of fire apparatus be staffed by at least five employees.

Cleary said the cost-cutting reductions that Johnson is seeking would double — from 35 to nearly 70 — the number of times in a day a piece of fire apparatus could be operated with fewer than the five-employee minimum.

The mayor also has offered firefighters and paramedics a “lesser” pay raise than rank-and-file Chicago police officers received, even though the contract guarantees police officers and firefighters identical pay raises.

“They want to reduce manning — not increase manning. Make it even worse so that we’re even more overworked. And we’ve had five live firefighter deaths in a two-year period,” Cleary said.

“Instead of having five people carrying my equipment, I now force four people to carry the equipment for five people. … We’re gonna be even more tired, more overworked.”

Johnson’s candidate questionnaire

Chicago Fire Fighters Union Local 2 says the mayor hasn't lived up to his responses to the questions they posed during the mayoral campaign.