On April 4, Brandon Johnson won a stunning victory in the Chicago mayoral election. But the honeymoon period for him and his supporters will be brief. As for all pro-worker reformers and movements, a proverbial “Sword of Damocles” hangs over their heads. Stray too far from the status quo, and the interconnected institutions of the capitalist class — the banks, corporations, lobbyists, and corporate media — will descend, or at least threaten to until compliance is restored.

Already, as Kevin Young has documented in these pages, businesses and their allies are threatening the incoming Johnson administration with capital flight (moving capital out of Chicago to other locales) or a capital strike (refusing to invest in the city) if he pursues some of his more ambitious economic reforms.

Other than capitulating, Johnson’s only real choice is to strike at the heart of this reactionary resistance by asserting public control over capital. While this will be politically and technically challenging, especially for a US city like Chicago, it is not impossible. Many US cities are in the advanced stages of exploring or creating new public banks. And as several observers, including Young and Saqib Bhatti have noted, Chicago could and should join them as soon as possible. In the meantime, there are several shortcuts and temporary measures that might expedite the public-banking process and allow Chicago to deploy its own substantial financial resources to blunt the threat from private capital.