Just one day after the Chicago City Council approved a $280,000 settlement for GoodKids MadCity (GKMC) organizer Miracle Boyd, she received a racist death threat in the form of a letter sent via mail to the organization’s West Englewood headquarters.
The first line of the typed letter from an anonymous author reads, “Miracle Boyd deserves to be knocked unconscious and be hanged from a tree.” The sender also wrote that Boyd “got what she deserved,” referring to her 2020 assault by Chicago police Officer Nicholas Jovanovich during a protest in Grant Park.
On Thursday at 1:15 p.m., Carlil Pittman, executive director of GKMC, said his mother was at their office. She saw the letter, opened it, and passed it on to him.
The letter has no return address, and the sender didn’t list their name. A post office stamp indicates that the United States Postal Service (USPS) received it on March 11 in Carol Stream, Ill.
Boyd reached out to The TRiiBE, wanting to speak out about this latest racist threat.
“The letter is talking about modern-day lynching, speaking of my partner when they don’t even know him, and essentially naming the mayor too,” Boyd told The TRiiBE. “So I feel like this has just become, like, a political game because now that they’ve mentioned the mayor, the mayor needs to make a statement on this, and so do all the people that voted in favor of this police misconduct settlement.”
In the explicit letter, the anonymous sender called Mayor Brandon Johnson the n-word, using the hard -er: “F-ck that ni—er mayor Brandon Johnson! Hopefully [President Donald] Trump puts that piece of shit in a cage just like the ape in the movie Trading Spaces.”
Trading Spaces is a 1983 comedy starring Eddie Murphy, Dan Aykroyd and Jamie Lee Curtis. There’s a scene in the movie where villain Clarence Beeks (played by Paul Gleason), a white character, is knocked out and dressed in a female gorilla suit by Aykroyd. When Beeks wakes up, he finds himself in a cage with a real gorilla who embraces him as a potential mate; the film has been criticized for its cringey implication of “gorilla rape.”
The TRiiBE contacted the Mayor’s Office for comment but has not received a response. Throughout his term, Johnson has been a vocal supporter of GKMC’s efforts to engage young people in peacekeeping to address violence in Chicago. Since Trump’s inauguration, the president has been targeting sanctuary cities like Chicago and has carried out arrests. Johnson along with other mayors defended Chicago’s sanctuary status during a congressional hearing last week.
“I’ve been having a very beautiful pregnancy up until this moment, and it’s just frustrating,” Boyd said. She’s expecting her first child, a daughter, in May. She was informed about the letter shortly after Pittman received it on Thursday. A photo of the letter was sent to her from another GKMC member.
At a March 10 City Council’s finance committee meeting, members voted 22-7 in favor of the settlement. Ald. Nicholas Sposato (38th Ward) argued that she didn’t deserve a settlement.
Then at the March 12 City Council meeting, the settlement was approved in a 34-15 vote.
At the 2020 protest, Boyd was filming an arrest and Officer Jovanovich swung his arm, knocking her phone from her hand. The phone struck her face with such force that it caused multiple injuries and knocked out one of her front teeth. Jovanovich resigned from the Chicago Police Department (CPD) in April 2022.
“I didn’t go after this officer’s pension. I didn’t call for him to be arrested. It wasn’t anything of that nature. He avoided accountability and was able to quit,” Boyd said, referring to Jovanovich.
Boyd shared what happened on a call this week with Glenn Brooks, the CPD’s director of community policing. They spoke by phone on Thursday evening, Boyd said.
Brooks told Boyd to share the letter with him so that a formal report could be filed, but she doesn’t trust CPD because of its track record on accountability. She wants the letter examined by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and a full investigation. Under Trump’s administration, the FBI is headed by Kash Patel, a former aide to Trump. Patel has said that he wants to shift FBI’s domestic terrorist organization investigations away from right wing extremist groups to focus on groups like Black Lives Matter and antifa.
This letter is not the first time GKMC or Boyd have been the subject of racist threats and vitriol. Boyd has been targeted by a wave of threats and criticisms from people like Fraternal Order of Police president John Catanzara, calling her a “spoiled little brat.”
Paul Vallas, a 2023 mayoral candidate, wrote in a March 11 post on X that it is the police who deserve a settlement because they were injured in an “orchestrated assault.”
Another user in a post on X wrote: “let’s make sure DCFS [Department of Children & Family Services] gets involved when the baby arrives.”
Boyd said she feels she’s being targeted because she speaks out for victims and survivors of police violence, and due to her not backing down during a heated argument with Catanzara during a Chicago Police Board hearing last April.
Over the last year, GKMC said it has received about 10 calls from “anonymous racist folks calling to voice their opinions,” according to Pittman. Sometimes, he gets those calls on his personal cell phone.
He said the most recent phone call came after the City Council finance committee vote on Boyd’s settlement. Pittman thinks the caller could be the same person who sent the letter.
“I got a call from a guy saying how upset he was that Miracle received this settlement, and he hung up the phone, and then a couple of days later, this letter comes in the mail,” Pittman said. “So I think this continues to show us how far — or how short — we’ve come from things like this happening 50 [or]60 years ago. So it’s just the fact that she has to go through something like this. I think it’s sickening.”
GKMC members have rallied around Boyd and have instructed her to stay indoors. If she needs to go outside, they’ve asked her not to go anywhere alone and to share her location with them. GKMC leaders are set to meet this weekend to celebrate their 7th anniversary, which is today, and discuss safety precautions.
“I’m not letting it get to me because I’m strong and brave. I’m brave enough to know to make smart decisions, but it seems like my safety is on the line, and I’m about to bring a child into the world that people just are not going to accept,” Boyd said. I still have a whole community of folks who will support me, my first child, and everything else that comes with it.”
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