Hours after its debut, one of the members of Mayor Brandon Johnson’s new budget working group has left after renewed backlash over a past video of him tearing down a poster of an Israeli hostage kidnapped by Hamas.
Ishan Daya, a former candidate for 32nd Ward Democratic committeeman, was one of about 20 Chicagoans who agreed to join a mayoral task force to brainstorm fiscal and revenue solutions ahead of what is sure to be a tough city budget season for 2026, per a Friday announcement. But later in the afternoon, he announced he won’t be participating.
“In the interest of the work to support a budget that advances the needs of working class folks in this city, Julie Dworkin will be the representative for the Institute for the Public Good,” Daya, a co-director of that institute, said in a statement when asked if he would stay on the budget group.
Daya withdrew from his committeeman race in December 2023, after a video circulated on social media of him ripping down an Israeli hostage poster in New York City. Ald. Scott Waguespack, 32nd, ran as a write-in candidate to retain his seat in the March 2024 election.
Ald. Debra Silverstein, the council’s only Jewish member, spoke out against Daya’s short-lived inclusion in the budget working group, in what she described as the latest sore spot from her community since the Israel-Hamas war began in October 2023.
“Appointing him to a leadership position in Chicago is a deliberate slap in the face to the Jewish community and to all those praying for the release of the 59 hostages still held in Gaza,” Silverstein wrote. “The mayor seems determined to surround himself with people who peddle hate and division. His repeated disregard for the Jewish community is both painful and unacceptable.”
Johnson spokesperson Cassio Mendoza declined comment Friday.
Silverstein told the Tribune she met with the mayor at the end of April to discuss his relationship with the Jewish community and “he appeared to want to make amends,” but the news about Daya’s invitation to the city budget group has left her “appalled.”
In a blog post from December 2023, Daya wrote that the bottom half of the poster had unspecified “claims about Palestinians that were racist and vitriolic.” He also wrote that before the video began, people surrounded him and another person ripping down the poster with him and yelled “transphobic and homophobic slurs.”
