Protesting at the Democratic Convention. What would Karen Lewis do?
Watching Chicago cops roughing up Art Institute students at their Pro-Gaza encampment in the museum’s sculpture garden this past weekend looked like another practice run for this summer’s Democratic convention.
If Columbia University was a flashback to 1968, imagine what the Chicago Democratic Convention of 2024 might look like?
The DNC is scheduled for the United Center in August.
The City has denied every permit that asks for a site anywhere outside of the official two block “alternative protest site” in the middle of Grant Park.
The City wants no protester within miles of the United Center.
I can’t avoid noting the irony of the Mayor of Chicago, Brandon Johnson, a former teacher union organizer who I remember giving rousing speeches at massive, disruptive street protests, now blocking demonstrators from protesting the national Democratic Party.
In fact, I distinctly remember when I marched with thousands of striking Chicago teachers on the west side, not far from the United Center, during the historic 2012 Chicago teachers strike.
This week another group announced it is suing the city after being denied protest permits.
Bodies Outside of Unjust Laws is the second coalition to sue the city over denied permits to protest outside the DNC.
Bodies Outside of Unjust Laws joins three other groups who have filed suit against the city, accusing the city of seeking to stifle their constitutionally protected right to protest and for giving police broad of powers to crack down on protesters.
The group intends to protest in support of protecting and strengthening abortion laws.
You would have thought the Democrats would have welcomed reproductive rights protesters with open arms. Isn’t that the issue they say will win them suburban women in swing states?
“We were the first group to apply for a permit. We gave the city more than eight months’ notice of our plans. But we got a rubber-stamp rejection, which was copied virtually word-for-word on all of the subsequent rejections received by groups that followed us,” Andy Thayer, an organizer with Bodies Outside of Unjust Laws, said Thursday.
The city subsequently issued the same permit denials to three other groups: the Anti-War Committee Chicago, Chicago Alliance Against Racist and Political Repression and Students for a Democratic Society.
All three groups applied to demonstrate during the convention and outlined different planned routes near the United Center, the main convention site. The city denied their applications, giving each group the same alternative parade route as it gave Bodies Outside of Unjust Laws.
Damn, Mayor Johnson.
I wonder what the late, great Chicago Teacher Union president, Karen Lewis, would have said about all this?
Karen Lewis was Mayor Johnson’s boss back in 2012.
You know very well what she would have said.