Democratic Convention 2024

Nancy Rommelmann | 8.21.2024 11:14 PM

William Langewiesche, a writer and pilot, once told me that flying a plane was "90 percent boredom, 10 percent terror." I might say the same for the "Make it great like '68! Shut down the [Democratic National Convention] for Gaza!" protest that took place in front of the Israeli consulate in downtown Chicago on Tuesday night. The event was organized by Behind Enemy Lines, and as might be expected from a group whose tagline is "The empire is the enemy. From the belly of the beast, we choose to resist it," participants arrived carrying resistance-ready banners, flags, and bullhorns.

They arrived when they said they would, 7 p.m. on the dot, after Behind Enemy Lines promoted the protest for weeks on Instagram and provided helpful links on its website. The group's leaders had also granted many pre-DNC interviews, including with me, explaining how they were real radicals, unlike the namby-pamby March on the DNC crew who'd applied for city permits—lame! If any group in Chicago was ready to let the Democrats know their imperialist and genocidal acts were being watched, and were not afraid to get into it with the cops, it was Behind Enemy Lines.

It was a message they spread perhaps too well, as the 75 or so participants were joined by maybe twice as many press people and six times as many cops. There were cops everywhere, eventually lining every curb and blocking every cross-street—a cop-a-palooza that all but assured the protest would not get out of hand, or not for very long.

This made the whole thing feel kind of staged: a clot of protesters chanting "Intifada revolution!" and "Killer Kamala, what do you say? How many kids did you kill today?" while the press all snapped the same........

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