It Could Happen Here - The DNC's Day of Protest

Episode Date: August 20, 2024

Robert and Gare report on pro-Palestine protests in Chicago on the first day of the Democratic National Convention.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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Cool Zone Media. Call zone media. Welcome to It Could Happen Here, a podcast about it happening here and here this week is Chicago. I'm Robert Evans. I'm here in town with Sophie Lichterman, who will not be on mic for this episode, but will be later this week. And Garrison Davis, with whom I've been out all day in the streets. And we are currently recording just a few blocks away from the DNC protest, the coalition to march on the DNC. Out in the street. So we apologize for whatever sounds are getting picked up.

Today's been very hectic. There's been protests all day that me and Robert have been at. And that's mostly what we're going to be talking about today. So this is day one of the DNC. We actually have not yet been inside the venue, although we will be later for the speeches. Today has basically all been protests. So at the start of the day, I went to the kind of temporary headquarters out of like a rental space in I think North Chicago. Don't quote me on the exact chunk of town. I'm bad at directions. But the organization's called Behind Enemy Lines, and it's a local, they call themselves a militant activist group

that has been kind of controversial because they have made a couple of statements about something, what was the rhyme? 1968 was... Oh, the slogan they've been using is, make it great like 68. Make it great because 1968 was a famously bloody DNC as a result of the conflict over McGovern versus Hubert Humphrey. And this is not so far very much like 68 because everyone's known who the candidates are going to be going into this thing.

And the protest today, at least by the time we left, no serious violence. And the protest today, at least by the time we left, no serious violence. You know, I did want to talk a little bit about that group because they made some interesting statements. And this is not their march today. The march today that we were at is specifically billed as the family-friendly one, whereas Behind Enemy Lines has made a couple of statements about, like, you know, collect bruises from the Chicago police. It's the new fall fashion, that sort of deal. So they're really playing up the whole there's going to be a big conflict thing. If that happens, it'll be

tomorrow because that's when their event is planned. Today was the event that everyone thought was going to be the largest march, probably will be. It's called the March on the DNC 2024. It's put together by a coalition of a lot of local different orgs in Chicago, as well as some ones from around the country. So heading into this, when organizers were asked, they said they were expecting 30,000 to 40,000. I saw a video by, I think, a CNN guy where he was like, 50,000 people could show up. That's not the numbers we've seen. I would say 2,000 to 3,000, maybe 5,000 at the most, maybe 5,000 kind of on the outside end. One of the organizers on the mic said that they had 15K there. I don't think that was 15,000 people. I will say there's more protesters than cops,

but it is closer to parity in terms of numbers than you normally get. The Chicago police have been lining every block for several blocks around the protest. Lines and lines of police vans some of them filled with riot teams some of them clearly for potential arrestees every time the protest moved they started in union park and moved towards what was the number of the park number five seven eight five seven eight sounds like a fucking half-life two which which is the park that chicago and the dnc is wanting most of the protests to take place at. Protesters, at least these big coalitions, have preferred to use Union Park as it's bigger.

But in this very moment, we just walked over from Park 578, where people are currently lined up in front of the fence. I would say it was a very controlled event. It's possible something's happened since we've left or will happen later, especially if people try to occupy the park. But from what happened while we were there, there was a group of a protest safety team who were all wearing high-vis vests that the entire line of march, the march itself, was hemmed in on two sides by lines of bike cops using their bikes to make a mobile wall. mobile wall. Inside the line of bike cops was a line of protest safety people in high-vis vests who, when folks tried to confront the fence, there's a fence that is essentially the same fence we had in Portland lining up to the DNC. Some groups of people tried to confront that, tried to get off of the route of march and move somewhere other than back to the park that the safety team wanted. And the safety team basically walled off the protest from doing anything but going back into

the park, essentially doing like kind of what the police were doing directly next to the police, which caused some conflict and some soreness among people. But as of the time we left, like nothing else had really happened. Hello, future Gare here, cutting in from the middle of the DNC, where I was just suffering through the Hillary Clinton speech. And I'm here to tell you that more, in fact, did happen, and things actually did get a little bit more spicy.

But you will hear about that a little bit later on in the episode. Anyway, back to us sitting on a random Chicago street corner. Yeah, among the 5,000 people, there's a lot of smaller groups. You know, you have hundreds of people from this organization, this organization. And it's a lot of regular people who are both against the genocide in Palestine. They do not believe that either political party is going to put an effort to actually achieve that.

And they put most of the blame for sending bombs to Israel on Biden and now Kamala. And I would say that's the vast majority. I did run into some people wearing like DNC Kamala shirts that my understanding was they were kind of here to get the vibe. And, yeah, it was definitely a lot of hostility towards the DNC. So my guess would be not a positive reaction there. A couple of different communist organizations here. Including five I've never heard of before. Yes, almost none of them.

But RevCom was there, which is a fun one that's essentially a cult. PSL, a few others. PSL's there. Also kind of on the culty side of things. I guess highlights, we did meet a lot of nice people out there, a lot of fans of the show. I was happy to see that they were not with the Popovacian crew. Everyone was very nice. I hope we weren't too curt. We're just kind of exhausted, and I've been talking to folks all day. I was able to geolocate enemy of the podcast.

Jack Posobiec. Yes, yes. He was in quote-unquote camo. He was just wearing a green shirt and a keffiyeh around his face trying to interview people. I ran up to him and yelled his name out repeatedly until he acknowledged that he was in fact Jack Posobiec. Then I asked him about an event from 2017 where he showed up at a protest undercover as an antifa with a sign that said, Rape Melania. BuzzFeed immediately published text messages of him essentially talking to a friend about like, yeah, I think this would be a great idea. We need to get somebody in there with this fucked up sign. So I asked him about it. He didn't want to answer, but he eventually left. I think the only people

who were willing to talk to him were communists who wanted to quote long passages of political writing at him. So I don't think it was a great content day for Jack, but we'll see. Maybe this will be what causes him to blow up. We're going to do some ads, then we're going to come back and talk about some of our highlights, what we expect from the week ahead, and the great city of Chicago. go. Hey, I'm Gianna Pardenti. And I'm Jemay Jackson-Gadsden. We're the hosts of Let's Talk Offline, the early career podcast from LinkedIn News and iHeart Podcasts. One of the most exciting things about having your first real job is that first real paycheck. You're probably thinking, yay, I can finally buy a new phone. But you also have a lot of questions.

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baddest part of town? And if you go down there, I'm just telling you, if you go to the south side of Chicago, you need to beware of a man called Leroy Brown. Jesus, I knew it. Bad, bad Leroy. He's the baddest man in the whole damn town, Garrison. I knew it. I knew it. Badder than old King Kong. He's meaner than a

junkyard dog. I'm not looking through my fucking notes. Alright. Okay. Great. As Robert was checking out this office for this other group planning a protest at the Israeli consulate tomorrow, I got to the Union Park protest early, was able to walk around, got a whole bunch of flyers for communist magazines

that I, again, have never heard of. And you don't need to seek them out either. They will walk up to you and put one in your hand. I got a whole book by Caleb Maupin, who is a LaRoucheite communist, which is like, it's like the foil Charizard communist. Like, you're really, yeah, it's beautiful stuff. And then we had, like, three hours of speeches before people eventually left

and marched to the DNC fence by Park 578. And although most of this is about Palestine, there also is some, like, intersectionality with a few other things. You know, there's a lot of LGBTQ stuff, a lot of trans stuff. A lot of LGBTQ stuff. A lot of BOM stuff, obviously. A lot of abortion rights stuff. Yes, a lot of abortion rights stuff. That has become a recurring

talking point that I think I'll mention something a little bit closer to the end. Yeah, because there's one of the groups of counter-protesters who has kind of shown up are these people purporting to be like dims against abortion basically. One of their chants was essentially being anti-abortionist being pro-trans because trans people

might get aborted, which was a fascinating argument. An amazing chant. It's both like, abortion is ableist, abortion is transphobic, abortion is racist, you know, all of the things. What I'll say, so, you know, obviously, you and I have both expressed, neither of us really like it when at a protest, you have a group of people basically being security who wall off other people from doing stuff. What I will say the protest safety team was effective at was every time someone like the Progressives Against Abortion or whoever would show up, there was one literal fascist lady

who was definitely unwell with a cardboard sign covered in racial slurs. They would just get a team to kind of wall them off with their bodies, and it kept them from becoming, like, media were not focused around the folks coming in to disrupt stuff like they were at the march yesterday. We were at a march on Sunday afternoon where as soon as those anti-abortion folks showed up, every camera turned towards them because there's this thought that like, oh, maybe this is where there will be a conflict. No, I think walling off groups like that makes sense. Yeah, it's a very effective way to do it. I do get very hesitant and a little bit on my toes whenever they start walling off people in the crowd who are actual participants who are just doing something that people in high-vis vests don't like.

Yes. And when you start restricting their freedom of movement, when you start walling them off and pushing them towards the police away from everyone else. It really looks like they were trying to push a chunk of the crowd. It can get pretty fucked up. Including a person with a YPG flag that, you know, away from everyone else. It really looked like they were trying to push a chunk of the crowd. It can get pretty fucked up. Including a person with a YPG flag that, you know, I don't know. I'm just inherently sympathetic towards. But yeah, trying to push them towards the police riot line, I did not like seeing that.

And there was some talk about this leading up to the DNC. There was some leaked memo, I think from some PSL people and a few other orgs about plans to, if there was any quote- quote unquote disruptors or whatever, to circle them off, keep them away from the march, make sure they cannot rejoin the march and push them towards the police line. Yeah. And that's, that is never great.

That's never great to see. No, especially when all of your chants are like, fuck the DNC, Kamala's evil. But like, we need to do what the police are not doing here. Like we have to be the cops. Yeah, and you're preventing people from actually marching to the DNC. And for most of this march on Monday, it was the cops who were leading the march. Yes, literally at the head of the march.

Cops were in front of everybody. They both had all of the streets walled off. At the head it was about six to eight cops at any given time, and then a couple of dozen people with cameras, media, and then it was the actual protest. But it's essentially the whole march whole march is being is being led by police yes and that's also one thing is led and surrounded whenever you're chanting like whose streets our streets and all these other things you're like this is this is basically it's not your

streets this is basically a cop-led protest by the cops at most points i was i was walking by a chicago pd sergeant who was on his comms. Oh, yeah. And he was telling everyone on the walkie-talkie system or whatever, there is, quote, nothing nefarious going on. There's nothing to worry about. Everything's good. Yeah. And, yeah, from their perspective, that was what most of today was like, at least until a few hours ago when people in the actual protest organizing committee

were sectioning off people that they didn't like. From what I have seen so far, you know, there's not much that would go viral that would be big news from this protest. Certainly not much that you would say it was embarrassing to anyone. No. But there's also not much that's going to, like, draw any attention. If you're considering that the goal of activism like this, I don't see this as, like, being a needle-moving march, right?. Even if you have a march with 5,000 people, which is good, when it's after three hours of speeches about communism,

that's not actually doing anything to put pressure on the Biden administration or the Democrats to actually do something about Palestine. There were several minutes today about getting the U.S. out of Korea, and if that's going to be your issue, that's going to be your issue. But if you're kind of making it about everything... It's about nothing. Yeah, it's about nothing. There was not a lot

of punch to today. A ceasefire in Palestine is a very popular issue. And important. But the more time that you're talking about and trying to recruit people for the revolution TM and fill up your sign-up sheet and have speeches about Marxism, Leninism, the immortal science,

that's not going to actually help anyone in Palestine at this point. I'm not sure how effective these protests are going to be. That's always hard to say. But if you are actually trying to apply pressure onto the Democrats, onto the party in charge of the executive branch, I think focusing on that would probably be slightly more beneficial. Hello, this is Gare cutting in again from a corridor underneath the Democratic National Convention, the United Center in Chicago. Sleepy Joe Biden's about to hit the stage, but before he

does, I need to give you a special update. So right after we recorded this little street conversation between me and Robert, a whole bunch of more things happened. So there was already some kind of inter-conflict within the march on the way to Park 578. People had differing ideas on where they wanted the march to be directed to, whether that's just stopping at the park or trying to break through and go further into the actual DNC perimeter. And eventually, we had a small group of people kind of up by the fence line that were able to breach a small section of the fence and people started going into one of the many layered barricades at the dnc now as this as this was happening some of like the

protest marshals and like organizers and stuff tried to rally the rest of the crowd to march back to union park away from this breach at the dnc and others started pouring in there was maybe about like 50 to 75 people who actually broke through this line. And maybe like half of them were protesters. The other half were like press and media. A whole bunch of the guys going through those barricades are people looking to take photos. And it was a lot of press. But police did pressure people out.

I think they arrested maybe like three people in this whole mess. But police pushed the remaining people out of the park and closed it for safety concerns. And then those people who got pushed out and then people who kind of already were on the move met back at Union Park where the day's protests began. And almost immediately they started setting up encampments, setting up tents, doing like logistic stuff. Now police saw this happen and did not like this very much. And they quickly moved in and gave a dispersal order. I believe two people were arrested during this kind of second kerfuffle. Police were saying, like, people can stay in the park as long as you're not setting up tents, as long as you're not doing, like, larger logistics, you know, using the sound system, all these kinds of things. And at a certain point, I think police pushed most people either onto the edges, onto the periphery, or just out of the area.

But a whole bunch of, like, SWAT, a whole bunch of Chicago PD just surrounded this whole area and kept a pretty tight lid on things. So I know people were planning to want to do a larger encampment tonight, and Chicago PD would not let that happen. And for whatever reason, there either wasn't enough people

or there wasn't enough logistics or dedication to really fight off the Chicago PD pd's uh incursion in union park so now the day is wrapping up joe bynes about to head on stage and that is the situation for the protests the first day of the dnc back to robert evans sitting on a random street corner. So, you know, the highlight to me of today, again, we met a lot of very nice fans, and they all seem to be doing smart things, which I like seeing. There was an old man who had, he had a big Palestinian flag, and underneath it was a Bosnian flag. So we went up to him because I was just kind of curious.

I had a feeling it had something to do with the genocide, but like, you know, I wanted to talk. And he was a survivor of Srebrenica, which was a massacre during the, um, uh, the Yugoslav breakup. That was, uh, I mean, just one of the worst acts of genocide of the 20th century. And we talked a bit cause I'd been to Srebrenica and interviewed some survivors and stuff. And he was like very moved to be here, expressed a lot of solidarity with Gaza, essentially said like,

I lived through a genocide, too. So I'm going to show up and support these people, which is very moving. It was probably the most moving part, definitely the most moving part of the day for me. Hey, I'm Gianna Pardenti. And I'm Jemay Jackson-Gadsden. We're the hosts of Let's Talk Offline, the early career podcast from LinkedIn News and iHeart Podcasts. One of the most exciting things about having your first real job is that first real paycheck.

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feels like to them like the only thing that they can do yes like especially if you're like from this area if you're from the midwest you're like what what can actually do to stop what's going on here they are all of the leaders of the democratic Party are here, you know. And that is the majority of the thousands that are gathered. Yeah. You know, I have to say, again, not to just be shitting on people, but it's probably a tactical mistake to, prior to the event, in the days heading up to this, some of the organizers said they were expecting 30,000 to 40,000 people in town for protests. And, you know, the crowd we got today was a solid crowd, 5,000 people or so, you know, marching, 3,000 to 5,000 people in town for protests. And, you know, the crowd we got today was a solid crowd, 5,000 people or so, you know, marching three to 5,000, not bad. But when you've gotten people

prepped for that, then the story is going to be that like, well, less people than expected showed up. And that can be used by folks to make the case that like, well, this isn't really that popular an issue for the Democrats. Why should they care as much about it as they would if you had gotten 50,000 people in the street? Anyway. So that was the second protest at the DNC. Technically, the first protest was yesterday, the day before the DNC actually started. And yes, both me and Robert were there. I showed up as early as usual, and Robert showed up late as usual.

That's right. That's right. Late and hungover. Don't you forget hungover. Of course. I got drunk as hell on that plane. It started off with maybe like 500 people, slowly accumulated to about like 1,000. This protest was called Bodies Outside Unjust Laws. It was about Palestinian liberation as a part of reproductive justice and trying to tie these issues together. So trying to rope in reproductive rights feminists who are here for the DNC into looking at Gaza

as a part of the reproductive rights issue with the deaths of mothers, the restriction of health care in Gaza, deaths of babies, children, separating children from families after bombings or evacuations, all that kind of stuff. Yeah. So initially, they were all gathered in front of the Chicago Trump Tower, which unfortunately is a pretty good looking building, at least in my opinion. There was also a few big anti-Trump signs, as there were today. There was a woman with a sign that just read,

Trump and J.D. Vance are weird. But she also had Gaza stuff. She also had Gaza pants. And there were also some people who you could tell are here for the DNC, but who showed up and yelled in support, but also had a Kamala shirt, or there was one lady who had Fuck Trump written on her arm, and who clearly just kind of showed up in between her day to go

cheer a couple of times and move on. Just like today, there was PSL people. Party for Socialism and Liberation, if you're curious. There was this one other socialist group who was really repping Jill Stein. A lot of Jill Stein signs. Saying she's the only candidate that is against the genocide, which technically isn't true.

The Libertarian Party candidate also. She's been pro several genocides this century, including the one Assad did in Syria. And similar today, there were some people who showed up to be like corkers, people on bikes to help section off the march from roads or cars, which proved to be ultimately useless because police were doing all of the corking. Lots and lots of cops. Immediately when I was walking downtown to this protest yesterday, just the sheer number

of Chicago PD was just stifling. This is very different from the RNC. Almost, I would say, 95% of the law enforcement we've seen have been Chicago and Illinois cops. Yes, actual local police as opposed to the RNC where there's a majority like out of state police. Yes. Yesterday did not have tons of medics. Today did. That's not unsurprising. Everyone was expecting

today to be the biggest day. And it probably will turn out to be. Yes, but like I said, yeah, even yesterday at the very first one, they still had a thousand people. They were really, really tying as much as they could into the reproductive rights issue. We saw pussy hats. We saw, you know, all that kind of stuff.

Yeah. And one of the funniest things from yesterday, and we saw some of it today too, is that with all these different communist newspapers, they were, like, competing. They were competing to be the ones that have, like, the true path to the revolution. Like, handing out flyers, handing out pamphlets,

being like, no, this is, we're the ones that have it figured out.'t figured it out. And you have like seven of these groups going after the same, like the same person. Yes. I felt very good when Jack wound up stumbling into one of those guys, because I was like, okay, he is going to bore the hell out of Jack Posobiec, but he's clearly, he's also like, has enough talking points that they're just kind of be going to be running talking points at each other, which is good. I always get worried when someone like Jack shows up that they're going to find either some like nice, normal person who's not ready to be on camera or, you know, somebody who's especially protests like this. You'll often have like an old guy who's an anti-circumcision activist just shows up to every protest and he's like kind of harmless kook and they get made fun

of a lot. So i'm always happy to see when an asshole shows up and gets confronted by someone who is just ready to sit there and talk for hours and similar to today there was a small collection quote-unquote like progressive anti abortion activists that showed up they kept mostly to the side the crowd largely ignored them but one thing i did like is that there was people in the crowd carrying around signs about abortion pill instructions, like how to use one, where to get one. QR codes. That was very nice

to see. And similar to today as well, there was a few DNC volunteers walking through the crowd, either because they actually do agree with these issues or just because they're curious. Who knows? I mean, obviously they're still probably more pro-Harris than most people in the crowd, but they still might nominally care about these issues.

But yesterday, they got booed while walking through the crowd. The crowd was not happy to have them, specifically the people from behind enemy lines, were giving out most of the boos. Referring to the protest tomorrow at the Israeli consulate at 7 p.m., that's Tuesday, they said that they're going to be the group that quote- consulate at 7 p.m. That's Tuesday. They said that they're going to be the group that, quote-unquote,

brings the ruckus. Yeah. And that is the vibe that they have. I think that's going to be maybe one of the more, like, conflictual protests that we're going to see this week, tomorrow. That's Tuesday. Without a doubt. So, yeah, we will be there on Tuesday to see what goes down there.

I'm about to walk into the DNC to hear old Sleepy Joe. We're taking bets to see if he has a stroke on stage. One thing that people have been able to use a lot, and that is a very real and valid issue, is that just last week, the government, including the Biden-Harris administration, as well as Congress, approved a $20 billion arms deal to Israel. We know how they're using these weapons. As many meetings that Kamala's going to take about, you know, an arms embargo, at least currently, we are still sending over.

We're doing the opposite. Which is what most people gathered here are concerned about. You know, it's great to see people talking about abortion, LGBTQ stuff, you know, all the other reasons that the U.S. is doing things that are bad. But, you know, when it comes to talking to the Democrats at the DNC, the Democrats are pro-abortion. They are nominally pro these things. Pressuring on the Palestinian stuff is going to be probably the biggest thing as expected

in these next few days. So we'll see how that goes. We'll be back tomorrow and the rest of the week from the DNC. This has been It Could Happen Here, happening to you. It Could Happen Here is a production of Cool Zone Media. For more podcasts from Cool Zone Media, visit our website, coolzonemedia.com,

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