Notes from a low-energy protest in Chicago.
Union Park, Chicago — It is a known fact that all journalism feels more grittily authentic when it opens with a “dateline.” They’re only allowed when a writer is legitimately on the scene and reporting as an eyewitness. And as I sit here with official DNC press passes swaying on a lanyard around my neck, cosplaying as the Fourth Estate for the first time in my life, I realize two things: (1) Wow, is it ever unbelievably easy to fake this, any moron could do it; (2) I might as well indulge my pretenses here on the first day of the Democratic National Convention, because I have to gin up excitement somehow, right?
Otherwise no excitement whatsoever was on offer at this afternoon’s protest on behalf of Palestine and Hamas at Union Park, a few blocks east of the security perimeter surrounding the United Center, where official festivities kick off tonight. (President Biden and Mayor Johnson are both speaking — both Brandons in one night, in a cosmic syzygy of incompetence.) But this morning, anyone hoping to see either outrage or glorious revolutionary rhetoric was instead greeted by a limp, surly, and emotionally fatigued crowd that agreed on only one thing other than Palestine: They want literally anybody else for president in 2024, and they have no answer to the ugly fact that they are not going to get it.
The protest itself was a moderately attended affair held in excellent weather — sunny, cool, and breezy — whose rhetoric was so par for the course these days as to be mostly beneath notice. I spent my time wandering among the keffiyeh-clad youth (in general, older adults carried signs, younger men wore masks and various Palestinian-themed gear), working my way to the front. There I found that the rest of the field had been gated off for a massive sea of press, who occupied a moat between the crowd and the stage at a ratio that I (with great amusement) estimated at one camera for every three protesters.
The speakers ran the gamut from Communists to anti-colonial activists to anti-racists, which is to say nothing you haven’t heard a thousand times since October 7. The Biden-Harris administration was roundly denounced. Israeli genocide was denounced. The Chicago Police Department was denounced at one point, just for good measure, I guess. Nobody even bothered to mention Donald Trump, for rather obvious reasons. “Don’t forget, we want Palestine to WIN!” one speaker bellowed, as the crowd responded rotely.
It was the roteness of the response that jumped out the most to me. I’ve seen my share of protests, but mostly via clips on social media and the like, and that’s a rather biased sample since boring claptrap ladled out to unenthused crowds doesn’t go viral on TikTok. This one felt positively sedate, utterly sapped of energy. Maybe things will get worse later on this week, but listening to a crowd lifelessly chant “From the River to Sea” slogans when told to by the emcee didn’t exactly convince me these people were still aflame with “the fierce urgency of now.” (I ran into actual — as opposed to temporary — journalist Nancy Rommelman while at the protest, and she agreed, describing it as “protest fatigue.”)
One message kept returning over and over again, both in the speakers’ rhetoric and the attendees’ grumbles: We don’t like Kamala Harris one iota more than we liked Joe Biden — and we hated Genocide Joe. Left-wing protests are not known for their “message coordination” (well over half the official groups represented among the crowd were Marxist or explicitly Communist organizations), but the loathing for and opposition to Kamala here seemed joylessly implacable. She’s every bit as much a war criminal in their eyes as Joe Biden (who was called one by a speaker while I was there) or Bibi Netanyahu (who was not, amusingly, at least not that I heard. I guess it’s just understood).
As I departed the thicket of quiet protesters, I strolled over to an American-flag tent set up on the outskirts of the crowd. I was feeling a mite low-energy myself after listening to all that cheerless sloganeering, and something written on the side of the tent grabbed my eye, printed in all caps: “LITERALLY ANYBODY ELSE FOR PRESIDENT 2024.” I couldn’t help but chuckle — heck I feel the same way myself after all, albeit for very different reasons. I told the guy standing underneath the tent that I wished he’d had a poster of that slogan; I’d pay for that.
And then he introduced himself, whipping out his driver’s license to show me: His name is literally Literally Anybody Else — he changed it in March of this year — and yes, that’s right, he is running for president. He came here because he figured it was as good a place as any to fish for votes. You have to at least respect the hustle; I don’t even know what his platform is, but he may have gotten mine today on principle alone.