Election Desk 2024: Unquiet Spirits

Heather Kenny takes the temperature around the DNC in the first dispatch from LARB’s Election Desk.

By Heather KennyAugust 21, 2024

• Politics

This piece is part of LARB’s ongoing 2024 election coverage, commissioned and edited by Tom Zoellner.

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THE CITY OF CHICAGO houses unquiet spirits: the Saint Valentine’s Day Massacre, the Billy Goat Curse that dogged the Cubs, the Haymarket Square bomb, the multiple indicted aldermen, the police killing of Laquan McDonald, and—perhaps most notoriously—the disorder and violence surrounding the 1968 Democratic National Convention. In the run-up to this year’s DNC, critics wondered aloud whether progressive mayor Brandon Johnson would be up to handling the crush of delegates, media, protesters, and bystanders flooding into the blocks surrounding the United Center. As I got close to the complex system of fencing and barricades, resembling the world’s biggest maze, it was clear Johnson’s team had decided on a simple strategy: police. Lots and lots of police.

On the convention’s first day, as thousands of people meandered through the residential blocks surrounding the United Center, home of the Bulls and the Blackhawks, an unbroken line of officers walking their bicycles accompanied the pedestrians on either side, separating them from the assembled crowd protesting the war in Gaza. “Democrats want polite genocide,” said one sign. Others held placards decrying police violence. A young woman carried a flyer that read “Abandon Harris.” “What does that mean?” I asked her. “No comment,” she replied.

But this wasn’t a repeat of 1968—at least, not yet. “They’ve been very courteous,” said Hyde Park resident Dale Arntson, 71, of the police. He said he had been “radicalized” by the 1968 convention, and that he was voting for a third-party candidate, a safe way to protest the war given that Illinois was sure to go blue. And if he lived in a swing state? “I’d have to think about that,” he said. There were few observers—mostly members of the press plus a few curious residents hanging out in their front yards, some taking videos of the procession on their phones. One woman danced to the beat of the protesters’ chants. “I’m just trying to get something to eat,” said a young man waiting patiently for the line of protesters to end.

The city’s plan to contain the marchers seemed to have worked. Near one of the entrances where delegates lined up to enter the United Center, there was only a smattering of protesters, including a small but vocal group shouting angrily at the well-dressed attendees as they filed past.  “Twenty-five dead in Gaza for every delegate here!” yelled a man in a kaffiyeh. Most politicos declined to interact, just as they studiously ignored a young man decked out in ostentatious pro-Trump gear. A man selling glossy souvenir convention booklets featuring a photo of Kamala Harris on the cover also had no takers.

Derrick Jackson, a state representative from Georgia, was wearing a “Voting Is My Black Job” T-shirt. “I think the level of excitement, enthusiasm that we are experiencing, that’s all organic,” he said. “I don’t think nobody wants to derail that.” I asked if he thought Israel and Gaza would be a liability for the party. “I don’t think it’s going to be much, to be honest,” he said. A military veteran himself, he saw the conflict as the latest in a long line of wars.

Nearby, North Side resident Emily Paine-Gibbons, 68, was carrying a homemade sign that read “Thank you Joe.” Surprisingly, she said the only negative comment she’d gotten all day had been from a neighbor. “People have the right to speak their mind,” she said cheerfully.

Down the block, a protester heading home exaggeratedly shrugged her shoulders at a half dozen police vans. “Why are you here?” she asked the cops. 

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Featured image: “1968 Democratic National Convention, Chicago. Sept 68 C15 10 1316 , Photo by Bea A Corson, Chicago” is licensed under CC0. Image has been cropped.