The 2024 Democratic National Convention in Chicago
started off with a boisterous, but peaceful, protest in the city’s Union Park
followed by a march toward the United Center where most of the formal
convention activities are being held.
The crowd was well below half of the 20,000 protesters that the organizers had hoped for and although the common theme was the ongoing Israeli attacks in Gaza, groups joined in that stood for numerous other issues both in the U.S. and abroad.
Angel Gonzales is a student at University of Illinois at Chicago, and for him the protest was a moral issue.
“There
are billions of United States tax dollars that are going to help fund genocide
by Israel that should instead be used to fund housing, education, health care
and jobs,” Gonzalez said. “I know Illinois is a blue state but I’m happy the
convention is being held here because we have the largest Palestinian
population of any U.S. city, and there is a movement here.”
Richard
Berg is an educator and Chicago Teachers Union member, and he feels the U.S. is
funding Israel’s incursion into Gaza at the expense of labor and education
right here at home.
“Right
now we’re being told that there’s not enough money to go into our schools and
to pay teachers, yet they’re sending billions of dollars to Israel to bomb
people in Gaza,” Berg said. “We think that money is better spent in schools
throughout Illinois.”
“We
are happy they are holding the convention here because we can tell them what we
think,” Berg said. “I was also a protester at the Republican National Convention
to protest President Trump’s Education Secretary, Betsy DeVos, and what she did
to public education.”
Chicago
resident Pidgeon Pagonis said the protest was all about autonomy for the
Palestinian people.
“I
am an intersex person who had my autonomy stripped from me as a baby by the
hospital systems here,” Pagonis said. “I believe every person on this earth
deserves autonomy, including the Palestinian people.”
There
were several small, counter-protests, including a group of people carrying
Israeli flags and a fundamentalist Christian group who used bullhorns to
broadcast their message that people of the Islamic faith need to repent or they
will not be saved. In each case, a cordon of Chicago Police officers arrived
quickly to keep the protesting groups from clashing with each other.
Protest organizer Kobi Guillory of Chicago was glad that the Democratic Party chose Chicago for its convention.
“We were always
going to march on this convention regardless of where it was,” Guillory said.
“The fact that it is here, with the nation’s largest Palestinian community,
means it is going to be a very significant march.”
The protest was
scheduled for Monday because that was the day that President Joe Biden was
scheduled to speak at the convention. The man that protesters derisively
called “Genocide Joe” is the person the organizers blamed for the United
States’ continued support of Israel in light of the situation in Gaza.
