It is February when Chicago Public Schools (CPS) announces that they will be pushing back the start of the school year, from August 19th to August 26th. The reason: Chicago will be hosting the Democratic National Convention the week of the 19th. It is an understandable decision. There will be at least fifty thousand people arriving in Chicago for the convention, not counting thousands of volunteers, and those coming for the planned protests; it will be one of the largest events here in decades. CPS has safety, traffic, and other logistics to consider.
This logic does not stop a conservative news organization from spreading word that this is a way to recruit CPS students into the DNC, as volunteers or attendees, part of an ongoing mayoral attempt to impose “radical leftist” politics upon unsuspecting young people.
If you’ve been the parent of a CPS student, as I am, or simply commuted in this city during rush hour, you know that traffic increases considerably at the start of the school year, DNC or not.
It is May when I begin to hear from students and friends about anticipated protests and the counter-programming of social justice groups, including many pro-Palestinian groups calling for a ceasefire in Gaza. As the weeks go by, I receive reminders from my local alderman and workplaces. “Get out if you can,” a neighbor whispers, her eyes widening. I don’t want to know what she means. These are the people who want out of this city anyway; the kind of attitude you can find, as I did not long ago, in Lakeview, a neighborhood near Wrigley Field. Chicago: If the taxes don’t kill you, the public school kids will.
Aldermen, the new mayor, and building managers assure locals of the extra security and alert them to restrictions. Around the United Center, where the convention will take place, there will be a perimeter and then another perimeter. A major hospital nearby is focused on how to get patients, many of whom travel long distances, in and out.
By July, the city is busy removing homeless encampments; the mayor denies that this is in preparation for the convention—rather, it is the execution of his recent campaign promise to reduce homelessness—but no one believes him.
In July I leave the city for a few days, to Iowa City, and come back with COVID. In isolation I search for images and videos from the famous 1968 DNC here in our city, the one regularly invoked now in anticipation of this one. Not long ago, giving a talk at the School of the Art Institute, Martha Rosler, an artist known for her anti-Vietnam War collages, recalled being at that DNC. She watched Senator Ribicoff of Connecticut take the mic, calling out Mayor Daley’s “Gestapo tactics.” Inside the convention hall, there were TVs: everyone could see what was going on outside. The cops with their billy clubs, beating the young protestors. Guns shoved into cars. In one video, a mother has a group of students in her back seat. “I am trying to get them home, Officer.” But the officer won’t let her drive, won’t let her cross the bridge. I find footage of Ribicoff’s speech and Daley’s rage. Daley, who looks unwell, looks like he could be my Irish uncle, shouts “get down” to Ribicoff, and then there it is: He cups his mouth and, according to Rosler and many who were there, he yells an antisemitic slur to Ribicoff. Impossible to hear in the video, but Rosler said it was true, there were lip readers.
At least eight separate groups have sued city hall for the right to protest “within sight and sound” of the convention. Protestors have previously been granted permits to march in Grant Park, where the 1968 anti-Vietnam protests took place, peaceful and then bloody, thanks to Daley’s orders to the police to “shoot to kill” and “shoot to maim or cripple.” But the lawsuits, since dismissed, insisted on permits to march closer to the actual convention.
Much happened while I was out, and everyone in Iowa and Chicago is talking about it: what JD Vance is saying about cat ladies and what Trump is telling Christians. Everything has changed. Days ago, the overconfident and fatalistic assuredly declared that Kamala would be wiped out, and that Trump would win in a landslide as a result of the post-assassination attempt, post-Biden exit. Well now they are not so sure; the situation may not be what it seemed. They have hope, or something like it. Hope they didn’t know they had.
And then Trump comes to Chicago to speak to a conference of Black journalists. No one knows why he came, but he did and the event became a joke. Three friends and family members send me the super cut: Trump comparing himself to Abraham Lincoln, Trump’s reference to “Black jobs,” Trump angry at reporter Rachel Scott’s pointed questions, Trump angry that his opponent was not there, Trump calling Scott nasty. It was nearly a decade ago that he called Hillary Clinton nasty, which then became a rallying cry, the word embraced by a generation of women. I myself have a “nasty woman” card deck, a “nasty woman” t-shirt, and a “nasty women” picture book (all gifts, none of which I’ve looked at since 2016). Trump’s hatred of women—or fear of women, and what’s the difference—was a mark of the times. This legacy endures. The day I leave Iowa, a new law goes into effect, what Harris is calling “Trump’s abortion ban.” Iowa is the fourth state to pass this law, which makes terminating pregnancy after the first six weeks illegal, and as I write there are fourteen states now with near total bans on abortion.
“Well, it doesn’t matter. Kamala or not,” a woman I meet at a party tells me. What she means is that the deaths worldwide, the slaughtering of innocents, is not going to stop. Not under Trump and not under Biden, Harris, or a schoolteacher. It’s all a death cult; we’re on our way out.
She is not hopeful, she tells me. She doesn’t care about this DNC because this DNC is not for those who want a revolution. The Democratic Party isn’t where she looks for hope.
We are now just days out and there are many like her who don’t care and don’t think this convention matters. There are just as many who can’t believe what has happened since Biden left. Those who find it hard not to be excited. Hard not to feel the sea change. Hard not to see how off-balance Trump was, there in his seat in this blue city, Obama’s city, a city he and Fox News demonize with racist language and dog whistles. Hard not to see what happened: he lost his best opponent, the one he knew he could beat hands down, no contest, wipe off the map. He could take back states that weren’t even in play, everyone was so sure, even Trump. And that was what, a few weeks ago?
And was it really just a week before that that he was nearly assassinated, that he rose again, for that indelible photo op? And all of us were, for days, gobsmacked, now certain he would win. “Well, he just won,” one or another friend would sigh. It was over, we said, as if we knew.
contributor
