My redeye to Chicago was supposed to leave at 11:55 p.m. on Sunday, but I got a text from United around 9 o'clock saying the flight was delayed an hour and a half, something about having to switch planes — exactly the kind of message you wanna receive right before flying. I got a last-minute upgrade to First Class, though, which came as a godsend cuz I'd been fretting over how I would catch any sleep back in Economy.
My seat was in the very first row, next to the window. I put on my prescription RayBan sunglasses and my noise-canceling headphones, played the latest episode of Joe Rogan (a fight companion episode), snuggled under a thin United Airlines throw blanket, and, for the next three-plus hours, drifted in and out of sleep. When the plane landed at O'Hare a little after 6:30 a.m., the sun was already up, coloring the big puffy clouds a soft peach on their eastern sides. My mom had a cup of Café Bustelo waiting for me when I got to her house in Mt. Prospect, just north of the airport.
The plan was to catch an 11 o'clock press conference at the Wit downtown hosted by the Hispanic Federation and the Latino Victory Foundation; the two groups were gonna announce the results of a poll of Latino voters. From there I would head over to Union Park to catch the start of the rally, scheduled for noon. But with my flight landing an hour and a half later than I'd expected, the thought of going all the way down to the Wit, which itself would take about an hour or so thanks to morning rush-hour traffic, and then hustling over to Union Park was already giving me a headache. With the organizers of the March on the DNC set to hold a press conference at 10, I decided to skip the Wit and just take a Lyft straight to the park.
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I'd been to Union Park a few times before, always for a march. But those marches were primarily for immigrant rights and took place on May 1st. The annual marches began back in 2006, after the U.S. House of Representatives passed an anti-immigration bill that would've (1) required undocumented immigrants arrested by local authorities to be transferred to federal custody, (2) increased the penalties on anyone helping an undocumented immigrant stay in the country, (3) ordered up to 700 miles of fencing be built along the U.S.-Mexico border, and (4) made it more difficult for undocumented immigrants (and their loved ones, too, by association) to access essential services.
In response to the Sensenbrenner Bill making its way through the Senate, on March 10th, 2006, more than a hundred thousand people marched the two miles down Washington from Union Park to the Picasso sculpture in Daley Plaza. Another march took place that year on the first of May — also known as International Workers' Day — and large May Day marches would take place every year afterward till at least the time I moved to Vegas in 2016. I even took my future wife and her sister to the one in 2010, back when they were both still undocumented.
Me and Carlos, the reporter from Puerto Rico, would both be covering this year's protests for The Latino Newsletter, though we'd decided a few days beforehand to divide the week between us, with me reporting the first day and him covering the tail end. The split was my idea since I was hoping to have my actual work over and done with as early in the week as possible so I could enjoy a few carefree days in my hometown and soak in the experience of DNC week and Thursday's march like any man on the street.
I had made one halfhearted attempt to score a press pass to the convention, but only after a friend and former colleague said he could get me in. Now a Congressional reporter for Vanity Fair and known for his oil paintings of D.C. figures in politics and journalism, Pablo Manríquez, who had been the Capitol Hill correspondent at the now-defunct Latino Rebels where I was editor, somehow (though unsurprisingly) finessed his way into getting permission from the DNC to paint from the convention floor all week. When I told him I'd be in Chicago covering the protests, Pabs offered to get me closer to the action by connecting me with the guy in charge of approving press credentials for the convention — Pabs knows everybody who's anybody in D.C., which he often refers to as "my town."
I have no doubt that I would've gotten into the convention had the deadline to apply for a credential not expired on May 31st, so that the online form I needed to fill out as a simple formality was no longer available.
When I got to Union Park on Monday morning, I immediately noticed that the park wasn't nearly as crowded as the rallies before the May Day marches I'd been to. In fact, if it weren't for the large stage and the police barricades, few passersby would even suspect that a massive rally was set to take place in only a couple hours. But it was still 9:30, and I figured most of the protesters wouldn't show up till about noon, earliest.
After checking in at the press table and picking up a lanyard and a press packet, I wandered over to the nearest baseball diamond where a big red banner attached to wooden poles was propped up against the backstop. The banner read in large white letters "STOP the GENOCIDE!" Beneath the banner stood two placards, one reading "CEASEFIRE on CHILDREN!" and the other "HONK to STOP ISRAEL'S GENOCIDE!"
In the tree-shaded area between the backstop and Ashland Avenue was a small crowd of people just killing time. At least a third seemed to be organizers, most of them wearing neon vests with the words "SAFETY TEAM" printed on their backs. Some had the black-and-white keffiyeh of Palestine draped over their shoulders, though a few didn't appear to be Palestinian themselves; I noticed a blonde girl, for example, the sturdy Midwestern type, wearing a keffiyeh over her shoulders and a pair of pristine Jordans on her feet. If she was Palestinian, then I don't know what one is.
Carlos, who had been the Caribbean correspondent at Latino Rebels, arrived at Union Park about 15 minutes before the press conference was set to start. Los is a big, 24 or 5-year-old kid, over six feet tall and somewhere north of 225 pounds. When I met him down in San Juan in early 2022, his size combined with his cleanly shaven face and haircut made me feel he was a cop. But Los won't be joining the force anytime soon, not after his experiences covering protests in P.R., where the police hardly disguise their unspoken role as the hired muscle for Big Money. Being pepper-sprayed and manhandled by San Juan P.D. at a LUMA protest in August 2022 didn't endear them to him either.
Such encounters with the Thin Blue Line are partly what led Los to cover the Stop Cop City movement outside Atlanta in the summer of 2023, where the police's "with us or against us" attitude toward the press, lumping journalists in with the activists, only soured him more on so-called peace officers. And it's for these reasons that Los seems to bear a stronger distrust of the badge than I do, even though my dad was an Army veteran and Chicago police officer himself who not only was addicted to crack and a thief but would beat my mom, my brother, and me at the drop of a hat (his cop buddies were all the same, too).
The press conference started ahead of schedule, seemingly prompted by a 50ish-year-old Black man in an all-white suit, a feathered white fedora on his head and black shades over his eyes, and a big muscly Black man in all black with a black yarmulke on top of his shaved head, shades over his eyes too, and the word "RABBI" printed on the back of his t-shirt. The rabbi held a bullhorn. Both men stood in front of two banners, one red, the other white, the red one reading "FREE PALESTINE! END U.S. AID TO ISRAEL," the other "STAND WITH PALESTINE! FREE THEM ALL!"
The two men were joined by Hatem Abudayyeh, chair of the U.S. Palestinian Community Network and the main spokesman for the March on the DNC. A big-bellied 50-something-year-old man with a grizzled beard and mustache, bags under his eyes, a scar on his nose, and the hair on top of his head thinning, Abudayyeh could easily be mistaken for a mechanic or the owner of a gyro joint. Only the doggedness in his eyes betrayed his true character and distinguished him as a leader.
Once more organizers had joined him and the two Black men and 10 or so microphones were set up and two or three dozen journalists and cameramen gathered around in a semicircle, Abudayyeh began to deliver a booming diatribe.
"Netanyahu continues to massacre every single day!" he said of the Israeli prime minister wanted by the International Criminal Court for war crimes committed in Gaza. "And he does it because Genocide Joe Biden allows him to do it! Make no mistake, Joe Biden can turn off that tap of money and funding immediately! He can do it right now! He coulda done it back in October! The fact that he didn't . . . means he supports this genocide . . . that he's got the blood of 40,000 Palestinians on his hands . . . and that he . . . and Kamala Harris . . . and Antony Blinken . . . and Jeffries . . . and Schumer . . . and Pelosi . . . and Schakowsky . . . and Durbin . . . and ALL the top Democrats . . . are complicit. They are responsible — we hold them responsible. We will hold them accountable. And that's why we're here today. And that's why this is going to be an incredibly beautiful scene."
Next to speak was Faayani Aboma Mijana, a tall, steely-eyed Black trans woman with an afro who organizes for the Chicago branch of the National Alliance Against Racist and Political Repression, which advocates community-controlled policing. She also organizes for the Freedom Road Socialist Organization, a Marxist-Leninist group pushing for revolution as the only means to end global capitalism and imperialism. Reading a prepared speech from her iPhone, Mijana also wore a keffiyeh over the straps of a backpack on her shoulders.
As she spoke, attention shifted to the left side of the audience where a heavy-set white guy, a black ballcap sitting low above his eyes, held a 3x5-foot American flag on a pole high over his head with one hand. He stood there peacefully but defiantly, causing some around him to eye him nervously. Los and I couldn't tell if he was a friend or foe of the protesters, but given the tone of the rally, I'm inclined to think the flag was meant as a thumb in their eyes. (I'm convinced that, in its fight for the soul of the country, the Left shoots itself in the foot by disowning America's most sacred symbol. If any movement on the Left or Right wants to win America for good, it must first convince the American people that it loves this country more than the other team does.)
Once the press conference was over, a group of 20 or so protesters from Code Pink, all wearing the group's signature color, marched around the audience carrying placards with messages like "FEMINISTS SAY NO TO WAR," "REJECT AIPAC," "DEMOCRATS ARE BOUGHT BY ZIONISM," "THE WOMEN OF GAZA ARE OUR SISTERS," and "FEMINISM NOT MILITARISM." About a third of the protesters carrying these signs were men, most of them appearing to be under the age of 40, while most of the women appeared to be over the age of 40. The group was led by an elderly white man wearing a pink ballcap and pink shoes and an obese 40-something-year-old white woman with boyishly short hair and glasses. Both wore the keffiyeh over their shoulders and carried a five-foot-long placard made to look like a hand with blood dripping from its fingertips. The lady wore a self-satisfied smile as she and the old man led the procession like standard-bearers in a Roman legion.
In a clearing in the grass lay more than two dozen stacks of placards seemingly made by the March on the DNC, as many of them displayed the coalition's official logo featuring a green fist. Each stack had about 20 placards, one stack reading "END U.S. AID TO ISRAEL," another "JUSTICE, PEACE, AND EQUALITY!" and yet another "GENOCIDE JOE'S LEGACY: THE BUTCHER OF GAZA." One eye-catching group of placards, prepared by the U.S. Palestinian Community Network, featured the "Dark Brandon" meme showing President Biden smiling with red laser eyes and flanked by Vice President Harris and State Sec. Blinken, both with red laser eyes too. Beneath this image read "DEMOCRATS FUND THE GENOCIDE OF PALESTINIANS."
Los and I began looking for people to interview. We noticed two Latino men wearing green t-shirts that read "IN THE STRUGGLE FOR JUSTICE" across the chest. Over their bellies was the emblem for the Centro de Trabajadores Unidos, a group founded in 2008 by low-wage immigrant workers on the city's southeast side. The younger man, probably in his 20s, wore stylish jogger pants with cargo pockets and a 3M mask over his mouth and nose. The older man, who could've been anywhere between 35 and 60, either had vitiligo or had suffered a severe chemical burn, as the skin on his fingers and splotches on his lips and around his mouth and chin had lost all of its brown pigmentation. He had a grim look in his eyes like you see in old Civil War photos and seemed to speak little or no English, saying nothing at all while we interviewed the kid.
Ángel, who stressed the fact that he and the older man weren't at the rally representing the CTU, compared the way many Americans view Palestinians as either supporters of terrorism or terrorists themselves to the way many Americans also view Latino immigrants and migrants as either un-American or flat out anti-American. "We know that immigrants are migrating from all parts of the world," he said, "and there's a reason for it, right? I think that these misconceptions of us being criminals or just coming here because we want to take jobs are big misconceptions that need to be researched. You know, there's a reason why people migrate. They don't just migrate because they want to migrate. We need to understand that these are also human beings that are coming here for a better life."
He then zeroed in on politicians: "Elected officials are always lying to us. They're always saying, 'Yeah, we'll help you. We'll support you.' And at the end of the day, once they're in office, the only thing that they really care about is getting re-elected."
Next we spotted Christine Neumann-Ortiz, founder and executive director of the Milwaukee-based immigrant-worker group Voces de la Frontera. She had been the last to speak during the press conference. Standing around five feet tall with dark hair and dark features, she too, as with Abudayyeh, looked like a leader and the veteran of many rallies and marches.
She said that after protesting outside of the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee in July, she and her group had come to Chicago “to put pressure on both (parties) . . . to call out what is a fascist modern-day party and movement under Trump, and . . . to really call out the need to prioritize immigrant rights on (the Democratic) agenda, to challenge their uncritical funding of this genocidal war in Gaza.”
The Democrats, she said, had “tried to cater to the Republican right wing, and all they did is move to the right themselves. . . . Under Joe Biden, again, it hasn't been a priority. I think, ultimately, it has to do with the influence of corporations on government. The private prison industry is a major lobbying force under Biden. He ended federal contracts with prisons, which is a good thing, but not with detention centers. And I think, you know, the military, all the border stuff, people are making money off that."
Onto the large stage walked singer-songwriter, poet, and Chicagoan Jamila Woods, who began by reciting acapella the lyrics to her song "VRY BLK," which she had performed in ESPN's 2023 documentary short Black Girls Play. The song borrows its structure from the clapping games "Miss Susie" and "Mary Mack" and spotlights the racial politics of America:
Black is like the magic, the magic's like a spell
My brothers went to heaven, the police go to
Hello operator, emergency hotline
If I say I can't breathe, will I be a chalk
Line up to see the movie, line up to see the act
The officers are scheming to cover up their
Aks me no more questions, tell me no more lies
Your serving and protecting is stealing babies' lives
I noticed three ultra-Orthodox Jews in black suits and black fedoras, their beards varying in length and grayness (one of them looked no older than 20), and each with the curly sidelocks. Each one also held a large placard, the oldest one's reading "State of 'Israel' does not represent world Jewry" with the URL "www.NKUSA.org" listed along the bottom. (The URL later took me to the website for Neturei Karta International, which was founded in "Jerusalem, Palestine" in 1938 and describes itself not as a group, per se, but merely a category of "Orthodox Jews who have maintained the traditional Jewish opposition to Zionism." "Neturei Karta," they explain, "is an Aramaic term meaning 'Guardians of the City," and "is a name for Jews who oppose Zionism and the establishment of the so-called 'State of Israel,' and retain all opposition to the existence of that state.") The placard of the young Jew read "Authentic Rabbis always opposed Zionism and the State of Israel" and displayed the Israeli flag with a no symbol over it.
Los and I walked across Washington Street to where more protesters were gathered in a triangular tree-covered area. Here, the left-wing Filipino coalition Bayan USA had a big puppet with three large heads made of paper-mâché, each one a grotesque representation of either Kamala Harris, Joe Biden, or Philippine president Ferdinand "Bongbong" Marcos Jr., only son of the famous dictator and his shoe-crazy wife. Both the Kamala head and the Bongbong sported long vampire fangs, with red paint in the hair of the Kamala head and red on the nose and around the mouth of the Bongbong one. The Bongbong puppet also displayed a gold rosette labeled "MARCOS JR #1 U.S. PUPPET" with a ribbon streamer mimicking the American flag. This three-headed puppet stood in front of a long banner that read "U.S. OUT OF THE PHILIPPINES! END U.S AID TO FASCIST MARCOS REGIME!"
"We're concerned about the war that is being provoked in the Asia Pacific between the U.S. and China," of which "Filipino people are caught in the crosshairs," Bayan spokesperson Jo Mangaliman told me. "In the last year, the U.S. has propped up more and more U.S. bases in our country, in the Philippines, and continuing to violate our sovereignty by having U.S. presence there, bringing more arms, more trainings of military troops, as if trying to provoke war with China. . . . The Filipino people — we don't want to go to war. We want livelihood. We want peace. We want our families to be safe. We want to be able to, you know, live our lives peacefully, independently. And we don't want foreign intervention from the United States."
Behind the Filipinos stood a small, soft-blue banner bordered with Japanese floral patterns that read "OKINAWA TO PALESTINE, OCCUPATION IS A CRIME!" Near this stood a table set up by the Chicago Cuba Coalition and covered with pro-Cuba literature, much of which featured images of Fidel, Che, or both. One booklet containing a pair of speeches by Fidel and Nelson Mandela and titled How Far We Slaves Have Come!, showed both Fidel and Mandela on the cover, Fidel with his arm around the South African leader and Mandela with a fist raised. Tending the table were two ladies with half-gray hair, one wearing a red shirt celebrating the failed attack on the Moncada Barracks in Santiago de Cuba in 1953 that served as a prelude to the Cuban Revolution. She also wore the keffiyeh over her shoulders. Behind the table stood a banner that read "Take Cuba off 'terrorist' list" and "End the U.S. anti-Cuba embargo."
Back on the north side of Washington Street, members of the International Migrants Alliance were gearing up for the march by practicing a few chants, one of which was the controversial "From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free!" They held two large banners, one reading "END FORCED MIGRATION! LIVELIHOOD & LEGALIZATION FOR ALL!" The banner featured cartoon depictions of migrants, all with dark brown skin. One of the cartoons was of an angry woman in a hijab with her fist raised, while another was of a young man wearing a backpack and a third was of a young woman holding a swaddled baby close to her chest. The other banner read "STOP ATTACKS ON IMMIGRANTS! LEGALIZATION FOR ALL!" Standing next to these banners was a girl wearing a keffiyeh as a headscarf and Jordans on her feet and carrying two flags over her shoulder, one Palestinian, the other Mexican.
Los and I spoke with Génesis of Capybara Colectiva, a Seattle-based group that describes itself in its IG bio as "a militant, grassroots org of Latin American diaspora fighting and exposing the u.s. imperialism that forces migrants to leave their homelands." (The group also offers copies of Galeano's Open Veins of Latin America in PDF form through its Linktree.) Génesis, who called Biden "a complete failure for migrants" and mentioned the fact that the president "has deported more people than Trump," listed four core issues at the center of the migrants’ agenda: (1) "putting an end to forced migration and imperialist war," (2) securing "the right to our basic needs and health and housing," (3) bringing "an end to the repression of migrants," and (4) "legalization for all migrants."
Biden, she said, "is progressive only in name, but not in actions. We expect Kamala Harris to be worse. We have already heard what she has told people in Central America, which is to not come, despite the fact that the U.S. is continuously, continuously disrupting any sort of stability in the Latin American region."
Génesis described Democrats and Republicans as "two sides of the same coin," saying that she didn't "see very much that's different between them."
"But what we know is that Trump will not lie to us," she said. "He will tell us how he thinks, what he thinks exactly of migrants. Biden and Kamala Harris and the Democrats, in general, have consistently lied to our faces and told us that they will do— they will have a comprehensive immigration reform, and time and time again they have failed us — utterly failed us."I asked her why she thought Democrats were able to get away with reneging on their promise to Latino voters to pass immigration reform — an issue that's been a Democratic talking point since I became legally eligible to vote at 18 back in 2004. "Because the election system is completely a sham," she insisted. "It's not actually real. The Electoral College is a complete failure of an election system. There is no actual democracy in the United States. We have the elites. We have the ruling that get to decide everything, and they have— we are essentially talking points for them. We're tokens for them. They get their diversity points for saying that they're going to give a comprehensive immigration reform, but that's all it is."
A column of marchers began forming on the dusty baseball diamond, headed by a banner that read "END THE KOREAN WAR!" Holding the banner on one end was a Korean woman (presumably) in yoga pants and gym shoes with a t-shirt that identified her as a member of NAKASEC, or the National Korean American Service & Education Consortium. Behind the banner was another banner that read "ASIANS FOR A LIBERATED PALESTINE," and next to it was a handful of people with the HANA Center banging on rustic two-headed drums slung from their shoulders. I was taking video of the drummers and the gathering procession when a man in khakis with a thick grizzled beard, looking like Forrest Gump at the end of the running scene (only he was wearing an old straw hat instead of a red trucker), came strolling through the group carrying a Palestinian flag over one shoulder and a cardboard sign that read "NEBRASKA FOR PALESTINE."
Los and I noticed some commotion on the walkway just north of Washington and hurried over there to see what was up. A small column of counterprotesters carrying Israeli flags above their heads — one flagbearer also had an American flag wrapped around his shoulders like a blanket — was being escorted by bicycle cops and a few rally organizers in neon vests toward the southeastern corner of the park. They were followed on both sides by journalists and cameramen, as well as protesters, a few of them carrying Palestinian flags, one of them leading a chant of "Neo-Nazis, KKK, Zionists, you're all the same!"
The pro-Israel group was consigned to a small strip of grass on the corner of Washington and Ogden, their Israeli flags fluttering in the wind with the Sears Tower (a.k.a. the Willis Tower) standing big-shouldered and alone in the distance against a clear blue sky. For their own protection, the counterprotesters were encircled by bike cops, while other bike cops formed a line of at least 30 along the south end of Washington Street. This area, within line of sight of the union hall for Pipefitters Local 597 and the Chicago Police Memorial Foundation, itself across the street from the Fraternal Order of Police's Chicago Lodge #7 — hence, a very police-friendly block — this area where the counterprotesters were placed also acted as the police's command post, evidenced by not only the line of bike cops but also the presence of high-ranking officers distinguished by the insignias on their uniforms and their yellow-checkered caps. These included the man himself, Police Supt. Larry Snelling.
A South Sider and 32-year-old veteran of the force with a big imposing frame, Snelling, a dark-skinned Black man, had been chief of CPD's Bureau of Counterterrorism when newly-elected Black mayor, Brandon Johnson, promoted him in August 2023. According to a profile published by Block Club Chicago that same month, Snelling had also "trained recruits in physical skills" at the police academy and "redesigned the department’s use of force training standards around national best practices."
According to an exposé, however, published a week later by South Side Weekly, Snelling was implicated in a scheme in which he and three other officers, including his partner at the time, threatened to plant crack on a 30-year-old parolee if the man didn't produce a gun for them. The other three cops were caught in a sting conducted by Internal Affairs and served short suspensions of less than a week. But since Snelling wasn't with them at the time of IA's surveillance, he walked away scot-free.
Standing in the street less than 20 yards from Supt. Snelling was a white girl with pink-purple hair, purple-tinted sunglasses, and a yellow faux-fur trapper hat, with studs in both nostrils. She held a cardboard sign that read "JEWS FUCK OFF FUCK NIGGERS GO THE FUCK BACK TO THE SHITHOLE YOU'RE FROM. FAGS EAT SHIT! GET AIDS AND DIE! RACE WAR NOW! FASCISM NOW!" She had dolled up the sign with a little swastika and an inverted pentagram. When I asked to take a photo of her with the sign, she addressed me as "sir" before posing for a few photos.
This polite bundle of joy I later identified as Rachel Siegel, who has made a bit of a name for herself as a right-wing agitator. A screenshot posted to Twitter the next day is of a photo apparently posted to her personal Facebook account showing her at the University of Chicago's Regenstein Library holding a book titled Female Suicide Bombers and smiling like a pig in shit. The caption reads: "Academia ruined me so now I'm an immoral angry woman who wants to confront god and kill him :D" Other photos show her giving the Nazi salute at rallies.
A video clip posted a few days later shows her sitting next to former New York City mayor and Trump lawyer (till he was disbarred) Rudy Guiliani on some podcast, where Rachel says, "Everyone these days in my generation is so hyper-opinionated that it makes my head spin! They have an opinion on everything. Whatever happened to 'Speak when you're spoken to'? No one wants to hear it. Nobody cares. . . . If you are that histrionic, if you are that obsessed with yourself that you project every little thought you have every three seconds onto Twitter, you are mentally ill!"
Rachel's would be the last photo I took at the rally, since my phone's battery was then at 2% and the portable charger Los had in his huge bulging backpack wasn't working. I thought of finding the nearest store that sold chargers but then realized that a charger would be a waste of money if I didn't have someplace to charge my phone. I remembered that my sister-in-law's place was only about a mile from the park, on Van Buren Street. So, with my last bit of battery, I checked Google Maps to see exactly where she was before making my way over there . . .
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