First Day of DNC Protests Ends With 4 Arrests

Carlos Berríos Polanco contributed to the reporting of this story.

CHICAGO — At least four people were detained on Monday after about 100 protesters broke through a police fence outside the United Center where the Democratic National Convention is being held this week.

The March on the DNC 2024, which began with a noon rally at Union Park in the city’s Near West Side, was expected by organizers and police officials to draw tens of thousands of demonstrators. But by the time protesters began marching westward a little before 3 p.m., estimates for the number of participants topped out at a few thousand.

The marchers followed a route approved by the City of Chicago that wound its way from the park to only three blocks north of the convention, before looping back around. Organizers were still pressing the city on Monday for a longer march route to accommodate the massive number of protesters that never materialized, plus more portable toilets and a medical tent. (Reporters with The Latino Newsletter did observe a long line of people wanting to use the bathrooms, about 50 yards or so, inching toward a handful of porta-potties.)

Latinas and Latinos at March

Among the coalition of more than 200 groups organizing the march were several Latinas and Latinos.

Christine Neumann-Ortiz, executive director of Voces de la Frontera, a Milwaukee-based immigrant rights organization, told TLN that her group had come to Chicago, following last month’s Republican convention in Milwaukee, “to put pressure on both” parties, “one, 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 in Gaza.”

The Democrats “tried to cater to the Republican right wing, and all they did is move to the right themselves,” Neumann-Ortiz said when asked why she thought Democrats continued to renege on their perennial campaign promise of passing comprehensive immigration reform. “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.”

Génesis with the International Migrants Alliance 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) the “legalization for all migrants.”

“Biden has been a failure, a complete failure for migrants,” she said. “If anything, he has worsened the situation. He has deported more people than Trump. So he 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.”

“I actually don't see very much that's different between them,” Génesis said of the two parties. “But what we know is that Trump will not lie to us. 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 have a comprehensive immigration reform. And time and time again, they have failed us, utterly failed us. And that is why we're here at the DNC,” Génesis added.

Ángel Escobar, the son of Guatemalan immigrants and who was wearing a Centro de Trabajadores Unidos shirt —though he wanted to make clear that he was not participating in the march in any official capacity— drew parallels between the mainstream misconceptions of Palestinians, who he said are presumably viewed as terrorists, and the mainstream perception of migrants as potentially un-American or even anti-American.

“We know that immigrants are migrating from all parts of the world,” he explained, “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.”

“I hope that Kamala Harris will listen to the community and actually” pass some kind of immigration reform, Ángel continued. “Whether that's going to happen, I'm not sure. 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.”

He ended by criticizing what he viewed as a double standard in U.S. immigration law that favors skilled workers over unskilled workers.

“A lot of [immigrant] visas are only for people that, like, went to college, or only for people that know some type of skill, which is cool and all. But what you're basically saying is that you only want smart immigrants here. You don't want dumb ones, right? The ones that are coming through the border or whatever. I don't believe that’s right.”

At Humboldt Park

A much smaller rally and march, organized by the Poor People’s Army and attended by only a few dozen peaceful demonstrators, was held on the southeast corner of Humboldt Park, in the shadow of one of two 40-ton, 56-foot-tall steel Puerto Rican flags marking a strip of Division Street known as “Paseo Boricua.” The rally featured a live band playing a mix of reggae and R&B with revolutionary lyrics, and the gathering was led by Cheri Honkala, national coordinator of the Poor People's Economic Human Rights Campaign. Honkala is also a former vice-presidential candidate, having run on the Green Party ticket in 2012 alongside longtime presidential hopeful Jill Stein, who was also in attendance and addressed the small crowd.

Speaking to reporters before the rally, Hatem Abudayyeh, national chair of the U.S. Palestinian Network and the lead organizer behind the March on the DNC, said that the coalition had “already achieved what we want to achieve.

“We've achieved unity with some of the most important issues and the most important organizations and the most important organizers in the country. When you see a crowd of thousands of people —Black, Latino, Asian, Native— all nationalities, all religions, marching together under the banner of ‘free Palestine,’ under the banner of ‘stop U.S. aid to Israel,’ under the banner of ‘stop the genocide,’ that, in and of itself, is a massive victory. We know that the entire world is with the people of Palestine. When we win the people of the United States as well, then we're on our way to full liberation.”

During his Monday night speech on Day 1 of the DNC, Biden took a moment to say the following about the Chicago protests: “Those protesters in the street have a point. A lot of innocent people being killed on both sides.”

A second, larger rally and march is scheduled to take place on Thursday at 5 p.m. to coincide with Harris’ address as she officially accepts her party’s presidential nomination.

About the Author

Hector Luis Alamo is a Las Vegas-based writer/journalist and the former senior editor of Latino Rebels.