WE Keep Us Safe — Not CPD
The Chicago Police Department (CPD) is not a friend to the movement for Palestinian rights, or to any of the social justice movements represented in the Coalition to March on the DNC. CPD has no right to take credit for the work of our Coalition, which kept protesters safe and secure for the entire week of the DNC, when it spent months trying to stop us from getting permits and limiting the amenities we could use to keep the people safe. Our marshals and safety team deescalated many tense situations, while police only instigated and exacerbated problems.
The original rejection of our permit applications was the work of CPD, and if it were not for our federal lawsuit and community organizing pressure on the city's law department, the powers that be would have been perfectly satisfied with burying us at Columbus Drive, a clear violation of our First Amendment rights. Many weeks ago, Superintendent Larry Snelling threatened our Coalition and DNC protesters with mass arrests, before being forced to retract his statements by our organizing and additional pressure from Chicago's federal consent decree legal coalition.
We want to especially call out Deputy Chief Duane DeVries, for interfering in our direct negotiations with city officials in the weekend leading up to the protests, as he unsuccessfully attempted to reverse our victories and permits regarding stage, sound, and other resources.
As mentioned in numerous press reports, the incredibly tight lining -- especially on Monday -- of our marches with bicycle CPD cops on both sides of protesters put us in unsafe situations, forcing our marshals to struggle to navigate around the bicycles to maintain safety.
Finally, on Thursday night, CPD commanders threatened mass arrests again, this time when 11,000 of us stopped under the Chicago L train tracks on Lake Street just north of the United Center. We were chanting and cheering the incredible success of our week of protests, holding our community space specifically because we wanted to make certain that we were still protesting while Kamala Harris was accepting the nomination. Despite the threats, we were not intimidated and held our ground, eventually ending the march and protest on our own terms at Union Park over an hour later.
The Coalition, especially its Chicago-based members, supports the Chicago Alliance Against Racist and Political Repression's (CAARPR's) campaign for community control of the police, and will work tirelessly to pass a Chicago referendum to win it.
And lastly, we demand that all charges against protesters from this week's DNC actions, and all protesters since October, including the O'Hare arrestees, be dropped.
