Bay City News reporter and cartoonist Joe Dworetzky is covering this week's Democratic National Convention in Chicago, accompanied by fellow Bay City News reporter Jay Harris and contributor David Paul. (Joe Dworetzky/Bay City News)
PERHAPS THE ONLY thing less reliable than on-the-ground estimates of crowd size are predictions of the size of expected crowds.
At Union Park, the coalition for the March on the DNC held the widely anticipated — and widely hyped — rally and march tied to the first day of the Democratic National Convention.
For months the organizers of the March on the DNC have said that they anticipated “tens of thousands” of protesters and referenced media reports that predicted as many as 100,000 would attend.
At the 10 a.m. pre-rally press conference called by the organizers, Jodie Evans, 70, co-founder of Code Pink, steered her contingent of Gaza war protesters in hot pink into position for the assembled cameras. She knows the drill of dealing with the press.
“At Code Pink, we’ve been disrupting the DNC and the RNC since 2004, because we know that both parties are parties of war,” Evans said.
She bristled at the suggestion, at 10:45 a.m., that there were nearly as many reporters in Union Park as there were protesters. It was true, as she quickly pointed out, that the rally wasn’t due to start until noon. But the crowd would need to grow fast if it was to reach the “tens of thousands” projected in recent weeks. Jodie, a Californian from Venice Beach, was staying positive.
“We live in a really dark time,” she continued, “but what’s beautiful is this: People coming together from a heart of love and care and a commitment to the future. People who think through things, aren’t listening to the propaganda, and believe that their lives matter in the continuation of life.”
When the rally began, one of the speakers declared there were 15,000 people around the stage. Another chanted over and over “The Whole World is Watching.” But the crowd appeared much smaller. Many people stood in loose clusters around a temporary stage located between two baseball diamonds. Most of the crowd fit comfortably in the two outfield areas. One police officer estimated that to his eye there were 1,500 people, but he acknowledged that he had not seen the back of the crowd and it would take an aerial count to be sure.
Peaceful, uneasy feeling
Whatever the number, the day was sunny and bright with a fresh breeze that gave a party atmosphere to the event. Hundreds of Palestinian flags flew in the afternoon breeze. Black and white keffiyehs were everywhere. People swayed to the Arab music coming from the loudspeakers. Expressions of gratitude for the volunteers at the Medic Tent were plentiful.
The crowd built, people streaming in from all sides carrying colorful banners and signs. Contingents of cops on bicycles rode up, maintaining their distance. They did not look menacing in their short pants. No riot shields. No nightsticks. The vibe in the park was peaceful, even friendly.
But behind the good vibes, anger at the U.S. role in the Gaza carnage was front and center.
The chants began, accompanied by cowbell, tom-tom and snare drum. “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free!” “Not another nickel, not another dime. No more money for fascist crime.”
And on the many hand-painted signs:
“No Pride in Apartheid”
“Victory to the New Intifada”
“Genocide Joe Has Got to Go”
On stage, speaker after speaker excoriated the Democratic party for its complicity in funding genocide in Gaza. Little was said about Trump or whether Harris/Walz was preferable to Trump. The message was that both parties were guilty.
The bicycle cops did not look menacing in their short pants. No riot shields. No nightsticks. The vibe in the park was peaceful, even friendly.
While the primary purpose of the rally was to protest the war in Gaza, other social issues were brought to the fore. Worker’s rights, income inequality, the repression of women, and organized labor were all intertwined with the message. One speaker said that a new party was needed because the billionaires owned the two that are out there.
Noura Ebrahim, 33, was stationed near stacks of t-shirts that bore a full-length manifesto: “Self-Determination & National Liberation for the Palestinian People/Right of return for all Palestinian Refugees/End US Aid to Israel.” Noura is a “PA,” a Palestinian American born and raised in Chicago. “The Democratic Party is complicit,” she said. “It’s directly funding the genocide of my people in Palestine. I’m here to take a stand against that. I don’t want my tax dollars going to Israel to commit these atrocities against the Palestinian people.”
And did she have concern that the protests might help re-elect Donald Trump? No. “If Trump gets elected, that’s not on us. It’s on the Democratic Party for not living up to the promises they made to the people.”
Gillian Rath, 22, came to the protest as part of a contingent of “SDS”students and others from Minneapolis; they had filled two coaches on Sunday night and drove all night to reach Union Park. “SDS is technically New Students for a Democratic Society,” she said. “It was re-founded in response to the Iraq War, but it’s multi-issue. We had a really big reproductive rights campaign when Roe v. Wade was overturned, and being from Minneapolis, we had a huge anti-police crimes campaign during the George Floyd uprising. But now we’re kind of coming back to our roots doing anti-war work with Palestine.”
A small counter-protest — a group carrying Israeli flags — circled the park perimeter for perhaps an hour and then walked away.
Cornel West, an unaffiliated presidential candidate, exits Union Park after speaking to protestors at a rally and march in Chicago on Aug. 24, 2024. (Joe Dworetzky/Bay City News)
Cornel West, the public intellectual and independent candidate for president, spoke briefly before exiting to applause.
There were dozens of men and women wearing yellow or orange vests with handwritten words “Security Force” on them. At one point a small group of men and women with a bullhorn and a large sign accusing Kamala Harris of being a baby-killer walked into the park and began to proselytize against abortion. The security force quickly dispatched two dozen people who held hands with each other and created a human circle around the anti-abortion activists, apparently to protect them from potential danger, though there was little sign anyone cared.
Another bull-horned speaker set himself across the street from the park on the corner of the street where the march — already delayed — was set to begin. He was bellowing a message about Jesus next to a large hand-painted sign that said, “Attention Lukewarm Christians: Jesus will Vomit you out of his Mouth.”
At one point, half an hour after the appointed time for the march had come and gone, he yelled into the crowd “They are shaking in their boots trying to decide if they dare walk past this preacher. They are afraid that their marchers will turn from Palestine to Christ when they hear me!”
There was some artwork: Large papier-mâché heads on sticks that caricatured Biden and Israeli President Benjamin Netanyahu as villainous. Kamala was depicted as having two sharp blood-covered fangs.
A papier-mâché caricature of Kamala Harris sits next to one of President Joe Biden in a display at the March On the DNC protest at Union Park in Chicago on Aug. 19, 2024. (Joe Dworetezky/Bay City News)
Paul Callahan, of Downers Grove, Illinois, drew blood-soaked portraits of Netanyahu, Harris, and Biden and labelled them the “Butchers of Palestine.” Callahan said that he has been coming to Chicago every weekend to protest.
Paul Callahan of Downers Grove, Illinois, expresses his opinion about the state of U.S.-Israel relations during a rally and march in Union Park in Chicago on Aug. 19, 2024. (Joe Dworetzky/Bay City News)
One of the issues raised by the coalition’s litigation involved porta-potties. The city grudgingly allowed the coalition the right to set up seven porta-potties, a number the organizers believed was completely inadequate for the crowds that would be gathering. In this, at least, they were right. At one point in the afternoon, an official count had the line of people waiting at 182.
A banner week in Chicago
Jackie Smith, an elected delegate from Rocklin, near Sacramento, is fired up.
Before leaving for Chicago, Jackie and a cohort of 15 “mostly menopausal” women friends finished a sewing marathon. In the short weeks since Harris became the Democrats’ presumptive nominee, “the ladies” cut and stitched 50 enormous KAMALA banners, one for every state delegation, each 10 feet long and sporting two-foot-high felt letters big enough to see from an airplane. A week ago, she shipped four cartons of banners off to her cousin in Chicago, and she brought four more suitcases on her flight with still more banners and templates to share with other delegations.
Jackie Smith, a California delegate at the Democratic National Convention, sews one of the 50 banners she helped produce in honor of the party’s presidential nominee Kamala Harris — one banner for each state. (Jackie Smith via Bay City News)
While Harris’s candidacy was enough to get Smith pumped up, the “other team’s” VP pick has made the banner effort even sweeter. Speaking in exclamation points, she said, “You see what we can do there, JD!” She continued, “What an idiot. He has no idea how insulting that is to women of our age.”
“The Cat Problem” (Joe Dworetzky/Bay City News)
Jackie is retired, but she sells real estate part-time to make ends meet. Through her work to elect Hillary Clinton in 2016 (she made banners for Hillary, too — banner version “1.0”) and subsequent local campaigns, she made a name for herself among her district’s Democrats. This is her first convention as an elected delegate.
She and her sewing volunteers believe the stakes are high: “We’re all worried about Social Security and Medicare, and we’re worried about women’s rights and stuff for the younger generation, the grandchildren and the world we’re leaving behind, and so we are all in.”
Even more “in” than when Biden was the nominee.
Smith was elected as a Biden delegate and said she was “proud to support Joe.” But when Kamala jumped into the race, she kicked into higher gear. “I looked at my friends and said, ‘I think we have to make banners now. We started straight up that day, and we’ve been working on banners ever since.’”
“It’s a lot of fun. We get pictures in front of Trump Tower. We get pictures in front of the White House. We get pictures over landmarks. People send me pictures with their banners, and I post them on the web [at kamalabanner.team].”
The banners are made of felt, a nod to the Silent Sentinels of 1917-20, the women who stood for years with felt banners in front of Woodrow Wilson’s White House to demand voting rights. Jackie dates her own political involvement to the 1972 McGovern campaign; her first speech was on women’s rights. Now she tastes, again, the chance to put a woman in the White House.
“I have to tell you; I do get up every day with a little more pep in my step since all this happened.”
A contrary point of view
Everywhere you go at the Chicago convention, Democrats are almost giddy with hope and joy. Kamala’s roll out has gone so well, Trump’s trolling has seemed so unhinged, and now the energized faithful have come together for a 50,000-person lovefest and pep rally. The time seems right to check in for a contrary perspective on the Dems’ delirium.
Fred Davis is a Republican campaign consultant, famous (some would say notorious) for attack ads that that stand out from the pack. Like “Demon Sheep,” an ad that helped Carly Fiorina triumph in California’s 2010 Senate primary. Or later that year, in the general, his depiction of Barbara Boxer as a giant hot-air balloon. (Fiorina lost that race.)
Davis has a record as a prognosticator: In 2016, he was one of the few who predicted that Trump would win. But this time around, in August 2024, he said, “No way. It’s too early to tell what’s going to happen.”
One of the sticky bits for the Republicans, he says, is Trump himself.
“If I were doing the advertising for the campaign, I wouldn’t have Trump in it. He already has the flamethrowers, but he needs some new people. Some suburban women. Instead of continuing the weird things, he should be presidential. And I still think, if he were presidential versus Kamala’s cackle and wackiness, I still think he would win just because of the economy and world security. Those are two very powerful contributors to a victory.”
If the Trump campaign would just make the race over inflation and the border and war, Davis thinks Trump’s GOP could triumph over popular concern about reproductive rights and authoritarian threats.
“If I were doing the advertising for the campaign, I wouldn’t have Trump in it. … Instead of continuing the weird things, he should be presidential. And I still think, if he were presidential versus Kamala’s cackle and wackiness, I still think he would win just because of the economy and world security. …”
Fred Davis, Republican campaign consultant
He said he knows the people running Trump’s campaign, “and they’re good.” But will Trump take their advice? “The odds aren’t good,” he said.
“I’d get away from personalities if I was doing it, but I’m not doing it. And Trump and Don Jr., in particular, love the personality battle. I’m not sure it’s one he can win.”
Still, despite Harris’s recent momentum, Davis believes it will be a tight race. “Momentum never stays. You want momentum, but you want it later. Nobody’s casting a vote now, and the guys doing Trump know that. They’re going to wait because the convention is going to be another big burst of energy, enthusiasm. The other shoe to fall, that comes after Labor Day. Then it’s going to be a crazy six-week sprint to the finish.”
He knows the people advising Harris, too. “It’s the Obama team, and they’re really good. If she’s smart enough to listen to them, she’ll be a formidable foe.”
The progressives
In a great hall at the Chicago Teacher’s Union, the Progressive Democrats for America were hosting speakers who sent the overriding message that organizing is the key to addressing the country’s most challenging problems.
“When we organize,” the chant goes, “we win.”
The keynote speaker was Bernie Sanders, looking trim and energetic — actually spry — as he recounted the many victories that progressives have made over the years.
He noted the progress made for women, Blacks, and members of the LGBTQ community. But lest anybody think he was satisfied with the state of things he moved quickly to the main point. He said that economic inequality is an overwhelming problem made worse by the fact that “we can’t talk about it. Outrage is not allowed.”
Sanders said that both political parties were in the control of billionaires and corporate money. He recited familiar statistics about income inequality and the vast concentration of wealth among a small group of people. He drew several standing ovations.
But Sanders was also very specific about what the strategy was. “It goes without saying,” he said, “the first thing is to defeat Trump.”
But it doesn’t stop there. When Harris and Walz are in the White House he believes that progressives must continue to push for fundamental structural changes to the country and its economy. “The American people want us to take on the greed of the oligarchy.”
The flag of Chicago
Chicago’s flag has light blue horizontal stripes on the top and bottom and four red stars between the stripes. At the Union Park protest, many of the police uniforms had the flag stitched on the sleeve.
The municipal flag of Chicago. (Wikipedia, CC0)
When a female officer was asked what the four stars stand for, she’s not sure — she thinks maybe one is for the Chicago Fire?
A fellow officer approaches and says that the fourth star is for the “madababy.”
He’s asked the obvious question: “What’s a madababy?”
“Nuthin’,” he says. “What’s a mada with you?”
Bay City News staff writer Joe Dworetzky is in Chicago with fellow BCN reporter Jay Harris and correspondent David Paul to report on the daily drama and curiosities at the Democratic National Convention. Learn more about their work here.
Day 1: Rally meets reality — The whole world is watching, depending on who’s counting
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PERHAPS THE ONLY thing less reliable than on-the-ground estimates of crowd size are predictions of the size of expected crowds.
At Union Park, the coalition for the March on the DNC held the widely anticipated — and widely hyped — rally and march tied to the first day of the Democratic National Convention.
For months the organizers of the March on the DNC have said that they anticipated “tens of thousands” of protesters and referenced media reports that predicted as many as 100,000 would attend.
At the 10 a.m. pre-rally press conference called by the organizers, Jodie Evans, 70, co-founder of Code Pink, steered her contingent of Gaza war protesters in hot pink into position for the assembled cameras. She knows the drill of dealing with the press.
“At Code Pink, we’ve been disrupting the DNC and the RNC since 2004, because we know that both parties are parties of war,” Evans said.
She bristled at the suggestion, at 10:45 a.m., that there were nearly as many reporters in Union Park as there were protesters. It was true, as she quickly pointed out, that the rally wasn’t due to start until noon. But the crowd would need to grow fast if it was to reach the “tens of thousands” projected in recent weeks. Jodie, a Californian from Venice Beach, was staying positive.
“We live in a really dark time,” she continued, “but what’s beautiful is this: People coming together from a heart of love and care and a commitment to the future. People who think through things, aren’t listening to the propaganda, and believe that their lives matter in the continuation of life.”
When the rally began, one of the speakers declared there were 15,000 people around the stage. Another chanted over and over “The Whole World is Watching.” But the crowd appeared much smaller. Many people stood in loose clusters around a temporary stage located between two baseball diamonds. Most of the crowd fit comfortably in the two outfield areas. One police officer estimated that to his eye there were 1,500 people, but he acknowledged that he had not seen the back of the crowd and it would take an aerial count to be sure.
Peaceful, uneasy feeling
Whatever the number, the day was sunny and bright with a fresh breeze that gave a party atmosphere to the event. Hundreds of Palestinian flags flew in the afternoon breeze. Black and white keffiyehs were everywhere. People swayed to the Arab music coming from the loudspeakers. Expressions of gratitude for the volunteers at the Medic Tent were plentiful.
The crowd built, people streaming in from all sides carrying colorful banners and signs. Contingents of cops on bicycles rode up, maintaining their distance. They did not look menacing in their short pants. No riot shields. No nightsticks. The vibe in the park was peaceful, even friendly.
But behind the good vibes, anger at the U.S. role in the Gaza carnage was front and center.
The chants began, accompanied by cowbell, tom-tom and snare drum. “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free!” “Not another nickel, not another dime. No more money for fascist crime.”
And on the many hand-painted signs:
“No Pride in Apartheid”
“Victory to the New Intifada”
“Genocide Joe Has Got to Go”
On stage, speaker after speaker excoriated the Democratic party for its complicity in funding genocide in Gaza. Little was said about Trump or whether Harris/Walz was preferable to Trump. The message was that both parties were guilty.
While the primary purpose of the rally was to protest the war in Gaza, other social issues were brought to the fore. Worker’s rights, income inequality, the repression of women, and organized labor were all intertwined with the message. One speaker said that a new party was needed because the billionaires owned the two that are out there.
Noura Ebrahim, 33, was stationed near stacks of t-shirts that bore a full-length manifesto: “Self-Determination & National Liberation for the Palestinian People/Right of return for all Palestinian Refugees/End US Aid to Israel.” Noura is a “PA,” a Palestinian American born and raised in Chicago. “The Democratic Party is complicit,” she said. “It’s directly funding the genocide of my people in Palestine. I’m here to take a stand against that. I don’t want my tax dollars going to Israel to commit these atrocities against the Palestinian people.”
And did she have concern that the protests might help re-elect Donald Trump? No. “If Trump gets elected, that’s not on us. It’s on the Democratic Party for not living up to the promises they made to the people.”
Gillian Rath, 22, came to the protest as part of a contingent of “SDS”students and others from Minneapolis; they had filled two coaches on Sunday night and drove all night to reach Union Park. “SDS is technically New Students for a Democratic Society,” she said. “It was re-founded in response to the Iraq War, but it’s multi-issue. We had a really big reproductive rights campaign when Roe v. Wade was overturned, and being from Minneapolis, we had a huge anti-police crimes campaign during the George Floyd uprising. But now we’re kind of coming back to our roots doing anti-war work with Palestine.”
A small counter-protest — a group carrying Israeli flags — circled the park perimeter for perhaps an hour and then walked away.
Cornel West, the public intellectual and independent candidate for president, spoke briefly before exiting to applause.
There were dozens of men and women wearing yellow or orange vests with handwritten words “Security Force” on them. At one point a small group of men and women with a bullhorn and a large sign accusing Kamala Harris of being a baby-killer walked into the park and began to proselytize against abortion. The security force quickly dispatched two dozen people who held hands with each other and created a human circle around the anti-abortion activists, apparently to protect them from potential danger, though there was little sign anyone cared.
Another bull-horned speaker set himself across the street from the park on the corner of the street where the march — already delayed — was set to begin. He was bellowing a message about Jesus next to a large hand-painted sign that said, “Attention Lukewarm Christians: Jesus will Vomit you out of his Mouth.”
At one point, half an hour after the appointed time for the march had come and gone, he yelled into the crowd “They are shaking in their boots trying to decide if they dare walk past this preacher. They are afraid that their marchers will turn from Palestine to Christ when they hear me!”
There was some artwork: Large papier-mâché heads on sticks that caricatured Biden and Israeli President Benjamin Netanyahu as villainous. Kamala was depicted as having two sharp blood-covered fangs.
A papier-mâché caricature of Kamala Harris sits next to one of President Joe Biden in a display at the March On the DNC protest at Union Park in Chicago on Aug. 19, 2024. (Joe Dworetezky/Bay City News)
Paul Callahan, of Downers Grove, Illinois, drew blood-soaked portraits of Netanyahu, Harris, and Biden and labelled them the “Butchers of Palestine.” Callahan said that he has been coming to Chicago every weekend to protest.
Paul Callahan of Downers Grove, Illinois, expresses his opinion about the state of U.S.-Israel relations during a rally and march in Union Park in Chicago on Aug. 19, 2024. (Joe Dworetzky/Bay City News)
One of the issues raised by the coalition’s litigation involved porta-potties. The city grudgingly allowed the coalition the right to set up seven porta-potties, a number the organizers believed was completely inadequate for the crowds that would be gathering. In this, at least, they were right. At one point in the afternoon, an official count had the line of people waiting at 182.
A banner week in Chicago
Jackie Smith, an elected delegate from Rocklin, near Sacramento, is fired up.
Before leaving for Chicago, Jackie and a cohort of 15 “mostly menopausal” women friends finished a sewing marathon. In the short weeks since Harris became the Democrats’ presumptive nominee, “the ladies” cut and stitched 50 enormous KAMALA banners, one for every state delegation, each 10 feet long and sporting two-foot-high felt letters big enough to see from an airplane. A week ago, she shipped four cartons of banners off to her cousin in Chicago, and she brought four more suitcases on her flight with still more banners and templates to share with other delegations.
Jackie Smith, a California delegate at the Democratic National Convention, sews one of the 50 banners she helped produce in honor of the party’s presidential nominee Kamala Harris — one banner for each state. (Jackie Smith via Bay City News)
While Harris’s candidacy was enough to get Smith pumped up, the “other team’s” VP pick has made the banner effort even sweeter. Speaking in exclamation points, she said, “You see what we can do there, JD!” She continued, “What an idiot. He has no idea how insulting that is to women of our age.”
“The Cat Problem” (Joe Dworetzky/Bay City News)
Jackie is retired, but she sells real estate part-time to make ends meet. Through her work to elect Hillary Clinton in 2016 (she made banners for Hillary, too — banner version “1.0”) and subsequent local campaigns, she made a name for herself among her district’s Democrats. This is her first convention as an elected delegate.
She and her sewing volunteers believe the stakes are high: “We’re all worried about Social Security and Medicare, and we’re worried about women’s rights and stuff for the younger generation, the grandchildren and the world we’re leaving behind, and so we are all in.”
Even more “in” than when Biden was the nominee.
Smith was elected as a Biden delegate and said she was “proud to support Joe.” But when Kamala jumped into the race, she kicked into higher gear. “I looked at my friends and said, ‘I think we have to make banners now. We started straight up that day, and we’ve been working on banners ever since.’”
“It’s a lot of fun. We get pictures in front of Trump Tower. We get pictures in front of the White House. We get pictures over landmarks. People send me pictures with their banners, and I post them on the web [at kamalabanner.team].”
The banners are made of felt, a nod to the Silent Sentinels of 1917-20, the women who stood for years with felt banners in front of Woodrow Wilson’s White House to demand voting rights. Jackie dates her own political involvement to the 1972 McGovern campaign; her first speech was on women’s rights. Now she tastes, again, the chance to put a woman in the White House.
“I have to tell you; I do get up every day with a little more pep in my step since all this happened.”
A contrary point of view
Everywhere you go at the Chicago convention, Democrats are almost giddy with hope and joy. Kamala’s roll out has gone so well, Trump’s trolling has seemed so unhinged, and now the energized faithful have come together for a 50,000-person lovefest and pep rally. The time seems right to check in for a contrary perspective on the Dems’ delirium.
Fred Davis is a Republican campaign consultant, famous (some would say notorious) for attack ads that that stand out from the pack. Like “Demon Sheep,” an ad that helped Carly Fiorina triumph in California’s 2010 Senate primary. Or later that year, in the general, his depiction of Barbara Boxer as a giant hot-air balloon. (Fiorina lost that race.)
Davis has a record as a prognosticator: In 2016, he was one of the few who predicted that Trump would win. But this time around, in August 2024, he said, “No way. It’s too early to tell what’s going to happen.”
One of the sticky bits for the Republicans, he says, is Trump himself.
“If I were doing the advertising for the campaign, I wouldn’t have Trump in it. He already has the flamethrowers, but he needs some new people. Some suburban women. Instead of continuing the weird things, he should be presidential. And I still think, if he were presidential versus Kamala’s cackle and wackiness, I still think he would win just because of the economy and world security. Those are two very powerful contributors to a victory.”
If the Trump campaign would just make the race over inflation and the border and war, Davis thinks Trump’s GOP could triumph over popular concern about reproductive rights and authoritarian threats.
He said he knows the people running Trump’s campaign, “and they’re good.” But will Trump take their advice? “The odds aren’t good,” he said.
“I’d get away from personalities if I was doing it, but I’m not doing it. And Trump and Don Jr., in particular, love the personality battle. I’m not sure it’s one he can win.”
Still, despite Harris’s recent momentum, Davis believes it will be a tight race. “Momentum never stays. You want momentum, but you want it later. Nobody’s casting a vote now, and the guys doing Trump know that. They’re going to wait because the convention is going to be another big burst of energy, enthusiasm. The other shoe to fall, that comes after Labor Day. Then it’s going to be a crazy six-week sprint to the finish.”
He knows the people advising Harris, too. “It’s the Obama team, and they’re really good. If she’s smart enough to listen to them, she’ll be a formidable foe.”
The progressives
In a great hall at the Chicago Teacher’s Union, the Progressive Democrats for America were hosting speakers who sent the overriding message that organizing is the key to addressing the country’s most challenging problems.
“When we organize,” the chant goes, “we win.”
The keynote speaker was Bernie Sanders, looking trim and energetic — actually spry — as he recounted the many victories that progressives have made over the years.
He noted the progress made for women, Blacks, and members of the LGBTQ community. But lest anybody think he was satisfied with the state of things he moved quickly to the main point. He said that economic inequality is an overwhelming problem made worse by the fact that “we can’t talk about it. Outrage is not allowed.”
Sanders said that both political parties were in the control of billionaires and corporate money. He recited familiar statistics about income inequality and the vast concentration of wealth among a small group of people. He drew several standing ovations.
But Sanders was also very specific about what the strategy was. “It goes without saying,” he said, “the first thing is to defeat Trump.”
But it doesn’t stop there. When Harris and Walz are in the White House he believes that progressives must continue to push for fundamental structural changes to the country and its economy. “The American people want us to take on the greed of the oligarchy.”
The flag of Chicago
Chicago’s flag has light blue horizontal stripes on the top and bottom and four red stars between the stripes. At the Union Park protest, many of the police uniforms had the flag stitched on the sleeve.
When a female officer was asked what the four stars stand for, she’s not sure — she thinks maybe one is for the Chicago Fire?
A fellow officer approaches and says that the fourth star is for the “madababy.”
He’s asked the obvious question: “What’s a madababy?”
“Nuthin’,” he says. “What’s a mada with you?”
Bay City News staff writer Joe Dworetzky is in Chicago with fellow BCN reporter Jay Harris and correspondent David Paul to report on the daily drama and curiosities at the Democratic National Convention. Learn more about their work here.