Video from raw clips by Ford Fischer, Talia Jane, and Unicorn Riot

On August 19th in Chicago, a march rolled in on the venue hosting the Democratic National Convention. Marchers succeeded in breaching the outer fence. The main thrust of the march was solidarity with Palestine and opposition to the Biden/Harris program of open-ended arms sales to Israel. This policy has led to a horrific genocide killing an estimated 40,000 Gaza residents directly and including all “excess deaths” possibly as many as 180,000.

With the outer perimeter fence breached cops made a stand at the inner fence, some fighting resulted. Cops made a small number of arrests, pushed most protesters back with billy clubs in “pushbar” mode. Pepper spray was brandished but not fired. Perhaps mace would invoke the tear gas of 1968?

Members of the press were threatened with having their press passes taken by the cops as the cops pushed everyone (save for arrestees) back through the breach in the outer fence.

Afterwards, police pushed again to force protesters further back from the fence. An effort to set up an encampment was harassed by cops demanding tents be taken down, results unknown to me at this time.

Ahh yes: billy clubs at the Chicago DNC. In 1968 it was joked two new TV shows came out of the DNC: “Beat the Press” and “Mace the Nation.” Again the press was hassled, so far just threats to grab their press passes though. Note that members of the press who do not intend to enter the convention can cover the protests just fine without press passes.