Lessons from Grant Park
Total Page：16
File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb
LESSONS RESEARCH BRIEF ON BLACK INDIGENOUS FROM SOLIDARITY RALLY CHICAGO, ILLINOIS GRANT PARK AUGUST 2020 R E P O R T C R E A T E D B Y TABLE OF CONTENTS 0 3 I N T R O D U C T I O N 0 4 T H I S M O M E N T 0 6 G E O G R A P H I C G R O U N D I N G 0 9 M E T H O D O L O G Y 1 0 L E S S O N S 3 6 R E - G R O U N D I N G C O N C L U S I O N * A P P E N D I X 0 2 INTRODUCTION On July 17th, 2020, the Chicago Police Department brutalized protestors in Grant Park. Following a Black & Indigenous Solidarity Rally attended by hundreds at Buckingham Fountain, protestors marched to the corner of Roosevelt Road and South Columbus Drive where they attempted to pull down a Christopher Columbus Statue. The attempt was met by a brutal attack from CPD who deployed batons, chemical weapons, and protestors’ own possessions against them. The viciousness and lawlessness of the attack constituted a riot—led and sustained for hours by the Chicago Police Department against unarmed protestors. The following report was published by Black Lives Matter Chicago and endorsed by Chi Nations Youth Council, OCAD, and DSA-Chicago to counter the media’s false reporting on the attack and its aftermath. This report has three aims: To provide a truthful and protestor-centered account of the brutality that took place To report the significant after-effects, both physical and mental, experienced by protestors To impart lessons learned from July 17th and prepare people for future police attacks by capturing the police riot tactics witnessed that night It is our hope that this report gives voice to the freedom fighters of the July 17th struggle at Grant Park and honors and supports the larger struggle for Black and Indigenous autonomy in Chicago and beyond. #WeTakeCareofUs #Fuck12 #FuckColumbus #DefundPolice #AbolishCPD #DecolonizeZhigaagoong #NoCopsOnStolenLand #LandBack L E S S O N S F R O M G R A N T P A R K 0 3 THIS MOMENT This report should be read in light of the moment that we are in. We’re in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, which is disproportionately affecting Black and brown Chicagoans. The US government’s inhumane, profit-driven response to the pandemic has exacerbated ongoing crises of housing, displacement, gentrification, and educational disparities, widening this nation’s racial wealth gap. State and local governments have left people to die in prisons and jails, where it’s impossible to social distance. We’re also in the midst of the largest social movement in history. A series of uprisings were sparked by the police murders of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, and Tony McDade, and most recently, the police shootings of Latrell Allen in Chicago and Jacob Blake in Kenosha, WI. Thousands of Chicagoans have taken the streets in solidarity, and in memory of Rekia Boyd, Laquan McDonald, Pierre Loury, RonnieMan Johnson, and too many others murdered by police in our city. During these uprisings, we’ve seen unmasked police officers brutalize protestors -- particularly Black and brown youth -- over and over and over again. L E S S O N S F R O M G R A N T P A R K 0 4 THIS MOMENT The Chicago Police Department's reckless violence has continued with no regard for the requirements of the consent decree. The consent decree is a legal agreement that the City of Chicago consented to enter around 18 months ago. The consent decree acknowledges CPD’s longstanding pattern of constitutional violations and abusive policing, and requires change. BLM Chicago, as part of a coalition of other community organizations, has legal power to enforce the consent decree, meaning that the Chicago Police Department is legally accountable to us in this moment. However, demonstrating their lack of interest in gradual reform, CPD has ignored numerous consent decree deadlines, while violating its requirements on use of force reforms daily. Given this context, this report is inherently incomplete. The pages that follow describe the events of a single protest, on the evening of July 17, 2020, out of a summer of daily actions. We have summarized the survey responses of just 97 people -- a small subset of the crowd on the 17th, which appeared to number in the hundreds or thousands. We could not possibly catalogue all of the violence CPD has inflicted upon our friends, comrades, and loved ones this summer, any more than we could quantify the endless love, solidarity, and resistance Chicagoans have shown in response. While this report is just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to CPD’s abuses of power, it’s also just one piece of our response -- BLM Chicago will continue to use every tool at our disposal to loosen CPD’s violent grip on this city, through the court system and through organizing in the streets. L E S S O N S F R O M G R A N T P A R K 0 5 GEOGRAPHIC GROUNDING While all land in a settler colonial state is highly political, Grant Park is a particularly important site for a number of reasons: Grant Park is unceded land. Zhigaagoong (Chicago) is built on land taken by force from nations including Ojibwe, Odawa, Potawatomi, Miami, Ho- Chunk, Sac, Fox, and Kickapoo. The first three of these nations were united into Niswi-mishkodewinan. In 1833, multiple tribes were coerced into signing a treaty ceding all land up to Lake Michigan. At the time, Grant Park, and other Lakefront spaces, did not exist. They were not created until after the Chicago Fire of 1871 when masses of debris were used to create a landfill, extending the city further east over Lake Michigan. Because this new land did not exist at the time of the 1833 treaty, the Pokagon Potawatomi claimed ownership of the land, known today as Grant Park. However, a 1917 Supreme Court ruling (Williams v. Chicago), claimed that, although the land did not exist, the natives had “abandoned” it when settlers arrived--effectively giving up the non-existent land. L E S S O N S F R O M G R A N T P A R K 0 6 GEOGRAPHIC GROUNDING Grant Park is a celebration of colonialism. 16 years after the Williams ruling, Chicago’s second world’s fair, themed “A Century of Progress”, celebrated the city’s centennial. The statue of Christopher Columbus was erected in Grant Park during the fair, visually tying America’s anti- Indigenous origins with that of Chicago. The 12-foot tall bronze statue rested on a 20 foot tall pedestal that read “To Christopher Columbus, Discoverer of America.” Grant Park is the site of one of the most high-profile police riots in US history. The phrase “police riot” was popularized after the events at Grant Park on August 28, 1968. During a march on the Democratic National Convention, a mass of protestors occupied Grant Park calling for an end to the Vietnam War. CPD, along with the Army and National Guard, beat, dragged, and tear gassed protestors on camera. According to the Chicago study Rights in Conflict, 668 people were arrested, 625 were injured without hospitalization, 400 given first aid for tear gas exposure, and 110 were hospitalized. Parallel to the events on July 17th, violence at the DNC protest began when police attacked protesters for climbing a statue. Historically, Grant Park has been used in repeated attempts by this government to assert its legitimacy. From self-serving legal reasoning to brazen police violence, Grant Park’s legacy is one of anti-Indigeneity and brutal political repression. The struggle at Grant Park on July 17th--necessarily grounded in Black and Indigenous resistance--was a continuation of that legacy. L E S S O N S F R O M G R A N T P A R K 0 7 GEOGRAPHIC GROUNDING Top Left: Inscription on photo from 1908 reads: "All the submerged land needed to complete a 205-acre park has been reclaimed." Top Right: The progression of the landfill's development by year. Bottom Left: Grant Park today. The red area indicates unceded Pokagon Potowatomi land. L E S S O N S F R O M G R A N T P A R K 0 8 METHODOLOGY This report draws information from a number of secondary sources, including but not limited to: Media coverage of the events of July 17th Chicago Police Department policies and directives The active consent decree emerging from Illinois v. Chicago Promotional materials of chemical weapons manufacturers, including Chicago-based SABRE Security Equipment Corporation BLM Chicago’s Research Working Group also created a survey to collect primary data on the experiences of protestors, medics, and marshals who were on the ground at the protest. This anonymous survey was circulated through the networks of the co-sponsoring Chicago-based organizations that supported the Black & Indigenous Solidarity Rally. In addition to gathering details about the nature of police violence and chemical weapons used, the survey aimed to to center the accounts and experiences of protesters, which were notably absent in press coverage of the events at Grant Park that day. The lessons shared below are a synthesis of the 97 total survey responses, additional conversations with a subset of respondents, and an analysis of the secondary sources listed above.