The pro-Palestinian protests outside the Democratic National Convention (DNC) in Chicago, Illinois, were “mostly peaceful,” the Chicago Tribune proclaimed in a Monday headline despite multiple arrests being made.
The headline echoed a CNN chyron from the 2020 cycle: “Fiery But Mostly Peaceful Protests After Police Shooting.” This line came during a report that showed a building engulfed in flames amid violent protests in Kenosha, Wisconsin.
Numerous pro-Hamas protesters demonstrated with vulgarities outside the convention on Sunday and Monday. The police presence was enormous.
“Quit your job! Quit your job!” some chanted as they attempted to penetrate the perimeter. “CPD, KKK, IDF…they’re all the same,” others shouted.
“Our job here is to make sure that we keep the DNC safe…and keep our city safe,” Police Superintendent Larry Snelling said in a statement.
“We have no idea what they would have done had that gotten onto the other side. But, as I’ve said before, we’re not going to tolerate anyone that is going to vandalize things in our city,” he added. “We are not going to tolerate anyone who [is] going to commit acts of violence.”
The Tribune published the story, titled, “Demonstrators chant, break fencing, but first major protest of DNC stays mostly peaceful”:
The day was marred by only one fairly minor skirmish. As protest leaders kept marching later in the afternoon, several protesters broke down the first barrier of the security perimeter along Washington Boulevard just north of the United Center. They faced the police officers in a line, shouting, “Quit your job! Quit your job!”
Officers moved in and formed several lines of defense where the fence was down, while some protesters could be seen throwing their wooden signs at the police. Other officers in riot gear came in from behind the protesters and corralled them back into the park using batons, to keep the situation from escalating.
The police put the broken pieces of the fence back into place, then lined up facing the wall of people.
Wendell Husebo is a political reporter with Breitbart News and a former RNC War Room Analyst. He is the author of Politics of Slave Morality. Follow Wendell on “X” @WendellHusebø or on Truth Social @WendellHusebo.