When “We Keep Us Safe” Become Hollow Words
Rallies are not created equal.
Recently, I attended one in downtown Chicago that sounded promising. We were to shut down the Magnificent Mile, disrupting consumerism in the heart of the city, and reminding all of these brands of their hollow statements in support of Black lives. From a marketing standpoint, I didn’t have to think twice about going. I was already there!
The moment I got there, however, it felt…off. I assumed it was because of the rally’s location; organizers had chosen a small plaza in front of the iconic Wrigley Building. My walk there was riddled with dozens of CPD officers on every street corner, their vans lining the riverfront. But, they kept to the peripheries of the rally, itself.
So, where was this uneasiness coming from?
From my vantage point, the event looked like others I’d been to across the city. Camera crews and reporters whose faces I’d begun to memorize were in place. The crowd was sizable and diverse, like many of the multiracial, multigenerational coalitions this year. There were signs and banners and flags everywhere. Visually, it was a familiar experience, until people started speaking.
Admittedly, I’d arrived half an hour late (love you, CTA), but the event was still suffering from logistical issues usually solved within the first few minutes of a rally. Most were reluctant speakers, holding court for thirty-or-so seconds. Megaphones were only partly available. Did a speaking list even exist?
I was sympathetic. Truly. As a person behind organizing quick, reactionary events, I understood how rallies could feel off. Sometimes the moment beckons for deep emotional reflection in ways words can’t sustain. Sometimes protests short-circuit because the mic goes out. Whatever. You work through those interruptions and conditions because there are no alternatives to this work.
Here, it was something different, though.
The empowering Shutdown Mag Mile narrative was light-years away from reality. Instead, I noticed the slightest All-Lives-Matter-ing of our chants and in the spontaneous speeches against the line of cops keeping us on the sidewalk. Nonviolence was fetishized by our protest leaders, as were essentialist takes on Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., and Mahatma Gandhi. Other movements that had resulted in fringe violence were categorically demonized and discredited. Along with four other non-Black Latinxs present, I was tokenized as a symbol of migration under threat from ICE.
Where was I?
I got my answer in a tense way when we ended up in the streets. The sidewalk had bottlenecked the march to where police lines couldn’t patrol it efficiently, resulting in half of us spilling into traffic. There was running, dozens of cop cars suddenly manifesting in cross streets, police on their bikes whizzing past. At one point, an unmarked police van tried to move by, coming uncomfortably close to my left side. With others, I formed a circle around the vehicle demanding answers, calling for accountability.
And yet, in this standoff, I was also really confused. Because as I looked around to who I was standing with, in defiance of the carceral state, I didn’t feel comfortable with my supposed allies.
I didn’t trust these people.
I wasn’t safe here.
So, why didn’t I leave?
Protests are shifting environments. Too often, they’re framed as moments, as a kind of bubble. They’re nicely delineated, where those on this side want one thing and those on that side want another. Identifying these lines isn’t even hard — any major newspaper has emblematic images of protestors and police facing off.
Neatly. Structured. Lines.
I’d argue this is a romantic version of protesting.
Yes, the face-offs exist. Yes, they present very powerful moments that command attention and, sometimes, reach stratospheric levels of artistry that will live on in textbooks forever (depending on who actually writes those textbooks, of course).
Yet, we’ve already witnessed the chaotic nature of what happens when the delineated bubble bursts. Recall the videos of cops swarming peaceful protestors, or of domestic terrorists ramming crowds with cars. Suddenly, who can identify the neatly structured lines?
Part of me wonders if this is why it was so difficult for media to accurately separate looters from protestors in Minneapolis. It’s a less enticing story of struggle when you actually have to think about everyone’s positionalities. What power does the privileged looter have compared to the enduring protestor, or either of them compared to the officer? Binaries are attractive. Anything more becomes confusing.
But, we have to think about the “more.” Not only is it truthful, but it deconstructs coalitions into its components that help us understand flows of power, allyship, and justice.
The Mag Mile rally was not one of these good coalitions, in my opinion and in my experience, despite it taking steps towards Black visibility, resistance, and liberation.
I later learned on my commute home that the leader of this rally — a Black man — is a polarizing figure in Chicago activism. Other organizations had warned their followings not to attend his event, and that his version of community and coalition-building was inconsistent with affiliated Black Lives Matter work. One person even mentioned via Instagram Story that this leader’s “actions are known to result in arrests, surveillance, and/or endangerment.”
Endangerment. That’s exactly what it was.
I couldn’t see it before in the moment, but it was another line. Not one of the neatly structured lines from the media. It was a fuzzy, twisted line.
It began with the controversial leader, whose mandates of self-martyrdom had not created an encircling line around a supportive coalition, but rather, intersected it in ways that made our positionalities meaningless. Because in the end, we wouldn’t have each other’s back when facing the police. “We keep us safe” were hollow words here.
In that moment, I was standing up to the cops for myself, not for Black lives, not for those around me. For myself, because that was the space I had unwittingly stepped into by attending this rally. Yet, I couldn’t leave because of my conditioning with the media, of seeing myself as an actor on one side of the neatly structured line.
I hadn’t done the research. I hadn’t crossed referenced the leader with other groups. I hadn’t done the work. And, it resulted in fear of, distrust in, and uncertainty with movement actors on my way home, of which, I’m thankful for my friends who kept me company on the phone during that painful walk.
It speaks to the factional nature movements. Perhaps it’s quite obvious from a retrospective position, that in practice, monolithic demographics are nonexistent. There are, in fact, multiplicitious agendas constructed and internalized by multiplicitous people.
It’s up to us to identify which of them are righteous, by listening to and trusting the right actors with demonstrable actions.
The alternative is endangerment.
