Labor contingent at Chicago DNC protests [Credit: Caleb D.J.]
I recently participated in the protests organized around the Democratic National Convention (DNC) in Chicago from August 19-22. The organizations behind the protests included the U.S. Palestinian Network, Coalition for Justice in Palestine (CJP) and an umbrella org called March on the DNC 2024. Many different orgs participated in these coalition marches including Freedom Road Socialist Organization (FRSO), Party of Socialism and Liberation (PSL), Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) as well as the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA), amongst others. I marshaled two of the main marches, participated in a third as well as walked a picket line with striking nurses at the University of Illinois.
Each march was heavily policed. Hundreds, if not thousands of cops , many in riot gear, and many riding bicycles, marched silently behind and alongside the protestors. I heard various estimates as to how many marchers protested each day. On Monday, the main march was estimated to be 15,000 ; the other two days had less protestors, maybe 5,000. Monday was also the day with the most significant arrests, when an unsanctioned anarchist action attempted to breach the barricade surrounding the United Center. Scores of riot police moved to surround this action, but the main march continued along the route and no one from the main march was arrested (on Tuesday there were 70 arrests when protestors engaged with a heavy police presence outside the Israeli embassy, but I wasn’t at that event).
On Tuesday, Chicago DSA organized a strike solidarity with striking nurses at the University of Illinois as well as hosted a national call, ‘Crashing the Party’ in which the presenters spoke at length about the role of labor in the protests as well as their national platform, ‘Workers Deserve More.’
Politically, the week was deeply frustrating. None of the demands from the protestors were heard inside the convention hall. The ‘Uncommitted’ delegates, a group of anti-genocide mostly Palestinian Democrats, were not offered a speaking role on the convention floor, even though the preferred speaker, Georgia state Rep. Ruwa Romman, was willing to endorse Vice President Harris and call for the defeat of Trump. These delegates staged a sit-in at the convention, including Ilhan Omar and Cori Bush. The mainstream media mostly mocked and dismissed the protests as ‘underwhelming’ in a further attempt to marginalize the Palestinian solidarity movement.
The work of The Democratic Socialists of America and Chicago DSA was more explicitly successful on its own terms. While unable to make an intervention in the Democratic Convention, DSA was able to make a serious contribution to the protest movement, working in coalition with other socialist organizations and Palestinian groups and organizing logistics, housing and transportation for participants to attend from out of state. One of CDSA leaders said that DSA contributed the most marshals to the coalition from any of the other orgs.
At the CDSA social on the last day of the DNC, I spoke with Ashik Siddique, the national Co Chair of DSA. We discussed the role of marshals in DSA and how National wants to re-establish a national Red Rabbits body to train chapters in protest marshaling.This conversation got me thinking about the role of protests in DSA and the political orientation of protests. Before I joined MUG I was heavily involved in the Red Rabbits and in Antifascist organizing (the Red Rabbits are the protest marshals and info security in DSA). Protesting, street actions, police abolition, mutual aid, care work and informational security are usually coded as ‘anarchist.’, while Marxists are thought to be ‘statists,’ or at least organize within the state as well as outside of it. However, I think Marxists should not cede the mantle of organizing against state authority to the ultra left. The goal of Marxism is to build a stateless, classless society free from state violence and all forms of repression.
Building the party will require that we care for one another and work together, requiring both mutual aid and de-escalation skills. Bringing a mass politics, Marxist perspective to the work of protest marshaling, mutual aid and info security can bring this work out of a niche subculture on the left to be a part of a transformation of our politics and how we treat one another. I also came out of this week further convinced that we need to root our struggle for democracy in the workplace, in transforming the workers struggle into a mass political struggle for democracy. seeing the work of Chicago unions, including teachers from the Chicago Teachers Union (CTU), emphasized for me how the worker’s movement can be merged with the political movement.
There were a lot of disparate experiences and feelings at the DNC. After nearly a year of relentless slaughter, the Palestinian solidarity movement is still strong but faces relentless hostility from the political mainstream. DSA’s focus on labor, party-building and a political platform are positive signs. Marxists should continue to fuse strategies of care work into party-building to forge DSA into a weapon against the ruling class and for our own collective struggle.