Boal
Fifty-six years ago, in 1968, the day after the “police riots” at the Democratic National Convention during the Vietnam War, I joined a 3,000-person march led by comedian Dick Gregory from downtown Chicago to the convention site.
The term “police riots” was first used in a 1968 report to the National Commission on the Prevention of Causes of Violence, which President Johnson established that same year. I was a taxi and bus driver, and earlier that year I was teaching mathematics at a West Side high school when Martin Luther King was shot.
The organizers had trained volunteers as marshals before the event, and I was one of them.
Our peaceful march included convention delegates who were shocked by the police actions the previous day. But city officials halted the march after two miles. The ordinance prohibited any conduct likely to cause “great harm, or great inconvenience, annoyance, or anxiety.” Some of us at the front were arrested. The rest were tear-gassed and dispersed, including my lawyer.
Thirteen of us stood trial for six weeks, a preliminary step in the infamous “Chicago Seven” case against the organizers of the convention march. The guilty judge found that my removal of my sheriff’s armband before my arrest was evidence that the group had expressed “emotional” grievances and made “threats of violence.”
The Illinois Supreme Court upheld the judge’s decision but rejected his reasoning. The court noted that there had been violence elsewhere by fewer than 30 other marchers, and that there had been “brief skirmishes with several young black men,” which were allegedly sufficient justification to end our 3,000-person march.
The U.S. Supreme Court declined to review the case. Justice William Douglas, in a dissenting opinion, said in a separate letter that he would have overturned the decision. He cited precedents that found the Chicago ordinance was so vague that “a person of ordinary intelligence is compelled to infer its meaning.”
This August, the Democratic National Convention will be held in Chicago again. There are parallels between 1968 and now. There was war then, and there is now. The United States was in a tense situation in many ways, just as it is now.
I have been to Palestine twice, and in 2016, as an attorney, I represented California UAW Local, representing 14,000 academic workers, in voting to call on the California State Board of Regents and the UAW itself to support divestment from Israeli institutions that are complicit in the violation of Palestinian human rights.
Palestinians did not carry out the Nazi Holocaust, but they are being denied the right to return to the homes from which they were forced to flee by Israeli forces in 1948 and 1967.
After 1948, the United States initially supported their right of return, but quickly reversed course. Israel, which is not a NATO member, has not pledged to come to the United States’ aid if attacked.
Hamas committed a war crime against Israel on October 7th, but Israel’s response has been far worse, killing and starving 30 times as many people, and is backed by the powerful military might of the United States.
The pro-Palestinian protests are not directed at Jews, but at the policies of the Israeli government.
Democrats and Republicans support military support for Israel (as does independent Robert F. Kennedy Jr.), but the Democrats control the White House, and the president’s response to pro-Palestinian protests has been to denounce what he calls a “violent surge in anti-Semitism.”
On April 30, dozens of pro-Israel vigilantes attacked a pro-Palestinian encampment at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) with sticks, chemical sprays, and fireworks, leaving some injured. Police stood by and made no arrests.
In Chicago, I will be back at the convention and protesting with thousands of others, but this time without armbands.
About the author: Ellis Boal is an attorney in private practice in Charlevoix. He specializes in labor, environmental, election, and zoning law. He has run for various offices on the Green Party multiple times. He and his wife, Luanne Kozma, just finished campaigning in the town and courthouse to stop the construction of a giant boathouse/party shack on Lake Charlevoix. He has been to Palestine twice.
