This summer, tens of thousands of people – many of them young — will come to the Midwest to demonstrate outside the presidential nominating conventions of this country’s two largest political parties. Some will march to oppose the U.S. government’s financing of Israel’s genocide in Gaza. Others will focus on issues like poverty, immigration, and reproductive rights. A campaign of slander against these protests is already underway – an orchestrated attack on freedom of assembly in the United States in 2024. It’s crucial that concerned people speak up now and support the right of people to demonstrate outside the conventions this summer.
Top: Coalition to March on the DNC in Chicago rally demanding a permit to march after being denied it. Screen Shot/Fox 32 News. Below: Coalition to March on the RNC sues the city of Milwaukee after being denied a permit. Screen Shot WISN 12 News.
The Republican National Convention will be held around the Fiserv Forum in downtown Milwaukee, Wisconsin from July 15-18. The Coalition to March on the RNC 2024 — an umbrella group of 100 organizations — is fighting for the right to demonstrate “within sight and sound” of the Convention. Top leaders of the Republican Party have issued a letter to the U.S. Secret Service arguing that protests anywhere near the Convention site would threaten the safety of attendees.
The Democratic National Convention will take place from Aug. 19-22 in Chicago. Several groups have applied for permits to march at locations where they could be seen and heard by Convention delegates. All the requests for parade permits were opposed by city officials.
The group Bodies Outside Unjust Laws opposes attacks on LGBTQ+ individuals and supports abortion rights. It applied for a permit to march on Aug. 18, the eve of the Democratic Convention, at a time and place where its protest might be seen by many Convention delegates and other visitors. The group’s request was denied, and its organizers told that they had to accept a location far away from the Convention site.
The same fate befell the Coalition to March on the DNC 2024. Like its sibling organization in Milwaukee, this coalition applied for a permit to march “within sight and sound” of the Democratic National Convention. That request was denied. City officials in Chicago tried to get the coalition to accept a location in Grant Park, almost four miles from the United Center, the site of the Democratic Convention.
Bodies Outside Unjust Laws and the Coalition to March on the DNC have taken the city of Chicago to court to demand that they be allowed to march in locations where their protests can have an impact. The Chicago Coalition for Justice in Palestine has announced that it will march during the Democratic Convention – with or without a permit. The Poor People’s Army was able to obtain a parade permit for a march to the Convention site on August 19 only because of an accident. (The city of Chicago failed to respond in time to the group’s appeal of Chicago’s denial of its original request for a parade permit.)
Clearly, the top echelons of both the Republican and Democratic parties are doing everything they can to stifle or contain demonstrations at the conventions and to demonize the demonstrations even before they begin. This fear-mongering has to be challenged.
We urge all our readers to contact city officials in Milwaukee and Chicago and demand that demonstrators be allowed to march where they can be seen and heard by the public — within sight and sound of the two Conventions!
