On Tuesday, August 20, approximately 200 people from across the country gathered outside the Israeli Consulate in Chicago, Illinois, to decry the ongoing genocide of the Palestinian people being perpetuated by the Israeli and United States governments. The demonstrators’ route down West Madison Street to the United Center, home of the Chicago Bulls and 2024 Democratic National Convention, was blocked by hundreds of police officers. Organizers and attendees pivoted to a stationary position, taking to the microphone and drawing the media’s attention to directly address the perpetrators accused of crimes against humanity.
While there were several actions organized by various groups over the four days of the DNC, the group that inspired the actions in front of the Israeli consulate that day was Behind Enemy Lines, a group that openly calls for collective and militant action against the crimes of U.S. imperialism. Separating itself from those who “virtue signal and stay within self-contained bubbles of leftist activists,” as it says on its Instagram, Behind Enemy Lines organizes demonstrations with the intention to disrupt—without a permit.
Behind Enemy Lines and other groups engaging in escalatory protest believe the point of these disruptive acts is to demonstrate to lawmakers and those in power that the people have the ability and the motivation to organize in actions of striking, rioting, taking up arms, and withholding their votes.
In 2014, the Ferguson Uprising sparked the Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement and a cascade of demonstrations following the police murder of Michael Brown in Missouri. A new wave of protest erupted across the United States, as people organized en masse. The BLM protests in the summer of 2020 may have collectively been the largest movement in U.S. history: An estimated 15 to 26 million Americans participated in marches across the country. A common chant from those demonstrations, and one we still hear a decade later, is “Who keeps us safe? We keep us safe”—a rebuke to state-sanctioned violence against people exercising their First Amendment right to assemble.
Kerem Gençer
A majority of those protesting the Democratic Party’s platform were not Republicans, but still felt voting for Kamala Harris would be unconscionable due to the Biden Administration’s support for the war in Gaza. These protesters say they plan to vote uncommitted, for a third party, or not at all.
Kerem Gençer
Demonstrators skirmish with police on August 20 as they are blocked from marching toward the Democratic National Convention at the United Center in Chicago, Illinois.
Kerem Gençer
Protesters display signs, heckle, and pass out leaflets about the ongoing genocide in Gaza to delegates as they leave on August 22, the last night of the 2024 Democratic National Convention, following Vice President Kamala Harris’s nomination acceptance speech.
Kerem Gençer
Police gather in Union Park at the corner of West Washington Boulevard and Ashland Avenue to intimidate and dismantle an autonomous encampment being constructed by anarchists on August 19, the first day of the Democratic National Convention in Chicago.
Kerem Gençer
Behind Enemy Lines organizers burn a symbolic flag made up of parts of the Israeli and U.S. national emblems during a demonstration in front of the Israeli Consulate in Chicago on August 20.