A fun time at Chicago’s weekend march

A special eyewitness report

This past Saturday, I attended the Chicago #NoKings protest and march in the downtown Loop. This is my third protest and second march just this year – and my fourth protest overall. I attended my first event around 2018 when it looked like Robert Mueller’s job was on the line.

Given all the armchair quarterbacking I see online about how these events unfolded and who was there, I figured I’d record how this one went. Anyone reading this is probably familiar with The Racket News’ comment threads, where my own personal politics around all of this are amply documented, so I’m going to keep this one light on opinion and punditry (except for some sociological brainstorming at the end), and do my best to provide an account for the day.

The week leading up to Saturday

I coordinated with some local friends to make plans for attending the protest and march through a lengthy group chat that we have on Signal. After some planning and back and forth, I had a core group of myself, my wife, a couple of college friends - one who brought her spouse (“S” and “J”). I was discussing the events with a work client earlier in the week and invited him to join us, and he did (“M”).

To keep things simple, we planned to meet in front of the Chicago Theatre on State Street, a landmark that’s readily accessible to public transit and impossible to miss.

Saturday: The protest

This event followed the standard template of meeting around noon at Daley Plaza, listening to a series of speakers address the crowd (more on this in a minute), and then the crowd marching down a pre-approved route – usually returning to the site of the original protest – and attendees dispersing to go home or do their own thing.

Our designated meeting place.

My wife and I were at the Chicago Theatre around 11:45, and we met folks there and we walked over to Daley Plaza – a block away – where the event was kicking off. We only made it part of the way there, as a crowd assembled that was already larger than any of the other events I attended. We got about a third of the way down Dearborn Street before the crowd became too thick to go any further. The organizers’ speeches had already started, but due to the acoustics of the concrete and steel jungle we were in, it was next to impossible to actually make out what was being said. There was an indigenous American group near us doing tribal dances, which was a lot of fun. (If you peek just underneath the dance cricle, you can see my wife waving our flag.)

Given the events in Los Angeles and a raucous series of protests earlier in the week in Chicago, I didn’t know what to expect, so I packed a decent kit including multiple video cameras, several bottles of water, some masks (to mitigate any tear gases), leather gloves to handle any hot or otherwise problematic materials, a battery-powered Bluetooth speaker, and a furled American flag I purchased from Amazon with the Star Wars Rebel Alliance insignia with some text from the in-universe Declaration of Rebellion. (I figured I would reach more folks with George Lucas’ science fiction than “The Challenge of Democracy”.)

Here’s an image of my unfurled flag, as capturing photos of flags outside is tricky!

I pulled out the flag and waved it proudly, and then handed that off to my wife, as the last member of our group was just arriving (“B”). The plan was to find her and weave through the crowd to get to the full group. I went back to the Chicago Theatre to meet her, forgetting that while the Blue Line subway runs parallel to the Red Line subway underneath the Chicago Loop and most stations are parallel to each other, and in this particular case, the Blue Line Washington stop disgorged passengers a couple of blocks south of the Red Line Lake stop that opened up to the Chicago Theatre entrance.

Using my flag to locate my squad in a sea of people.

As I tried to navigate to B, the crowd size had grown significantly, overflowing onto the streets around Daley Plaza, and I found it impossible to get to her, so I headed back to my original group, which was an adventure on its own. It was during this journey that I fully grokked the reason armies use flags to organize their troops. I could see the white Rebel insignia on my flag and head in that direction, but just as I was closing in, I lost it. I had to message my wife to poke the flag up again, so I knew where to go. I eventually made it back to the group, resumed flag duty, and stood through another half-hour of unintelligible voices echoing through the skyscrapers. I messaged my stranded friend to just stay put, and we’d find a way to join up when the march began.

Saturday: The march

A little after 1 pm, the event shifted from speech mode to marching mode. Around us, the Individible event organizers – identifiable in their yellow vests – informed us that we would be marching north on Dearborn Street. I messaged my friend telling her that we were planning on staying put around some easily identifiable garage doors, and we would wait for her when she came our way. So we stood by as the march started. Had we not needed to wait, we would have been pretty close to the front of the line.

Despite Pope Leo delivering a message to a sold-out Comiskey Park later that afternoon, the faithful were well-represented.

I’m going to spoil things a bit and let Racket readers know that the greatest amount of violence inflicted during that march was by my work boots on my feet. Not knowing what to expect, I thought it would be wise to wear some rarely worn steel-toed leather boots that I use when welding or doing metal work, just in case I needed to kick away a teargas canister or needed my feet protected for any reason. In reality, I just ended up murdering my feet and ankles over fifteen thousand steps that day. In terms of the other goodies I packed, the water was appreciated, and later in the parade, I shared it with my friend – who had rejoined us shortly after the march began, because she wanted to blast some Rage Against the Machine out of my cheap (not loud) Bluetooth speaker. But I get ahead of myself!

The march route began and ended at Daley Plaza.

After watching the head of the march depart, B eventually caught up to us and gave S a big hug (we all went to college together, but they hadn’t seen each other for over two decades). By this point, M had left as planned (he had some other stuff going on that afternoon), but the rest of us joined the marching crowd. S was caught off-guard by B’s protest game, as we set off and B started leading the folks around us in chants of “No justice! No peace!” That was a fun moment to witness.

Police lined up alongside the start of the route before the march began.

Our route first took us through the city’s off-Broadway district, past the Goodman Theatre onto Wacker Drive, which traces the south bank of the Chicago River east to Lake Michigan. Both lanes were closed for the march, and the crowd filled them. Along the way, we passed Trump’s local tower, which slowed the traffic a bit, as many marchers took selfies making all kinds of creative gestures, with the TRUMP logo on the building across the river in the background. It’s around this point that my wife bid us adieu as she had tickets to a play further south in the Hyde Park neighborhood.

It was during this part of the march that I got a good look at the flags flying, which had been a topic of discussion in the week leading up to Saturday. I saw a few Palestinian flags flying, and a decent number of Mexican flags as well. I also saw someone flying a red and white flag with a circle in the middle that I thought might be a nautical flag for distress. (After getting home and looking it up, I discovered that it was Greenland’s flag.)

That all said, the clear winner of the flag census was the American flag. There were quite a few Old Glories being flown as we’re used to, many flown upside-down Sam Alito-style, and there were folks like me who came to the event with one variation or another. I saw quite a few folks flying a Mexican flag with an American flag, and a number of folks flying their native state or territory’s flag, including quite a few Puerto Rican flags later in the afternoon. Since I’m no longer on Facebook or X in any meaningful sense, I didn’t see the discourse there, but anyone trying to make a case that the Chicago march was overwhelmed by foreign flags is telling a pretty big whopper (and not the kind that the “NO KING, BUT BURGER KING” guy would approve of).

American flags vastly outnumbered all other flag types at the protest and march.

Our time on Wacker Drive ended when we hit Michigan Avenue, north of us was Chicago’s version of New York’s Fifth Avenue shopping district, and we proceeded down the southbound lane past Millennium Park, the Art Institute of Chicago, and Grant Park (where Obama’s big rally happened on election night 2008 and killed the election party I was throwing then). This long stretch of marching was the heart of the event. It took us past the surprised tourists who were in the city for other reasons and beside the northbound traffic that cheered and honked at us in support.

Marching south down Michigan Avenue.

About halfway down our Michigan Avenue leg, my feet were killing me, and we reverted from “marcher mode” to “onlooker mode” and took a seat for a while on a planter on the sidewalk. This allowed us to get a good look at others marching, not just the folks that had been around us since Dearborn Street. This is where I started seeing the Puerto Rican flags (which are just as American as any State flag), and started seeing some of the creative costumes and signs folks brought with them. My favorite was a woman dressed as the Statue of Liberty with screen captures from HBO’s “Game of Thrones” and the text “A CROWN FOR A KING” with golden wax melted on a skull, reflecting what happened when one Targaryen heir failed to read his situation accurately. A number of folks walking past came over to take pictures or ask about the red hand that B had painted on her face – a symbol of the missing and murdered indigenous women movement. I event had a number of folks come over to me with compliments on the Star Wars nerdery embodied as a flag.

After about fifteen minutes of blood recirculating back into my feet and some necessary rehydration, we rejoined the march down to Ida B. Wells Drive (née Congress Parkway) behind the Harold Washington Library and the Loop’s financial district to Clark Street, where we turned north, marched under the south side of the elevated tracks that gives The Loop its name, and past the Metropolitan Correctional Center, a triangular skyscraper that is the federal prison that folks like R. Kelly and members of the Chicago Outfit have called home at one time or another. On the corner as we turned up Clark Street, we also passed ICE’s headquarters in the city. Nothing notable happened in the section of the march as we passed that point, but I’ve seen some comments on social media about some protestors attempting to enter the building (and failing) during the march that I haven’t been able to properly substantiate.

The rest of the Rebel Alliance showed up as well.

The walk up Clark Street was short. We passed the Kluczynski Federal Building, which had been the site of an earlier Stand Up for Science! protest (but no march) that I attended earlier in the year. We turned west onto Jackson Boulevard, which took us past the Chicago Mercantile Exchange, and we turned north onto La Salle Street and marched across all the streets named after US presidents: Quincy, Adams, Monroe, and Madison to Washington Street. At Washington, we turned east once more and walked a block to return to the original site of the protest at Daley Plaza. My little group found a curb in front of the George W. Dunne Cook County Administration Building to sit on after we passed Chicago police officers directing protesters where to go. While I gave my battered feet another rest, we listened to some classic Mexican songs playing nearby, and B found herself a new friend and dance partner for the impromptu dance party that was happening at the end of the march.

No longer “marchers” anymore, rather than brave the crowded subways that would be packed with folks going home, we grabbed a bite to eat and drink at a local pub. S and B ordered local beers, J had a negroni spritz, and I celebrated the end of the march with a shot of Chicago’s hometown spirit, Malört. After we cooled off and enjoyed some delicious soft pretzel bites, we walked south towards S and J’s place in the South Loop, and B and I hopped onto the train at the Jackson Blue Line station, where she caught a train back to her neighborhood, and I took a quick trip through the Pedway to the corresponding Red Line Jackson stop a block east underground.

The taste of the Malört shot took my mind off my feet for a while.

I made it home, took off my boots, and played some Halo Wars on my Steam Deck while I wondered if I’d be able to walk the next day after the abuse my feet had taken. I expected to find a blistered, bloody mess, but everything was fine when I took off my socks.

Reflection

When I reached out to Steve and David late last week asking if they’d like a post on the #NoKings protest from the street level, I didn’t know what I would be turning in, especially given the events in Los Angeles, and the news of the Minnesota political assassination I read when I woke up Saturday morning. As mentioned earlier, I packed for the worst, but ended up lugging around a lot of unneeded stuff during the day. That the entire experience was rather uneventful and well-managed speaks well for the local Indivisible chapter and their partners that set up the event in parallel with thousands of similar events around the world. (Fun fact: Since folks in the British Commonwealth actually have a king, these events were branded “No Tyrants” in places like Canada and the United Kingdom.)

I’m not going to comment on the #NoKings marches/protests and Trump’s Washington parade other than to note that we had better music that was appropriately themed for the event.

When I woke up this Sunday morning, I was wondering whether I’d see the familiar pattern where a peaceful event happens during the day, but the folks looking to start trouble stick around and start tearing places up when the sun goes down. (This was a far-too-common pattern during the Black Lives Matter protests in 2020.) I was glad to wake up to news where that pattern hadn’t been repeated yesterday, and the most I read about any issues was about the arrests made earlier in the week at an anti-ICE protest downtown on Tuesday.

Along the march on Wacker Drive, we did see one instance of a man down receiving medical attention before we made it to Trump Tower. There were medics on hand attending to the man, and B thought she heard someone say that he had a heart attack. I haven’t seen any news that this fellow died, so I’m assuming that he received the care he needed and is recovering somewhere.

That’s about the extent of Saturday’s drama. No big fights, no conflict with ICE or the police – we didn’t see anyone other than the Chicago police officers. There were no National Guard from Indiana or anything like that. It was a lot of people having a good time, showing their creativity in the form of signs and costumes, and a lot of walking.

This drone has a better crowd size estimate than me.

Now, let’s discuss the crowd size. I’ve been to three events this year, and this was by far the largest, easily outpacing April’s “Hands Off” demonstrations. It’s difficult to estimate a crowd size when you’re in the middle of it, and from what I’ve found, the best estimate seems to be 75,000 attendees. It was enough people to overfill Daley Plaza significantly, and enough people that we could look down Chicago’s famously straight streets and look back to places where we had already passed and see marchers still going. From what I could tell, the Chicago crowd was much more localized – more people from the city itself than its neighbors, unlike the “Hands Off” event, where I was meeting grandmothers from the far-flung suburbs of Chicago who spent significant time on the regional METRA train coming in to make their displeasure known. I think that since this was a larger event globally and there were many more events in smaller towns, folks generally congregated at the nearest event, which sapped the regional participation in the downtown event. You may also see some much larger estimates floating around social media, but these are likely just clout and reputation farmers making up numbers for shares and likes. I’m not going to comment on the national numbers, as I haven’t had time to really look into those.

But why are protest numbers important?

The answer is 3.5%. According to Harvard political scientist Erica Chenoweth, 3.5% is the rate of non-violent protest participation that has resulted in significant political changes from 1900 through 2006. A 3.5 percent participation rate is a goal that the resistance movement is trying to reach in these events. I’ve seen folks throwing numbers between 5 and 12 million national participants for yesterday, for participation rates between 1.4 percent and 3.5 percent in a nation of 340 million Americans. (I have more confidence that the true count is much closer to the lower estimate than the higher one.)

Does reaching this threshold matter? Who knows? Chenoweth herself has written a document with qualifiers, caveats, and exceptions for the 3.5% Rule, including a movement in Bahrain fifteen years ago that failed, despite hitting the 6% mark. My biggest uncertainty with the Rule is that it sampled movements prior to the age of social networking, influencers, and the collapse of mass media and the rise of podcasts and video streaming. My personal hunch is we’re collectively working through how to psychologically deal with a world where the physical constraints that gave rise to Dunbar’s number (the number of stable social relationships one can maintain) no longer exist at the same time our faith and trust in traditional sources of informational authority are shattered and it’s nearly always possible to find a community of like-minded people who inhabit in the same bespoke informational universe as yourself.

I don’t have a good answer to that question or the question of whether a 3.5% participation rate is a suitable goal or not. What I can tell you is that these protest movements are growing, and as they grow, they create an expanded permission structure for others to join. If your older suburban neighbor across the street is heading out to #NoKings, that’s a lot different than watching a bunch of kids waving Mexican flags wearing Palestinian keffiyehs. I have a sense that there’s a lot of new protest behavior that is being normalized for folks who never considered themselves radicals (such as myself). It will be interesting to see how that plays out.

As I remarked to my little brother this weekend, I never expected to end up as similar to my father as I’ve become. We both own and fly political flags now. The only difference is that his has “TRUMP” printed on it and mine has the crest of the Rebel Alliance. Will that lead to an increased bifurcation of the American polity where the Red and Blue teams end up avoiding each other more often? Will Dunbar’s number reassert itself on the residential streets of the respective protesters and end up achieving a balancing effect?

My Magic 8 Ball hasn’t been a lot of help answering these questions.

Chris Karr is an occasional contributor to the Racket News. Follow him at Bluesky and his Notes from the Void newsletter.

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