Activists arrested protesting Israel’s war on Gaza outside the Democratic National Convention on Monday have reported injuries from police violence that required hospitalization and a lack of access to attorneys or medication while in custody, according to legal observers and attorneys representing demonstrators.
Chicago police arrested 13 individuals at demonstrations on Monday, according to the National Lawyers Guild Chicago, a nonprofit legal support organization. The majority of those taken into custody were participating in the main, permitted march that included about 3,500 protesters moving the several city blocks between Union Park and the United Center, where Democratic delegates gathered for the first day of the convention. During the march, some protesters breached a security fence but were quickly pushed back. Two other individuals were arrested on Sunday during a separate rally for transgender rights and abortion rights outside hotels in downtown Chicago where delegates were staying, the guild said.
Charges filed against protesters are largely misdemeanors, including criminal trespass, criminal damage to property, and one case of reckless conduct, the lawyers guild said.
Chicago Police Superintendent Larry Snelling, who heads the department, said Tuesday morning in a press conference that other charges include resisting arrest and obstructing an officer, as well as one aggravated battery of an officer. No officers were injured during demonstrations, Snelling said, while alleging some protesters used pepper spray on officers.
While Snelling praised his officers for having “showed great restraint,” two protesters were hospitalized due to injuries from arrests. In both cases, officers used force on protesters, said Matthew McLoughlin, who coordinates defense attorneys with the National Lawyers Guild.
A third demonstrator was hospitalized after suffering a panic attack during an arrest. When officers brought her back to jail, McLoughlin said she was cuffed to a wall by her ankles with tight restraints, causing severe swelling to her joints. Attorneys had to intervene and request officers loosen the cuffs.
Another protester had told officers about a medical condition and that they needed access to medications. Police initially denied their requests to be transferred to a hospital to receive their medications, McLoughlin said. Officers allowed for the hospitalization only after multiple complaints by attorneys.
In response to questions from The Intercept, the Chicago Police Department sent a link to Snelling’s press conference from earlier in the day.
Days before the convention, activists who were beaten by police during protests against the war in Gaza at the Democratic National Committee headquarters last November filed a lawsuit against Washington, D.C., police. The lawsuit’s allegations of police brutality heightened anxieties about possible police violence in Chicago, where thousands plan to pack the streets during the course of the event. Activists are marching to demonstrate on a range of issues but are largely calling for a ceasefire in Gaza and for the U.S. to stop sending military aid to Israel.
The war in Gaza also weighed on Democratic delegates inside the convention. A group of 30 “Uncommitted” delegates and a growing number of more than 150 Kamala Harris delegates who are standing in solidarity with the Uncommitted movement have been pushing for the party to include an arms embargo on Israel in its platform, and for Palestinian Americans to speak from the main stage. Most speakers on the main stage have so far ignored the topic of Israel and Palestine, with only three speakers mentioning the issue: Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y.; Sen. Raphael Warnock, D-Ga.; and President Joe Biden, the only speaker to acknowledge the protests outside the convention.
“Those protesters out in the street, they have a point,” Biden said after mentioning his administration’s efforts to secure a ceasefire and hostage deal. “A lot of innocent people are being killed — on both sides.”
Outside the convention hall, officers pursued and targeted protesters who were already leaving the area after dispersal orders, arresting them as they made their way to public transit or ride-share drivers, a representative from the National Lawyers Guild told The Intercept.
McLoughlin has provided legal aid to protesters in Chicago over the last seven years. Since October 7, he said the guild has supported at least 450 individuals who were arrested at pro-Palestinian demonstrations. But since the start of the DNC, McLoughlin noted increases in aggression of law enforcement responses.
“There have been 450 arrests in the last 10 months, but it wasn’t until [the DNC] that we have had people taken to hospitals,” he said.
He also said that he believed the show of force from the Chicago police is meant to deter free protests. “The number of officers dispatched are not there to maintain public safety,” McLoughlin said, “but we believe are there to chill First Amendment speech, as a deterrent.”
Snelling said at the press conference there was a difference between peaceful protesters and those who breached the security fence, maintaining that his officers responded appropriately. When questioned by a reporter on instances where protesters not involved with the fence breach were also swept up in arrests, Snelling dug his heels in.
“Sometimes being in the wrong place at the wrong time is indicative of the choices that you make to engage in criminal activity,” he said.
Another rally with the Poor People’s Army, with an estimated attendance of 300 protesters on Monday, peacefully marched toward the edge of the security perimeter along the United Center to make “a citizen’s arrest to the Democratic Party for crimes against humanity,” the group said, referring to the Biden administration funding and arming Israel to kill Palestinian civilians in Gaza, as well as a lack of response to the ongoing fentanyl crisis in the U.S.
The group of low-income families, some accompanied by their children, were met by a large number of officers dressed in riot gear, said Cheri Honkala, co-founder of the Poor People’s Army, who attended the march with her 2-year-old pushed in a stroller. Officers arrested Honkala during the protest and charged her with misdemeanor disorderly conduct.
“It was overkill,” Honkala said, “They could’ve easily arrested and issued a citation and told us to go away, but it’s a fine line when police officers make themselves judge and jury for who gets to have First Amendment rights and who doesn’t.”
McLoughlin criticized law enforcement for opting not to follow the Pretrial Fairness Act, which was enacted in September, abolishing cash bail and also allowing officers to cite and release people suspected of minor offenses such as nonviolent misdemeanors.
Honkala said after her arrest, she was kept in the back of a police van for several hours, where her restraints caused her hands to go numb. Officers denied her request to loosen restraints. It took attorneys more than five hours for them to locate Honkala, said McLoughlin.
Attorneys had called a line provided by police before the convention to assist communication with defendants. When they called the line, department employees admitted they had no way of knowing where detainees from protests were located. In other cases, he said protesters were denied access to phones, leaving them without representation for hours. Other attorneys reported difficulty finding private space to have confidential conversations with their clients.
“I think what we’re seeing here is a larger pattern, when there’s National Security Events happening,” McLoughlin said, referring to a special designation granted by the Department of Homeland Security to large events, such as the Olympics, which gives law enforcement expanded powers under a single command shared by federal and local authorities. He recalled a similar show of force at another National Security Event during a NATO summit in 2012 when he protested as a part of the Occupy Movement.
“There is this huge investment in expanding police technology, putting more cops on the streets, and aggressively policing protests” in order to silence protesters before they begin, he said.
Honkala said she was released at 2 a.m. after the attorneys’ struggle to locate her had ended. She said the experience had left her surprised, given the peaceful nature of their rally. Before each march, her group takes an oath to nonviolence, she said. The practice is largely driven out of safety to protect themselves from police violence.
“Things like getting shot and killed by a police officer are not rhetoric to us, these are real people that we know,” Honkala said. She lives in the Kensington neighborhood of Philadelphia, a few blocks from the home of Eddie Irizarry, who was killed by a police officer last year. “We love our lives and we love our children’s lives.”