October 25, 2023

Getting around downtown Chicago is a challenge at the best of times.  Weekdays feature a constant flow of carefully and swiftly moving traffic; weekends all the more so.

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But it is a city of 2.5 million people, in a tri-state metro area of 9 million. Back in the days when Chicago was known as “The City that Works” – a generation ago, at least – the city fathers took great care to minimize any event that threatened to jeopardize that title.

We had parades occasionally; we had demonstrations all the time.  The Constitution guarantees American citizens’ right to such things.

So the city always allowed them – it had to – but made sure they were kept under control, usually on the front courtyard of the Daley Center or some similar easily-confined location. 

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The goal of the demonstrators was never to disrupt traffic, in those days.  As fellow Chicagoans, demonstrators knew that their own neighbors, parents, or siblings had to get to work.  So demonstrators would hold picket signs and recite pithy slogans, and the police would make sure fights don’t break out.

The regular population of downtown – the businessmen and the shoppers, the tourists and suburbanites in town for lunch or a show – could get on with their day unimpeded, but they would receive the message of the demonstrators while walking or driving past.   See? The city still works, and the demonstrators reach an audience.   Win-Win.

Not anymore.

On the afternoon of Saturday, October 21, A.D. 2023, Gentle Reader, this writer had to venture into the city to see a friend’s world premiere performance in an iconic downtown venue.  With the Kennedy under construction and the usual traffic of a Saturday, it was sure to be an unpleasant drive, but nobody knew how unpleasant it was going to get.

There was already a big event scheduled for Saturday– the Halloween Parade, attracting some 50,000 spectators. Back in the days when the infamous Machine still functioned, they would not have granted a permit for a competing event two blocks away on a Saturday afternoon.

But at about 3:00 p.m., thousands of pro-Hamas protesters – both pedestrians and vehicles – converged on Chicago’s downtown, centering around the intersection of Ida B. Wells Drive (named for a famous black Republican journalist of the 19th century) and Michigan Avenue (named for our own Great Lake), mere blocks to the east).