World News: Chicago 1968, Chicago 2024

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Category: World News

Published on Sunday, 18 August 2024 10:52

Written by Janet Walker

Chicago, a solid democratic stronghold, has long been a key convention city. In the years before the 2024 Democratic National Convention, the 1968 Democratic Convention that resulted in riots, and an historical infamy some 56 years later.

The current anti-war protests staged by Palestinians, may become the newest anti-war protests that will live in infamy in the Windy City.

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Michigan, the home to the largest immigrant Palestinian population in the United States, is less than a five-hour drive to the United Center, the home to this year's Democratic National Convention. The New York Times reported, "On Monday, as the political show begins inside the United Center, demonstrators say they will gather by the thousands outside. And as the convention goes on, activists say, so too will the protests, every single day."

Chicago 1968. The Vietnam War was at its height. Thousands of American soldiers were dying, daily. Unfathomable losses, agitated by stateside unrest, the civil rights movement was broadcasting horrific images into American homes each night of unfathomable brutality, and finally the assassinations of Martin Luther King, Jr, in April 1968 and Bobby Kennedy, in June 1968, shot to death in the kitchen of the Ambassador Hotel, in Los Angeles, after he had won the California primary which secured him the delegates for the presidential nomination. The American people were fed up and showed up, in the thousands, prepared for peaceful protests, and met with bully-club wielding police, part of the Chicago Mayor Richard Daley suppression machine, which counted the protesters as no-good, pot-smoking, slacker hippies, a blight on society.

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Chicago 2024: The scene is not so different today Palestinian Americans are fed up. What began as a retaliation for an unprecedented border breech has expanded into a ten-month annihilation of the Palestinian people of Gaza. Every nation has a right to defend themselves against the violation of their territorial sovereignty. For Palestinian Americans, Israel has long past the point of defense, and retaliation and entered into the final solution phase. As media reports daily of the horrors of the war in Gaza, images so brutal and shocking even the media will not post them.

However, The Washington Post, who along with other media have been denied by Israel access to Gaza, described this scene, "Earlier this week, journalist Talal al-Arouqi was at al-Awda Hospital in Nuseirat, in central Gaza, when an ambulance arrived carrying victims from a nearby strike. He captured a photo of one of them: a decapitated child whose arms were also severed. The toddler was one of seven members of the Abu Nada family killed Tuesday, according to a neighbor."

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Anti-Israel protests have continued to draw strength, in the ten months since the war began. As the news cycle is a fast-moving machine, many may have forgotten about the Spring 2024 widespread campus protests and fall out or the democratic primaries where Michigan Palestine population chose undecided over incumbent President Joe Biden, who came in second.

Drawing a parallel to days gone by, anti-war protestors will show up in Chicago, and while many expect peaceful protests, there are always agitators and those who will use mob mentality or crowd psychology to influence larger group aggression.

In 1968, it was a power play, the clash of change against the stubbornness of subordinate control, and in 2024, while society may have advanced, to the Palestinians it is the same, the clash of change against Israel and their subordinate control over Gaza and the Palestinian people.

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Janet Walker is the publisher, founder, and sole owner of Haute-Lifestyle.com. A graduate of New York University, she has been covering international news through the Beltway Insider, a weekly review of the nation's top stories, for more than a decade.  A general beat writer/reporter and entertainment/film critic, she is also an accomplished news/investigative news/crime reporter and submitted for Pulitzer Prize consideration "Cops Conspire to Deep Six Sex Assaults" in the Breaking News Category. Ms. Walker has completed five screenplays, "The Six Sides of Truth," "The Assassins of Fifth Avenue," "The Wednesday Killer," "The Manhattan Project," and the sci-fi thriller "Project 13: The Last Day." She is a member of the Los Angeles Press Club, the National Writers Union, and the International Federation of Journalists.