Jan 30

Jan 30 Tyre Nichols

Chicago, Demonstrations, Protest, Public Declarations

Put plainly, it was ‘F’ ing cold out tonight, particularly for the 200-plus protesters who gathered in Chicago’s Federal Plaza to memorialize Tyre Nichols and to protest his murder by five police officers (with possibly several fireman and EMT’s also bearing some responsibility). At the 6 PM start time, the temperature hovered between zero and ten degrees Fahrenheit—not taking into account windchill.

Thankfully, Kobi Guillory, Co-Chair of the Chicago Alliance Against Racist and Political Repression (CAARPR) and the event’s emcee, told the seven or eight speakers to keep their remarks to two minutes or less. Let’s face reality, that was wishful thinking, but no one spoke for more than five minutes. Guillory began by leading the demonstrators in some familiar chants, including name-checking Tyre Nichols.

Next up came Frank Chapman, the Educational Director of the CAARPR. At 80 years of age, Chapman has been an advocate for civil rights since the Sixties. According to the Chicago Reader, Chapman was wrongfully convicted of murder and armed robbery, resulting in a 50-year sentence in the Missouri State Penitentiary. In prison, Chapman began a movement to desegregate the prison. He was paroled in 1976, continuing his civil rights advocacy, including repeatedly calling for citizen control of the police.

The Rainbow Push Coalition was well represented by Bishop Tavis Grant, who explained to the assembly, “We saw on Friday night one of America’s most brutal acts of institutionalized racism. As a native of Memphis, I know what it’s like to confront racism in the Memphis Police Department. We were raised and taught to be afraid of them, but tonight it stops. We are not afraid.” (Thanks to the Chicago Suntimes for printing the quotation.)

While I admire anyone who comes out to speak his or her mind on such a cold night, the organizers made both procedural and substantive mistakes. From a procedural standpoint:

Too many speakers read their remarks from their smartphones. As regular readers know, I have called out this practice before. If the speaker is passionate about his or her subject matter, he or she should be able to rely on a single piece of paper with four or five phrases. This approach might require practicing before heading to the demonstration, but practice is worth the effort if it means establishing eye contact with the rally participants and using emotive gestures.

Several speakers strayed from the immediate topic. People came out to honor Nichols and other victims of police violence, as well as demanding reforms to end such violence. The demonstration was not about the Palestinian cause, the shortcomings of capitalism, the Democratic Party’s failings, or LGBQ rights. but each came up during the speeches. Stick to your knitting.

In a major blunder, the organizers ignored the cue offered by the television crews that were covering the event. The crews had set their cameras up toward the corner of Adams and Dearborn, where the light was better and the visual backdrop was more photogenic. Although the organizers did not have a stage or fixed microphones, they nevertheless chose to ignore the television crews’ aesthetic by positioning the speakers in a dark area of Federal Plaza. As a consequence, the event was not as photogenic as it might have been.

Setting aside a better background and lighting, the news crews bring a microphone stand for each station’s microphones (in the vernacular, a “fork”). The organizers could have placed a microphone on the stand, which would have meant that each speaker’s face would have been fully visible.

Given the national interest in the Tyre Nichols case following the release of the body-cam footage last Friday night, the local stations put the story toward the top of the 10-o’clock news lineup. Optics matter in capturing the public’s imagination and sympathies. Next time don’t ignore the professionals who deal with television news optics everyday. They are trained and paid to make the shot look good.

Better signage would have also improved the effort’s results. True, most demonstrations rely on homemade signage, but today, the signage was particularly slapdash—little more than unimaginative scribbles on plain white paper or cardboard. With an organization like Rainbow Push behind the effort, the signage could have been much more evocative. To illustrate, some of the speakers mentioned the now familiar names of other victims of police violence. Why not have a group of people lined up, with each person holding a sign with a victim’s name and photograph on it? When that person’s name was called, the sign could have been raised high.

From a substantive standpoint, both the organizers and some participants have an unrealistic and counter-productive view of messaging. I saw a number of “Defund the Police” and “Abolish the Police” signs. A number of speakers echoed the signage. At least one speaker objected to a new police training facility, arguing that police budgets should be reallocated toward community services. Given that crime is the number one issue in the upcoming mayoral election, the police are not going to be abolished or defunded, and that sort of talk alienates the public at large.

During the 2020 election cycle, the Democrats paid the price for such talk. Rather than capturing a possibly veto-proof majority (or at least one that could not be held hostage by Senators Kyrsten Sinema and Joe Manchin), the Democrats ended up with a majority that could be undone with the death of just one member. The election post-mortem was clear: All the cries to defund and abolish the police cost the Democrats a much larger majority. Today’s organizers and demonstrators should learn the lesson of 2020, or risk re-electing Donald Trump and a larger Freedom Caucus in 2024.

In sum: The organizers and demonstrators want to change a system that produces intolerable results. But rather than taking advantage of the media coverage to reach the public at large, they chose to speak to themselves. For many demonstrations that is not an issue because the news media’s presence is thin. Tonight, though, the media was out in force, meaning that tonight was somewhat of a wasted opportunity.

When the march began, the gathered headed east on Adams, turned north on State Street, and then turned west on Washington, presumably heading back to Federal Plaza. For me that was the wrong direction. Warmth and dinner was to the north, so I split off from the marchers.

The police conduct during the demonstration and march was highly professional. They were there to make sure everyone was safe and that the event proceeded as planned, particularly the march. I often wonder what those police officers must be thinking as they are negatively portrayed with very broad brushes.

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