Mar 7

Mar 7 Listing the Dead

According to the Gaza Ministry of Health, over 30,000 Palestinians have been killed in Gaza since October 7, 2023. Whether you identify as pro-Palestinian or pro-Israeli, if you are a human being, you cringe when contemplating that much death during a five-month span on such a tiny sliver of land. Even if you are pro-Israeli and believe that Israel had a right to respond to the Hamas attack, the 30,000 number should trouble your conscience because so many of the dead women, children, and men were not culpable in the attack. Most of the deaths occurred randomly: those killed were in the wrong place when Israel dropped its bombs and launched its missiles.

Today, several groups came together in Chicago’s Federal Plaza under the watchful eye of Alexander Calder’s Flamingo to acknowledge and remember the victims. The mourners simply read victims’ names, together with their genders and ages. The event began at 8:00 AM this morning, and will run through 8:00 AM tomorrow morning. I stopped by at 10:45 AM, and then again at 4:45 PM. At 8:30 PM tonight, somebody is scheduled to give what has been described as an alternative State of the Union address.

There were more people present late this afternoon than this morning, but even this afternoon’s turnout was low— maybe 75 people at 5:30 PM. Normally, people are outwardly angry at the typical pro-Palestinian rallies I have attended, loudly chanting in unison or listening to highly animated speakers. Today, people exuded peacefulness and sorrow. A pallor was in the air, the same one evident at funerals when someone unexpectedly dies, particularly a child.

Several months ago, I attended a similar memorial held on the University of Illinois’s Chicago campus. That day the list of names ‘only’ included 15,000+ people. The organizers also planted an equal number of small white flags with a victim’s name written on each one. If I recall correctly, over the course of eight or nine hours, those reading the names read all 15,000+ names. When I left Federal Plaza today at 5:55 PM, the readers had read out 4,156 names, making it highly unlikely that all 30,000 names would be read within the allotted time. Failure to read all the names doesn’t matter. Being in the plaza for 24-hours suffices: the overarching message will be delivered regardless of whether all the names are read.

I asked one of the press handlers whether they hoped to namecheck all 30,000 victims by 8:00 PM tomorrow. She confirmed that the readers would be unable to read every name. I also asked if the group planned to name any others who have met their demise outside of Gaza, such as Aaron Bushnell, who engaged in an act of self-immolation 11 days ago, or six-year-old Wadea Al-Fayoume, who was allegedly murdered by his mother’s landlord because Wadea was a Muslim. The spokesperson said that those people are special, but given the time constraints, the list is limited only to those killed in Gaza.

I was particularly intrigued by the messages to President Biden that people wrote on two white sheets of paper lying on the ground. Not surprisingly, many reflected antipathy toward the President. Others, however, sounded a note of reconciliation.

Unfortunately, this will not be the last reading of names. Sometime this summer, I suspect people will read a list then containing 50,000 or more names. If bombs and missiles are not the proximate cause of death, starvation, insufficient medical aid, and disease will be. If I am right, the organizers should choose a more visible location. A decade ago, office workers would have been scurrying about at noon and heading home at 5:30 PM. Aside from the mourners, Federal Plaza was largely empty today at those times, except for the occasional pedestrian cutting through the plaza. I often encounter skateboarders in the plaza, but even they were absent today.

The organizers chose Federal Plaza because it is adjacent to the John C. Kluczynski Federal Building, which is where Senators Richard Durbin and Tammy Duckworth have their Chicago offices. But no matter how visible the mourners might have been today, they were not visible to Senators Durbin or Duckworth, who were in Washington, D.C. for the State of the Union address.

To maximize visibility when there is another reading of names, the organizers should choose a location on Michigan Avenue, such as the plaza outside The Wrigley Building. Despite vacant storefronts, Michigan Avenue still is where tourists and shoppers head on a Saturday. It is also a major thoroughfare for buses (3, 10, 151, 146, and 148).

Despite today’s miscues, as a protest strategy, the reading of names serves as highly effective way to humanize the death toll and associated suffering.

PostScript [Friday, March 8, 2024]: I thought about returning to Federal Plaza this morning to see how far the demonstrators had progressed through the list of names, but I decided not to because additional images would be largely repetitive. Big mistake on my part. According to the Chicago Tribune, 33 demonstrators were arrested shortly after the vigil came to an end when they blocked the intersection at West Jackson Boulevard and South Dearborn.

I am not sure why the demonstrators chose to engage in a pointless and counter-productive act of civil disobedience following their vigil. Prior to Covid, blocking an intersection in the Loop during morning rush hour might have been a big deal, but post-Covid, the Loop is largely empty on Fridays, as the many retail vacancies highlight—no office workers, no shoppers. Even if there had been bumper-to-bumper traffic, what’s the point of temporarily causing a disruption? People are already well aware of what is happening in Gaza.

In this case, the effort served to undercut the group’s messaging—they stepped on their own messaging. The Tribune’s headline reads, “Vigil for Victims in Gaza Leads to Arrests After Protesters Block Traffic Near Federal Plaza,” with a picture immediately below showing one protester stepping into a police wagon with the protester’s hands bound together by zip-ties. Had I been present, I would have led with a similar image.

To the Tribune’s readers, the demonstration was about the protesters, not the 30,000+ Palestinians who had needlessly been killed. The spotlight had shifted to those who live comfortably in Chicago, rather than those individuals who have senselessly died in a war zone.

I am also curious why the Chicago Police Department decided to arrest the protesters this morning. Last Saturday, when protesters at another pro-Palestinian rally blocked the escalators at Ogilvie Transportation Center, there were no arrests, at least that I saw. Nor did CPD arrest the protesters who shut down the southbound lanes of DuSable Lake Shore Drive for three hours in January. Why today? What criteria is CPD using to determine when protesters will be arrested for acts of civil disobedience? Do today’s arrests represent a change of policy in anticipation of the upcoming Democratic National Convention? Has CPD decided to send a message? Time will tell.

[Click on an Image to Enlarge It. The Images Are Not Necessarily in Exact Chronological Order]