Beyond the coordinated organizing of local religious leaders and their communities, Arise’s pro-labor efforts include an arm dedicated to providing legal support and training to low-wage workers, particularly immigrant workers. This initiative is one among well over 200 functional “Worker Centers” that serve under-represented laborers in the United States. Arise Chicago’s director, Adam Kader, explains, “we’re a community resource … a place for workers to get educated about rights to learn about strategies for improving their workplace.”

The Arise Worker Center, like other organizations of its kind, began as a multi-faith religious advocacy group in 1991. The original members – among them Monsignor Jack Egan, Rabbi Robert Marx, and United Methodist Bishop Jesse De Witt – organized their varied religious communities to support labor initiatives on the north side of Chicago. When they published a comprehensive Workers Rights Manual in 2001, the group received a wide response as individual workers began calling with questions about their rights in the workplace. In 2002 the group added a Worker Center initiative specifically to respond to worker concerns about their workplace rights. Kader describes the early years of the Worker Center as a “rapid response” model, where workers’ calls were responded to as they came in – something the organization has tried to structure differently in recent years. Today, the Arise Worker Center is a member organization that somewhat resembles an actual union. Constituents are encouraged to “commit to other members” by contributing monthly dues (in any amount), attending and teaching workshops, and leading advocacy campaigns. With 215 members – primarily immigrants from Latin America and Eastern Europe, working in several industries – Arise’s Worker Center members have been able to take advantage of the broader network of Worker Centers to share stories and strategies.

In a 2006 Economic Policy Institute study of Worker Centers, Janice Fine described these organizations as “suggestive of earlier U.S. civic institutions” such as “fraternal organizations, political parties, settlement houses, and urban churches…” These early groups were places where immigrants found support and modern unions saw their beginnings. However, the organized unions that formed as a result – which provided job stability and secure wages to families in the 50s and 60s (when 1 in 3 workers was a member of a union) – have seen a steady decline over the past 50 years. The globalization of labor forces in manufacturing, and the nationwide expansion of unprotected job sectors (service industries such as food and janitorial services), has led to a modern economy in which few professions are protected against labor market competition.

But this imbalance of power between big business and organized labor appears to have reached its breaking point. Arise Chicago and other worker solidarity organizations stand today at the edge of what could be another historical turning point – a resurgence of organized labor. In light of the highly publicized occupation at Republic Windows and Doors, and upon the inauguration of a pro-labor president, Kader believes that labor organization has become more important now than it has been in generations. “Deregulation and privatization have really eroded worker protections and led to de-unionization” – a breach of what he refers to as the social contract. “The combination of those things have resulted in poorer and fewer jobs in the US … that’s why our standard of living is not as good as it should be.”

For the hopeful among us, it is difficult not to draw parallels to earlier labor movements and to envision a bright future for low-wage laborers in the U.S. With a new pro-labor president in office, who was an original co-sponsor of the Employee Free Choice Act, there are numerous reasons to believe things can only get better. The act would make it easier for workers to unionize based on a “card check” or secret ballot election, coordinated by union leaders; if more than half the workers vote in favor, the workplace would unionize. This is a significant change from the standard practice over the last 50-plus years of employer oversight in union elections, and heavy intimidation against unionization. The Employee Free Choice Act would be the first major pro-union legislation since the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA) of 1935, which protected the right to unionize. (The NLRA has since been amended to outlaw “unfair labor practices” on the part of organizers, placing great limits on their jurisdiction.)

Unfortunately, the drive behind the Employee Free Choice Act, one of Senator Obama’s campaign platforms, is appearing more and more difficult to push through Congress. Business leaders, already faced with declining numbers in the poor economy, are fighting tooth and nail to keep the legislation from adding another difficult element to their restructuring processes. The business community’s attempts to counter the purpose of the bill argue that the elections would not be secret, that union leaders would coerce employee votes, and that the process denies a democratic right to free elections, despite the name of the bill. In a 2007 policy paper, the Heritage Foundation even argued that “few employees want to organize.”

Current economic troubles are not only a business-side argument against labor organizing, but are also a practical consideration for smaller pro-labor groups like Arise, whose operating budget has been shrinking by the day. Even as the need for these community efforts is growing, their sources of funding (churches, foundations, and so on) have been spread thin. When I met with Kader in a north side Chicago coffee shop in early March, he was just finishing a meeting with another staffer at Arise. He told me they no longer had money to pay her, and although she had done great work, they were going to have to cut her hours. Kader went on to tell me that as the economy turned south last summer, Arise’s Worker Center network members grew hesitant to push the envelope. Over the last few months, however, after Republic’s workers settled for $1.75 million, their constituents were impressed. In the weeks following the Republic settlement and Obama’s inauguration, Arise received more phone calls from disparaged workers than they’d seen in months. “Republic showed to vulnerable workers, low-wage workers, and immigrant workers, that you have to stand up,” Kader explained. “Workers are now saying ‘the economy’s so bad, I can’t afford not to fight’ … When people are desperate they’re willing to do more and to fight more.”

In response to the particular issues at Republic Windows and Doors, service workers around the country are gearing up to fight a large-scale problem dubbed “wage theft” – the pervasive practice of denying workers overtime and severance pay and benefits, to which they are entitled by law. The climate is hopeful and workers are inspired by their forefathers in the labor movement of the 1930s. Kari Lyderson, author of a forthcoming book about Republic Windows, writes, “in a shifting economic and political context, collective action can bring real results.” It seems the time has come for major change, as community organizations set the tone for the voice of labor in our generation.

—

To get involved with Worker Center initiatives like Arise, start with www.arisechicago.org/

To learn more about Wage Theft, see http://www.wagetheft.org

Known to most as “Motor Voter,” the Act was among the earliest pieces of national legislation signed by President Clinton, and was intended to expand the accessibility of voting rights. Motor Voter required public processing centers (Secretary of State and DMV facilities, schools, libraries, etc.) in each state to make voter registration paperwork available to their patrons. Since the federal enactment, most states have adopted the legislation as their own, though several (Illinois, for example) had initial qualms about the higher rates of fraud that could result. Unfortunately, they may have been right, though they could never have predicted how.

—

In North Liberty, Iowa, a suburb of Iowa City, Cindy Diouf is a school principal and active community member. Cindy and her husband, Ivon, met in Senegal at a Peace Corps training event in the mid-90s-she was an American volunteer stationed in Guinea, and he was working at the swimming pool where the volunteers had come to relax. They fell in love during Cindy’s years in Africa, and were soon married and beginning their life together in the U.S.

Only recently, after several long worrisome years, mounds of paperwork, and time and money spent in deportation proceedings, did Ivon finally earn his U.S. citizenship and the family-whose lives have become yet another example of an unforeseeable outcome of Motor Voter-is finally able to lead a quiet life.

The Dioufs ran into this snag on an early Tuesday in a November not unlike this year’s. They were recently married when Cindy walked across the street to perform her civic duty and cast a voter’s ballot. When the polling judge couldn’t find her listed under her maiden name, Cindy gave her new married name and saw that both she and her husband were listed as registered voters. Excited, she ran home and brought Ivon back with her, showing him the list and encouraging him to cast his vote. Ivon, who had only earned his permanent resident status¹ at that time, was unsure but wanted to do the right thing. Because he saw his name on the list, he wondered if this civic responsibility might be expected of him, so he voted. Alas, the very thing he and Cindy believed to be proper turned out to be what one Houston attorney would later call “a death sentence.” That is, registering to vote and-worse yet-voting as a non-citizen of the United States.

As impossible as it would seem, this happens to many immigrants without their knowing that they are ineligible. It can occur either as part of an application for a drivers license or state identification card, or as part of community “get-out-the-vote” efforts.

At Secretary of State or DMV facilities in states with active Motor Voter protocol, the attendants are required to offer voter registration as part of the process of obtaining a state ID. Because of the time-constrained and uniform nature of these interactions between individuals and facility attendants, crucial details are often overlooked-such as the applicant’s immigration status. Many immigrants present their foreign passports when prompted for their identification, and are still asked if they would like to register to vote.

If the individual’s uninformed answer is “yes,” he or she is presented with a voter registration card, told to check a box, and shown where sign. This box-often filled with an ‘X’ by the attendant his or her self before being given to the registrant-reads (on most states’ registration cards):

“I swear or affirm that: 
- I am a U.S. citizen 
- I will be at least 18 years old on or before the next election 
- I live at the above address 
- I am not on parole, probation or serving a sentence…”

plus an additional bullet point that varies by state, occasionally reading, “I certify under penalty of perjury of the State of ___ that all the information on this form is true and correct,” and other times outlining the fines and jail sentences imparted to those who present false information on the form.

This is the government’s fail-safe to ensure that a voter registration is legitimate: a certification statement at the bottom of the form, which is often checked off by someone other than the person completing the form. In so many cases, the only action the registrant takes on the form is to sign it-the biographic portions (address, birth date, etc.) are already completed electronically as part of the state ID application. For an immigrant who may not speak fluent English, or if they do, may not understand the nuance between the legal definition of Citizen and the layperson’s definition (more like a general “resident”), it is easy to make this mistake-especially when he or she is asked several questions at once and given multiple forms to sign. This action, however, constitutes “making false claims to U.S. citizenship” and is more than adequate reason for an Immigration Judge to order deportation.

Jerri Mead, an attorney based in Fort Wayne, Indiana, believes that a lot of the confusion has to do with a language barrier. “Our way of doing things really doesn’t take into effect the people who don’t know the language,” she argues. “The government, from what I’m seeing, is finally saying ‘if you’re going to be here, you need to learn the language, and if you don’t learn the language, then you’re just going to pay dearly for it.’”

Houston-based attorney, Brian Johnson, says nearly all of the cases his firm handles dealing with “false claims to citizenship” involve immigrants who speak little English. “They don’t know what they’re signing, they don’t know what they’re checking off,” he explains. In one particular case, at a community event, “the client thought it was just a lottery thing or a sweepstakes” and signed his name on the form, which had been completed for him by a cousin.

Well-meaning U.S. citizen family members are often, sadly, the source of such misinformation. “Most people who are confused are not the immigrants,” says Altagracia McDonald, an attorney in Pasadena, Texas. “A lot of people are under the misconception that because they are U.S. citizens, their spouses automatically are either residents or citizens and they can do all these things….  So a lot of times it was the spouses that would say ‘Honey, they sent you that [voter registration form] because you’re married to me and I’m sure it’s okay. They wouldn’t send you this if it wasn’t ok.’”

Innumerable immigrants have been presented with such an opportunity to break the law, and they are given no reason to believe that it might be the wrong thing to do. In these cases, where immigrants end up in deportation for claiming U.S. citizenship on a form that was presented to them with no explanation of the consequences, the most well-meaning of individuals have found themselves in harrowing circumstances.

Technically, a false claim to citizenship could be considered a form of fraud, and in order to be convicted of fraud-under each state’s criminal laws-any such crime requires intent. However, the relationship is sticky between federal immigration law, which outlines what sorts of offenses are deportable, and criminal law, which defines and criminalizes “fraud” at the state level. There is essentially a missing link between the two.

At the federal level, voting or claiming citizenship can get a non-citizen immigrant deported; at the state level, committing any sort of fraud requires intent. Unfortunately for immigrants, their applications for citizenship are evaluated at the federal level. “ICE [Immigration and Customs Enforcement] is getting people who haven’t committed fraud, they simply made a mistake!” says James Benzoni, attorney for the Diouf family. Benzoni is a seasoned immigration attorney, but he says their case was the first time he’d seen a situation like this-likely an unforeseen result of the reorganization of the Department of Homeland Security.

Technical improvements in the linking of government databases between all the various agencies that now fall under DHS (Social Security, the FBI, and so on) mean each individual now has a trackable long-term history in the system, and “mistakes” will no longer go undetected. Attorney Johnson says he’s seen the government agencies “tighten the screws on a lot of things… verifying the accuracy of information and double-checking sources, doing background checks.”

Mead and Benzoni both warned that by joining these various databases, the government is broaching on sensitive individual information. Benzoni points out that state election officials are verifying identity illegally by “going to the Social Security database first when they shouldn’t.” Mead echoed his sentiment, saying, “they’re slipping it in under everybody’s noses.”

—

Over the years, the passage of overlapping and conflicting legislation-from the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1986, to the implementation of Motor Voter in the mid-90s, to the recent reorganization of INS under the DHS umbrella-has brought about this messy conundrum of accidental voter registration. Nowadays, unlike in years past, citizenship applicants who have lived in the country for decades are seeing old mistakes come back to haunt them, and it doesn’t seem fair. “The punishment doesn’t fit the crime,” says attorney McDonald.

The only hope a naturalization applicant may have at this point is an exercise of discretion by the particular officer who handles his or her case. As attorney McDonald explains, however, the extent of discretion varies widely. “If you file naturalization in California this may not be an issue, but if you file it in Houston you may get deported-out of the same action-because the adjudicator has discretion.”

“The best thing I think we could hope for is for them to allow a waiver for it,” says Johnson. A waiver would allow, for example, a man who is married to a U.S. citizen and has children who are U.S. citizens, to plead the case that his family would not be able to survive without him here. At present, there is no waiver option available to immigrants who are placed in deportation proceedings for false claims to citizenship.

McDonald, for her part, believes the general public needs to be more educated on what it means to be a citizen and the difference between various immigrant statuses. “Perhaps 20 years ago this wasn’t a big issue, but now our citizenry need to know.”

While education on immigrant status and the meaning of “citizen” is important for the general populace, perhaps more salient-particularly this year-would be a background on fraud surrounding our nation’s electoral process. There is a possibility that ineligible immigrants may be registered to vote unintentionally, and it is one of many good reasons to direct a close eye to the way our elections are managed. However, “The real problem,” according to attorney Benzoni, “is just getting [immigrants] to vote at all when they’re U.S. citizens.”

David Morris, vice president of the Institute for Local Self-Reliance, writes in an opinion piece for the Minneapolis Star-Tribune: “Raising the fear of individual voter fraud brings a short-term and a long-term advantage to those who would reduce the turnout of the disadvantaged and dispossessed. In the short term, it hobbles registration and turnout efforts. In the longer term, it helps to persuade state legislatures to pass laws that make it more difficult to vote.”

The majority of immigrant applicants for naturalization lead honest, hard-working lives, trying to do the right thing in the hopes of someday being justly awarded their rightful citizenship. These individuals must face every application for benefits, every tax form, and every governmental process with painstaking attention to detail. Unfortunately for some, the application for voter registration is too often not fully explained and the outcome of immigrant voter fraud takes a much higher toll on the well-meaning immigrant than on the integrity of the electoral process.

FOOTNOTE: [1] Permanent residency is the initial immigration application process after becoming married to a U.S. citizen. This is usually granted on a two year “conditional” basis, after which the couple must apply to remove the conditions on the immigrant’s residence. This application requires couples to prove the legitimacy of their union with detailed documentation.

Over three millennia, the epic canto The Ramayana has provided an archetype for many cultures–Hindu, Thai, Lao, Malaysian–of the ideal man of virtue. In Paley’s film, the story is narrated humorously by three individuals in conversation with each other; their commentary provides different versions of the story (of which there are many), and as they debate the details the animation follows suit. What it boils down to is this:

Rama, the eldest son of an emperor (and supposed reincarnation of Vishnu), is forced to step aside and allow his younger half-brother to take the throne because of a favor the emperor owes to the younger son’s mother. Rama takes the news well and accepts his 14-year banishment to the forest, taking his young wife, Sita, along with him at her own insistence. Rama and Sita, the mythological “perfect couple,” live happily in isolation until the evil king of Sri Lanka, Ravana, stealthily captures Sita, leading to an 18-month war between the two men and their armies. Rama eventually wins Sita back, then turns her away because her living in another man’s home has made her impure. He will not allow Sita in the palace when he returns to the throne after his 14-year hiatus, and she responds by willingly moving back to the forest alone to raise Rama’s two sons-–all the while remaining devoted to Rama.

Upon first coming across the story while she was living with her then-husband in India, Paley writes on her website that she “considered the Ramayana little more than misogynist propaganda.” A few months later, while on a work trip to New York where she was dumped over email (all of which is related in the film), Paley says she saw something in the Ramayana that was universal. She developed one scene from the fable into an animated short, but the creative urge was not spent and early viewers of the piece wanted more. Sita Sings the Blues was fashioned in its full length over the next couple of years, and is currently screening in numerous North American cities.

As if that wasn’t enough, there is even more drama behind Paley’s Sita: following the first well-received screenings, the indie cartoonist happened upon another self-defining moment in her career – copyright infringement. At present, her film cannot be distributed in theaters unless Paley pays several hundred thousand dollars for the rights to use Annette Hanshaw’s music; also she may be getting sued. As a result, Paley is now championing a new cause, and she’s not being quiet about it. Read her blog or see if you can catch her at one of the film’s screenings this year. Her legal battle could be a watershed for independent filmmakers everywhere.

Melikyan, born in Azerbaijan and raised in Armenia, studied film in Moscow where she met Masha Shalayeva, an enchanting actress for whom she wrote the role of Alisa. The young girl’s interactions with the city of Moscow depict a sense of wonderment that must certainly be a close reality to how Melikyan would have felt upon first exposure to Russia’s capital.

Alisa’s comically ordinary story begins with her underwater conception — the first scene of the film. Her mother, whose character comes to define the picture of small-town frustration, has a chance encounter with a sailor when she is out by herself for a swim at a quiet beach on the Black Sea. The sailor never reappears in their lives, but Alisa’s mother continues to engage passing seamen in rendezvous to ease her boredom and single-mother stress. When Alisa’s curiosity leads her to walk in on one of these meetings at a young age, she reacts destructively, setting fire to their seaside shanty and refusing to speak for the duration of her childhood.

Throughout the grey and provincial scenes of the first half of the film, Alisa’s imaginative narration lends color and humor. She also develops a secret power — if she wishes for something to occur, it will indeed come to pass. A few months before her seventeenth birthday Alisa’s mental efforts cause a massive windstorm in her seaside town, destroying their home yet again and leading her mother to move her and her grandmother to Moscow. Alisa’s frank voice describes the event with innocent astuteness, explaining, “When people have nowhere else to go, they go to Moscow.”

The three women take up residence in a typical Moscow high-rise, and Alisa and her mother join the workforce — her mother working as a smartly-uniformed grocery store clerk, and Alisa handing out flyers around town dressed as a giant cell phone. The young girl’s tender childhood is humorously shattered by the appearance of “Sasha” (Yevgeni Tysganov), a depressed but attractive yuppie who makes his living selling real estate on the moon; he and Alisa meet when they both jump off a bridge on the same night.

The film succeeds in Melikyan’s use of Alisa’s humorously innocent narration, fantastical symbolism, and several visually-stylized dream sequences. It calls to mind Amelie and The Science of Sleep, though it doesn’t quite achieve the complexity of either of these films. What Rusakla lacks in density, however, it makes up for with pure charm. You’ll feel an instinctive pull toward Melikyan’s Moscow, and an honest desire to understand its people and its art. The film breaks through whatever “curtain” the city’s true heart has been hiding behind, as Moscow comes of age on screen, symbolically abandoning it’s tail alongside the story’s young narrator.

Upon reading his work, one is reminded immediately of Carl Sandburg or Walt Whitman, and Coval himself mentions Nelson Algren as an influence. All three writers capture a hard and masculine reality of America without much flourish. Coval’s America, as portrayed in Everyday People, is Red-White-and-Blue Chicago- roots in Southern Illinois and cosmopolitan flirtations with New York.

this Chicago, this why the world works

under the common wealth of forced gas heat,

open kitchen ovens and corrupt politicians.

this city/country are the same

beauty at first glance

and after toiling in the rush-hour commute

grit sticks and melts the bones

of those called to work in the dirt of empire

- excerpt from The Corner Store

Unlike Sandburg, Whitman, and Algren, Coval’s stanzas beg to be spoken aloud. Indeed, on paper some of his poems appear flat, but to witness Coval perform is to understand that his work is truly a musical, live form of poetry. Coval is the founder of Louder Than A Bomb: The Chicago Teen Poetry Festival and he performed for four seasons on HBO’s Def Poetry Slam. So important is the poetry slam forum to Coval’s ethos that he dedicates a number of the poems in Everyday People to the topic.

But he doesn’t stop there. Coval is also a firm believer in, and vocal proponent of, hip-hop, which he has worked diligently to make accessible to broader populations. “What hip-hop taught us to do,” he explains, “is just tell our stories and where we come from.” He continues: “Hip-hop asks one eternal question: ‘What do you represent?’”

When Coval himself faced this question, having found a creative outlet in hip-hop at a young age, it took him some time to negotiate exactly how he wanted to answer. Having grown up with his mother and one brother in a Jewish household in the suburb of Northbrook, Illinois, Coval said in a recent interview that he was not always up-front about his suburban identity when he first explored Chicago’s hip-hop scene.

However, it was this very same internal question which became the impetus for much of his self-examination and poetic articulation. As he grew as a poet, he worked to educate young adults around the city, across the state, and around the world on the power of this particular art form. Today he teaches at the School of the Art Institute, University of Illinois-Chicago, and is poet-in-residence at the Jane Adams Hull House. In an earlier work, which Coval performed on the opening track of Idris Goodwin’s 2004 EP, he posits:

this is hip-hop

it is alive and well

it lives elsewhere than your radio MTV BET station

it has saved a generation of kids who write

and bomb

and break

and make beats

and read books on their own time outside of institutional gazes

cuz they heard De La or Rakim or Big Daddy Kane or Pac

or saw Style Wars

…

and wanted to do that

tell stories like that

truth like that

rep who you are what you feel where you come from like that

Everyday People is a testament to Coval’s now established presence in the hip-hop world and his influence on the next generation of spoken word artists. His voice is young at times – relatable, expressing frustration with nepotism and learning to make ends meet on one’s own. At other times, such as the more epic Parting the Red, White, and Blues, his knowledge is sagacious, and his words flow quickly and powerfully.

For the fullest experience of the book, read it out loud on a street corner, in a club, or on the train. Backed with the industrial noises of the street or the hum of human voices, Coval’s words come alive.

      We sat in a circle on the ground, breaking hunks off a loaf of bread, and discussing – somewhat vaguely – the schedule of events for the coming Thursday night, when this group would be re-enacting the SDS protests of the 1968 Democratic National Convention. There were about twenty of us gathered at the fountain in Wicker Park as the sun went down, the shouts of basketball players faded, and a wealthy family strolled past holding take-out boxes. The group – ragged, mostly white, earnest – were tiring of the specifics: what to do if the police came (“I’ll take one for the team – free blow jobs for cops who don’t arrest us!”); where they would be posting flyers in the coming days (“most of the north side neighborhoods… and Hyde Park”); and whether the provision of a sound system was a sure thing (“if all else fades, we do have a megaphone”).

      Liam Warfield, 28, Chip Hamlett, 26, and Yony Leyser, 23, had never planned anything like Re-Enact ’68 before this August. Warfield’s idea to stage a re-enactment came about last year, after he missed out on participating in a Civil War re-enactment. He thought it would be more powerful to stage, “something more controversial and more recent.”

      The rest of this group agreed that Warfield was on to something, and, seemingly, so did a lot of the greater Chicago community. “We’ve gotten a surprisingly large amount of attention… the strength of the idea and it being something new and something exciting is a lot of the draw,” Hamlett added. “I think people see this and they kind of get it.“ 

      I will admit I was skeptical – and it wasn’t just the obvious irony in the organizers’ assertion that re-enactment was “something new”. Though I am certainly not opposed to an action calling attention to the similarities between today’s political situation and that of 1968, I am generally intrigued by a growing pattern of I see among my peers – that of constructing and living out a historical identity.

      It seems that members of my generation are living in a fluid sort of time, where past decades are present and visible and relevant. This can be great, and it can be dangerous: great if our recognition of the past leads us to learn from our mistakes; dangerous if it leads us to repeat them. From the faces and personalities I encountered at the meeting that Sunday night, I was unsure whether their deepest of individual intentions were to re-enact 1968 in an effort to stimulate the current political discussion, or to re-live the social attitudes, music, and fashion of 1968 because – for whatever reason – this was part of their personal identity. 

AUGUST 28, 1968

      In August of 1968, the country was reeling from the assassinations of two powerful public figures who were anti-war and pro-civil rights. The democratic president in office was still fighting a war to which much of the country was opposed, and the choice of presidential candidates did not seem representative to the New Left. So the Students for a Democratic Society decided to make themselves heard at the Democratic National Convention.

      They gathered in Chicago for five days in August, where they were met with unexpected police brutality. The student protestors were tear-gassed, shot at, threatened, and beaten. Many sustained injuries, as physically blunt as they were politically stifling. Law enforcement in Chicago demonstrated the willingness and the ability to suppress democratic opinion, and the students – who had imagined a peaceful gathering akin to a drug-friendly music festival – were shocked. 

      Several “survivors” of the 1968 protests spoke at Thursday’s re-enactment, including Peter Butler, a reporter who covered the convention protests in Grant Park and Lincoln Park. Butler described 1968 as the year that everyone in the country underwent a “loss of innocence”. Even the media were overwhelmed by the actions of Chicago law enforcement during the week of the convention. No one in their homes had expected to be watching this sort of violent altercation on live television.

      John Schultz, author of No One was Killed and The Chicago Conspiracy Trial, defined it as a true “confrontation” between the war makers and those opposed to the making of war. He recalled the sensation of knowing that reporters and politicians (many of whom approved the continued occupation of Vietnam) were looking down from their hotel rooms in the Conrad, watching the physical meeting of the democratic populace and their repressive government. They watched as the police released tear gas and young people grew weak and nauseous, “puking over the side of the bridge.”

      As each speaker concluded and stepped down, reincarnations of the famed Chicago Eight took turns reading transcriptions from the event. Abbie Hoffman, Bobby Seale, Studs Terkel, and Allen Ginsburg were present in spirit through the young organizers of the event. These were passionate and surreal moments – particularly the point in the evening when “Allen Ginsburg” (Leyser) nominated a presidential ticket for the New Left: two live chickens.

      Students and adults alike waved signs that read “Make Love Not War”, “Drop Acid Not Bombs”, “Fuck It All”, “Peace Now”. Members of the crowd blew bubbles, tooted their whistles, and shared a hot stew provided by Food Not Bombs. 

AUGUST 28, 2008

      The group that gathered in Grant Park 40 years after the SDS protests was difficult to define. There were the old hippies, the old New Left, the new younger Left, the intellectuals, the artists, the reporters, and the students. Next to me, sitting on the ground in front of the makeshift stage area, were two girls around the age of 16 or 17. They each held one side of a sign, which they picked up from the organizers and had not read. While one examined her fingernails, the other talked on her pink cell phone, saying audibly at one point, “yeah, we’re at, like, a protest.”

      I recalled my own experiences at that age, most certainly my first moments of exposure to the wider world and the end of a childish innocence, and I wondered what these girls would take with them from this experience. Marilyn Katz, in a recent interview, recalled the moment she decided she “couldn’t just write about history, [she] needed to make it.” Would these girls – after hearing so many personal recollections and re-readings of speeches from those five historic days of protest – make that same choice? Would they see this as their fight, or would they find their own cause?

      On Sunday evening, Warfield and I had discussed the connection he felt to the DNC protestors. “I think what happened during that week in Chicago in 1968 was a pretty revolutionary moment… protestors were operating at the end of a bayonet, passions were running extremely high, and a lot of things came into focus for people,” he said. “I don’t think there are very many of those moments.” 

      For me, the value of the re-enactment was not as much an inspiration to become a public actor as it was a reminder that the demons of our history are still present. There was a moment earlier that afternoon when I “got it” – just as Hamlett thought people would “get it” – hearing the shouts and cheers of the group as we crossed the pedestrian bridge toward Michigan Avenue. In the muggy heat of the August afternoon, surrounded by a buzz of historical and present-day politics, I realized I was no longer skeptically questioning the intentions of re-enactment. My mind was flooded with a new set of questions. Suddenly, I was engaged in the skyline, the music we were making, the text messages my peers were typing, the numbers of women around me – all these things that had changed so significantly over 40 years.

      Indeed, the very definitions of protest and public space have changed, I thought. As the internet has made information and politics more accessible, we tend more often to neglect the value of public demonstration. I momentarily pondered whether this re-enactment was not just of the 1968 protests of the DNC, but of protest in general. Had this form of resistance become a relic? At the present day in age, is open air protest even accessible to the general public?

      Each of us has a unique understanding of history and of the role of past decades in our identity and our politics. The re-enactment of 1968 tapped an element of society with social and political sympathies for that era. Warfield, Hamlett, and Leyser share this passion with many other individuals – as evidenced by the evening’s solid attendance – and it has inspired these people to exercise their democratic rights to speech and demonstration.

      In St. Paul, Minnesota this week, protestors who shared a past- and present-day dissent toward foreign war attempted to protest the Republican National Convention and were tear-gassed and arrested in mass numbers. Suddenly, the question of what has changed and what has not is simpler that I realized. We literally saw a real-life re-enactment of the 1968 law enforcement practices, in what may become the inspiration for a new generation of activists. 

      Our ability to understand politics in a historical context is a valuable characteristic of our generation, and it is important to utilize our historical-identity politics to define goals for the collective. Ideally, my peers and I are not so much living in the past as we all are making the past part of our present, and part of the political discussion. The most important thing we can do is to reach out to each other with our message, and give a voice to those who are defining their passions.

      Again, I found a quote from Katz particularly relevant: “You’d better take the public space before the public space becomes non-existent,” she said. “You either create the space or it goes away.”