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Chicago’s been at the center of many major movements, from the 1886 push for an eight-hour workday to the recent pro-immigration rallies. But how can an organization ensure its protests have similar success and aren’t just weak gatherings of pot-smoking wanna-be radicals with poorly scrawled signage? We asked University of Chicago poli-sci prof Cathy Cohen to offer insights into how people can effectively assemble, and examined past Chicago protests that best put these tactics to work. Just think: If one group employed all these strategies at once, it could build a no-fail, überprotest capable of world domination! Or, at the very least, social change.
Mobilize big numbers.
The size of your crowd has a huge bearing on the cause’s perceived importance. “When you call something the ‘Million Man March,’ ” Cohen says, “you better get a million men there.” By that standard, the pro-immigration rally held in Chicago on May 1, 2006, was a resounding success. United against the Sensenbrenner bill in the U.S. House (that would’ve made illegal immigrants and their employers felons), hundreds of thousands of people nationwide skipped work that day to march. The biggest march happened here, where Latino, Asian, European and other immigrants hit the streets, then gathered in Grant Park. An event six weeks earlier had drawn 100,000 demonstrators, so Chicago police prepared for 300,000 this time around. Far more showed up: Even police estimates (which are often low) tallied nearly 400,000 people at the peaceful march and rally. And that Sensenbrenner bill? It didn’t pass Congress.
Entice rookies to join your rally.
“When you bring people who aren’t a part of the process into the political process…that should make people take note,” Cohen says. A recent example is a series of antiviolence rallies made up of Chicago Public School teenagers, who spoke out against a wave of deadly gunfire at their schools. Organized by South Side community activist and priest Michael Pfleger, the largest rally so far occurred downtown on April 1, drawing Mayor Richard M. Daley, Gov. Rod Blagojevich—and 1,000 students chanting, “We want futures, not funerals!” Those new voices offered ideas beyond gun-control laws: They called for more after-school and job-training programs to give teens alternatives to gangbanging. Blagojevich championed those ideas in a $150 million Community Investment Works proposal last week.
Get air time on network news.
Social protests that nobody documents fall flat. In terms of media saturation, it’s hard to beat the 1968 Democratic National Convention protests. The effects of that week are still debated; some historians believe the demonstrations secured Republican Richard Nixon’s election. But there’s no doubt extensive media coverage made an impact. One senator denounced police “Gestapo tactics” at the convention, and the federal Walker Report later that year dubbed it a “police riot.” The antiwar protesters’ now-ubiquitous chant in the face of police violence—“The whole world is watching!”—became a buzz phrase during that turbulent era.
Spread ideas far and wide.
When other groups “see what you’re doing and replicate it—that’s the beginning of a social movement,” Cohen says. Although better known today in Mexico than in the U.S., Chicago’s Haymarket massacre became the rallying symbol of a worldwide labor movement. An 1886 May Day parade down Michigan Avenue to support an eight-hour workday kicked off a citywide workers’ strike, but an initially peaceful May 4 rally at Haymarket Square in the West Loop led to dozens of deaths after someone threw a bomb and police opened fire. At that point, the labor movement had martyrs, which sparked outrage worldwide. It took decades before the U.S. legislated eight-hour days, but May Day was celebrated as early as 1890 around the world in remembrance of Chicago’s fight for workers’ rights. Even today, Haymarket’s legacy echoes, with pro-immigration organizers choosing May 1 as their rally date.
Innovate with art and street drama.
“Clearly you want lots of people there,” Cohen says, “but then you want to make a dramatic emotional impact.” Many antiwar groups dramatize the human cost of war in Iraq by mimicking the “die-ins” that started in the Vietnam War era.
