Chicago police are bracing for yet another night of protests as demonstrators continue to march just blocks from where the final night of the Democratic National Convention is being held.
Thousands of pro-Palestinians have rallied in the area throughout the week, as they voice displeasure with Democratic leaders who support U.S. aid to Israel. While the demonstrations have remained mostly peaceful, dozens of people were arrested Tuesday when protesters clashed with police near the Israeli consulate.
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Scripps News has been on the ground monitoring the protests all week long and caught up with one of the protest organizers, who said they weren't concerned about agitators attempting to disrupt the march.
"I'm not worried about that stuff," said Faayani Aboma Mijana, spokesperson for March on DNC. "What I'm worried about is this march that we're having. We're having a march with many thousands of people. We're protesting a genocide that the Democratic party leadership is responsible for and we want to tell them that we're not with it. That's what I'm focused on."
Cook County is home to a large Palestinian population, and the crowds were made up of people of all ages, some old enough to have been around in 1968. That's when a Democratic convention here gave the city a black eye over police clashes with Vietnam War demonstrators.
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Mirroring that same anti-war movement of more than half a century ago, Mijana told Scripps News that an end to the war in Gaza is the protesters' biggest pressure point on the Democratic delegates attending the DNC this year.
"The Democratic party has made its position known with regard to this genocide, but that's why we're out here," Mijana added. "We're out here to force them to do what we want. We're mobilizing people. We're building a movement to pressure them to end U.S. aid to Israel. That's our focus."
