David Brooks and Jim Cason

Correspondents

The newspaper La Jornada
Sunday, August 18, 2024, p. 19

Chicago. Urban blues, the Chicago martyrs, the centuries-old struggles of immigrants, 68 and the Chicago Seventhe largest migrant marches of the century, the stock market where the life or death of agricultural producers worldwide is decided, Benito Juárez, the third largest Mexican city in the country, all facing a saltless sea – Lake Michigan – which will be the scene of the Democratic National Convention from the 19th to the 22nd of this month.

Suddenly, without any sign of warning and in the middle of a block that used to be a plaza, Haymarket Square appears, the birthplace of May Day, which honors the working class around the world – with the exception of the United States.

There is a rather strange monument there: faceless figures that record the events of May 4, 1886, when during a rally of the movement demanding to reduce the work day to eight hours a day – which had organized a mega-march of 80 thousand workers on May 1 – someone threw a bomb killing several policemen and civilians, for which several anarchist leaders were blamed, four of them tried and executed, and they were recorded in history as The Chicago Martyrs.

Symbol of the working class struggle

Plaques around the base of the monument, placed by labor unions and trade unions from various parts of the world, including one from the Authentic Labor Front of Mexico, others from labor federations in Germany, Argentina, France and one from the American AFL-CIO, with messages of proletarian solidarity, keep alive the ghosts of this site with contemporary relevance in the struggle and defense of labor justice here and the rest of the world.

It is also a reminder of the lives lost for the cause of work and offers a warning about the extremes to which oppressors against expressions of popular struggle can go, an aspect criticized by organizers of a protest march planned to take place outside the Democratic caucus.

Some point to parallels here in the summer of 1968, when the Democratic Party held its national convention here amid an increasingly unpopular war (Vietnam), nationwide student protests, and shortly after a Democratic president (Lyndon B. Johnson) dropped out of re-election because of the war.

In 1968, protests in Chicago by thousands against the war and for civil rights were violently suppressed, in an episode that some called a police riot, under the orders of a mayor and Democratic leader Richard Daley. Part of the repression was the famous trial of the alleged leaders of the protests who were dubbed the Chicago Seven.

But the mayor is now a progressive who graduated from the big teachers union, and the Democratic establishment is keen to avoid a repeat of ’68 – they lost the presidential election that year, it should be remembered – although some activists and journalists are nostalgic.

The convention will be held in a city that, on its own, would be the twentieth largest economy in the world. It is a city full of immigrant past – Poles, Italians, Germans, Irish, Puerto Ricans, Central Americans – but, above all, it is largely a Mexican metropolis. Mexican culture is imprinted throughout the city, from gastronomy to murals and plastic arts and, of course, in music. And there are statues of Benito Juárez in the center, the National Museum of Mexican Art; the federations and clubs of natives and the Mexican neighborhoods of Pilsen and La Villita, among others.

The Mexicanization Chicago has a complex history nourished by decades of migrants from Michoacán, Guanajuato, Jalisco and other states, to the point that today, one in five people in this city identifies as Mexican.

Internal migration from other parts of the United States has also shaped the city, particularly African Americans from the countryside of the South who came to the city’s industries. Chicago blues is a living manifestation of this migration, with rural acoustic blues born in the South plugging into urban industrial electricity. BB King, Buddy Guy (whose club is still running, sometimes with the icon in attendance) and others are part of the city’s sonic route.

Between the speeches and forums of the grand spectacle of the Democratic National Convention, and the protests outside, this city keeps its spirits up in the midst of difficult times, and insists that, despite everything that is suffered and endured, one must also celebrate another day of life, that is, here we know how to sing the blues.