Back in the spring, the die was cast: Chicago was picked to host the 2024 Democratic National Convention. According to the pundits, the convention will showcase Chicago to the nation, the city’s economy will get a much-needed shot in the arm and the convention will shore up the Midwest’s “blue wall” for Joe Biden.
Settle down. Let’s not get giddy. And here’s a story to ponder:
In the early 2000s, I taught at Truman College in Uptown. Night classes on how to produce a college-level research paper were my favorite, as the students were older, fairly hip and often insightful.
For our text, we read Mark Kurlansky’s “1968: The Year that Rocked the World.” In response, my students wrote their research papers based on some historical event, literary work or film from the ‘60s. I chose that subject matter as I saw that many of the social and political problems of that decade — student revolt, racial unrest and an ongoing foreign war — brewing up again.
On the last day of a summer night class, we watched Haskell Wexler’s classic Chicago film “Medium Cool” from 1969. Afterward, one of the students, an older gentleman from India, asked, “Will it all happen again?”
Before I relate my reply, let me digress. Filmed during the summer of 1968, “Medium Cool” captured the issues, energy and violence of the era, from the assassinations of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and Bobby Kennedy to that year’s violent Democratic National Convention here in Chicago.
At one point, Wexler took one of the film’s actors, Verna Bloom, and filmed her in real time amid the police violence against the anti-war protesters who had gathered in Grant Park. The film also captured the mantra of the year: “The whole world is watching!”
To return to the gentleman and his question, I replied that unfortunately, yes, the turmoil of 1968 would likely happen again, as we never seem to learn from the past until it’s too late. I also regretted that we would probably be caught up in various movements, as in 1968.
As the class seemed puzzled by this, I told them a story from one night at the start of that sultry summer semester. After class had ended at 9 p.m., I was out of the building and on the steamy Wilson Avenue Red Line platform by 9:15, heading south to 69th and State to catch my bus home.
At the 69th Street station, a Black woman, gaunt and haggard, hurried past me and a few others at the bus stop. She had three young children with her, and they all looked hungry. As for her age, she might have been a decade younger than me. Had she been born in 1968?
She stopped and asked us for spare change, but we ignored her. Myself included, I’m sad to say. I watched her as she headed toward the McDonald’s across from the Red Line station, her three charges following her in a ragged line.
When I paused, the class again seemed puzzled, waiting for a connection. And so, echoing our class’s historical focus, I gave it to them. Where was the women’s liberation movement for her? A Black liberation movement? A Poor People’s Campaign, like the one that marched on Washington in May-June of ‘68?
After another pause, I continued. Movements can draw attention to social problems; they can raise one’s consciousness, but they often don’t bring about lasting change for the people who need it most. I then posed a question to them: Had the hopes, dreams and even anger for change that the ‘60s embodied come to pass? Silence.
Finished, I collected their research papers and thanked them for a memorable class.
And so here we are in 2023, thinking of all the good that will come our way in the third week of August 2024. And like in the ‘60s, we are a nation of movements, with a new generation of protesters advocating for Black Lives Matter, defunding the police, LGBTQ+ issues, abortion rights and anti-gun legislation.
On the other side are their polar opposites, along with pro-Trump zealots, Biden-election deniers, and the anti-books, anti-science, anti-government types. And all are angry, and they all have smartphones with GPS apps that show that, like in 1968, all roads lead to Chicago.
The whole world will be watching.
John Vukmirovich is a Chicago-area writer and book reviewer.
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