A few hundred people gathered Saturday night near Mayor Lori Lightfoot’s Logan Square home to protest the city’s handling of a demonstration the night before in Grant Park that saw clashes between police and activists.
The demonstration, which began forming about 7 p.m., eventually grew to include more than 200 people protesting at Fullerton and Kimball avenues in a peaceful but at times tense, standoff with officers.
As of 11 p.m., Chicago police had reported no arrests. Shortly after, protesters turned away from the intersection and marched east on Fullerton.
“We want everyone to get home safely,” one activist said of the decision to stop for the night.
Earlier at the demonstration, a woman read an excerpt from Emma Goldman’s “Anarchism and Other Essays” to the crowd. The woman, who declined to give her name, said she joined the demonstration to stand in solidarity with people fighting against oppression.
“I’m tired of being a person of color, overeducated, and having to wake up every day and watch the patterns and habits of ... ignorance that is swallowing our lives,” she said.
At other moments, demonstrators danced to music in the street, linked arms in their own barricade against a line of police and shouted at officers with calls for the city to “defund the police.”
Activists decried the clashes between police and protestors Friday night when an attempt to pull down a statue of Christopher Columbus in Grant Park resulted in violent clashes with officers who were defending the statue and trying to disperse the crowd.
Among those injured was 18-year-old Miracle Boyd, a member of the community anti-violence group Good Kids Mad City, who had organized the protest. Video showed an officer punch Boyd as she appeared to be backing away, resulting in her losing a least one tooth.
Mayor Lightfoot described the reports of excessive force as “unacceptable” in a statement but also reprimanded some of the participants of the protest, who she said came with cans and water bottles to throw at officers.
