This browser does not support the Video element.
Protesters gather near Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot’s home
Protesters gathered near Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot's home on Saturday night.
CHICAGO - 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 “Anarchist 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.”
Some of the protesters said they were at the clash on Friday night with police at the Christopher Columbus statue in Grant Park. There, 18 officers were injured and 12 protesters were arrested.
Activists said video shows a Chicago police officer punching an 18-year-old woman in the mouth.
Other video provided to Fox 32 News seemed to show protesters throwing objects at police. In that video, some protesters were carrying umbrellas, in an apparent attempt to protect themselves from the projectiles.