Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker on Sunday dismissed concern that the anti-Israel protests at the Democratic National Convention (DNC) would rise to the level of the 1968 chaos when Chicago hosted the convention decades ago at the height of the Vietnam War.
“It’s a whole different ballgame. Here we are, you know, 56 years later — we’ve got a very, very different situation,” Pritzker told CNN host Jake Tapper. “The Democratic Party, honestly, has coalesced around this candidate. That was not the case in 1968. We’ve got — policing is all different now, and we’ve got technology at work.”
“And, really, the protesters are protesting something that is very far away from here. Very important, but it’s not about people getting drafted from here, going abroad,” he said. “So it’s a whole different situation. And, honestly, I expect that we’re going to have peaceful protests. We’re going to protect the protesters but also protect all the people visiting — 50,000 people coming to Chicago and the residents of Chicago. So I — a plan has been in place for a year and a quarter now already. We’re going to execute on that plan in the next four days.”
Tapper noted that one of the organizers called Behind Enemy Lines, a leftist, anti-imperialist protest group calling on its supporters to shut down the DNC, has urged supporters to make bruises from Chicago police batons the 2024 back to school fall fashion.
“You guys prepared for that?” Tapper asked.
“If there are troublemakers, they’re going to get arrested and they’re going to get convicted,” Pritzker. “But the fact is that the vast majority of people who are protesting, and we’ve seen this before, are, you know, peaceful protesters. They want to have their voices heard. They’re going to be heard, no doubt about it. And we’re going to protect that.”
Chicago businesses around the convention center have boarded their windows in anticipation of riots similar to those seen in 2020 following the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis.