Sometime between 8 and 8:30 PM on March 20, attorney Patrick Donnell was heading home from the Loop on a northbound 147 bus. A police officer stopped the bus at Chicago and Michigan and told the driver he’d have to take a different route. Donnell looked out the window and saw several more officers milling around the intersection. Wanting to know what was going on, he stepped off the bus.
Graham says one officer blurted out while restraining him, “All of you fuckers ought to be sent to Iraq. We’ve got guys dying over there today.” Graham says that when he asked why he was being arrested the officer responded, “You ought to see what you fuckers have done to this city.”
Nicotera, Graham, and Slive say the reactions of the drivers varied widely. Some were curious, some irritated. Others honked in support and flashed peace signs. The three activists also say that the police were cooperative, moving ahead of the marchers to stop traffic. But Graham, who’d attended a couple of smaller marches before the war, thought something was off. “This was the first march I’ve been to where the full route was not divulged,” he says. “People kept asking each other, ‘Where are we going?’ ‘Is this the end of the march?’”
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Graham says he worked his way to the front of the crowd, told the police he wanted to leave, and asked what direction he should go. He says he got no response. “There was zero march leadership at this point,” he adds. “No direction whatsoever.” He saw that the police weren’t preventing people from going north, but he needed to get back downtown to catch a Metra train. He decided to wait to see if he could go straight south.
Graham says he again told the police he wanted to leave and was told to go back to Lake Shore Drive. He was relieved, thinking he was finally going home.
Graham says that at first the police seemed intent on arresting only people they thought were leading the protest. “They would break formation and go deep into the crowd, targeting anyone with a loudspeaker, people with drums,” he says. “It seemed to be very methodical.” But he says the police lines kept closing in, pushing protesters into an ever tighter crowd. “Once it became clear that everyone was going to be arrested, I asked as many people as possible if an order to disperse had been heard. Nobody had heard one.”
