Voices Against Fear

It was one of those evenings when a city begins to breathe, even though everything looks as if it were holding its breath. At dusk, hundreds of people moved through the streets of Chicago – first one hundred, then five hundred, then eight hundred, and finally more than a thousand. They came together to protest the deployment of the National Guard and the immigration agency ICE – against a policy that sends uniforms into neighborhoods where neighbors once lived.

The people walked, no anger, no violence, but a determination that seemed almost silent. The demonstrators marched along Michigan Avenue, through the center of the city, in the shadow of Trump Tower. Tourists on a double-decker bus called out to them, cheered, clapped – small gestures of humanity that, in moments like this, act as signals: You are not alone. The crowd remained peaceful, even though the atmosphere was anything but. Only once did things get loud – a single counterprotester with a microphone who spoke about “illegal immigration.” The police stepped in, separated, calmed. No stone, no siren, no fist. Only the voices of those who no longer wanted to watch as their city became the backdrop of a political power play.

There were a hundred at the beginning. A hundred people gathering in the dusk by the Chicago River – exhausted, angry, undeterred. From a hundred came five hundred, from eight hundred a thousand, and finally more than two thousand. And for anyone who thinks that is too few, there is only one thing to say: You first have to find the courage to take to the streets under these warlike circumstances. We know what we are talking about. Those who go out on a night like this do so under the gaze of drones, under the threat of laws that declare every movement a danger. These people know what they are risking. But they also know that silence costs more than courage.

That evening, Chicago was not a city of steel and concrete but of backbone. A city that raised its voice because it no longer wanted to serve as a backdrop – not for the state of emergency, not for fear. And if someone says a thousand are too few, then the answer is simple: You first have to find the courage of those two thousand.