Chicago Police Attack Queers at Bash Back! written by Max Montana

Chicago Police attempt to re-enact Stonewall by rioting against queers. On Saturday night, May 30th, a group of approximately 100 queers disembarked the red line train at the Belmont stop into Chicago's Boystown area. Intending to march around a bit, the crowd found themselves too large to fit on the sidewalk (especially in an area where bars are frequent and patrons and tables spill out the front doors). Most of the crowd moved into the street, walking around cars and allowing cars to pass in the middle.

A few blocks down, the crowd took a left turn, and the police showed up from behind. In attempting to get their cars around the crowd, they repeatedly ran into people's legs, in some cases knocking the victim onto the hood of the car, then slamming on their brakes to cause the person to fall to the ground.

During this time a few queers at the back of the crowd moved one newspaper box and one trash can (without spilling the trash) into the road in front of cop cars. A few other queers, yelling things like "no!" and "this is nonviolent!" moved the items back to the sidewalk (see sibling article, "What Happened at BashBack?" for more details on this incident).

[ Note: In my opinion this was fucked up and endangered people in the street by providing a clearer path for the cops to attack and target people from behind, which is what happened. Discomfort with certain tactics is totally okay, but in these situations please disengage and direct your energies to something you feel more comfortable with, separate from the other action!!! Damn. ]

As a few cop cars got to the front of the crowd. The first car in the line stopped and the cop jumped out and ran at the crowd, which parted down a residential side street. The cop stopped, shook his baton at the crowd, then went back to his car. The first few cars followed the crowd onto the side street. More cops parked and began running into the crowd, grabbing queers seemingly at random (although they did catch a high percentage of non-gender-conforming folks) and proceeding to beat them with batons and extendable asps. At this time, there was a scream from the middle of the crowd, and then people shouting, "he just ran her foot over!" The patient was helped out of the fray and a medic took over her evacuation.

During this time, at least 8 cops were involved in the beating of at least 10 queers in the crowd.