UDPATE: account from anarchoqueer reposted below.

Hundreds of people from across the Midwest and beyond attended the Bash Back! Convergence in Chicago May 28-31. Although reactions to the convergence vary greatly, agreement can be reached on one thing: Saturday night ended in what can only be characterized as an anti-queer police riot. After exiting a dance party at the Belmont el station, the crowd of over 100 soon came under attack from charging police cruisers. No dispersal order was given, but officers soon charged the crowd with batons and fists flailing. When it was over, four people were arrested and several hospitalized. With an international reputation of homophobia and brutality directed at queer and transfolk, the Chicago Police Department may be now be looking at yet another civil suit in the near future.

TCIMC is looking for more accounts from the convergence in Chicago. If you have something to share, please publish it (and we'll post a link here), or contact us. Thanks!

Read Below: Two accounts from Chicago Indymedia, Article from the Windy City Times, and more...

Index of Chicago anti-queer Police Brutality from the Gay Liberation Network: http://www.gayliberation.net/policebrutality/index.html

Amnesty International renews call for investigation into homophobic abuse by Chicago police officers (2001):
http://www.amnesty.org/en/library/asset/AMR51/092/2001/en/8f7fcfb9-d91d-11dd-ad8c-f3d4445c118e/amr510922001en.html

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Chicago IMC article posted the night of the action:

Police Brutality at Bash Back! Convergence

Just hours ago, a bunch of radical queers took to the streets in Boystown Chicago, singing chants and dancing to music being blasted through a boombox. Minutes after we started marching, cops showed up. We proceeded to march and wait for them to tell us to get out of the street. But they didn't. Instead they ran a police car into the back of the march, running over one person. Then they proceeded to run out of the cop cars with their weapons raised high and chase down whomever they could. Randomly picking some people out of the crowd, they beat them continuously, dragging them through the streets, pushing people down, etc, yelling faggots as they hit them.

As far as I could see 3 people were arrested, though it could have been four or five. The person who was run over by the police car was rushed to the hospital. Besides the fact that it is a clear case of police brutality, there are a few reasons why this was especially fucked up.

First of all. there were NO warnings at all. No sirens, no requests to get off the street. Just plain beatings and arrests.

Secondly, no one resisted, yet those targeted were being beaten and pushed around like they were.

Thirdly, this all took place in a completely public area at a very busy time of night. There were bystanders everywhere. Half the people that were chased down by the police were just neighborhood folk that were walking to or from downtown.

I don't know what to think or write about all this, but the Bash Back convergence starts back up tomorrow at 9am and I'm sure there will be plenty of good discussion.

Solidarity and good night.

Comment to CIMC article:

Saturday night's action began with an el train dance party. A group of 100+ radical queers boarded the a Southbound red line train to sing, dance and celebrate. The group then boarded a Northbound train and continued their party to the Belmont stop where they exited the train, still singing and dancing.
After heading out of the station, the group entered the street as a spontaneous march/dance party. They headed East on Belmont, passing several police who made no attempt to stop the festivities. Shortly after turning North onto Halsted, more police showed up and attempted to force the crowd onto the sidewalk with their cruisers. No demands were made and no sirens were turned on, the police simply began to drive into the group, running into several people in the process.
After it became clear that the police would continue endangering the still-partying crowd, several masked party goers dragged newspaper boxes into the street to hinder the advances of the police. Other individuals who were with the group then dragged the blockade back onto the sidewalk, assisting the police in corralling the crowd onto a dark side street.
Almost immediately, a person's foot was run over and broken by a police cruiser and several officers appeared with batons drawn. The police then attempted to arrest whomever they could grab while masked marchers successfully de-arrested several people.
Most of the crowd exited the street amid blows from the police in an attempt to quell the brutality. The police continued showering the group with baton strikes, however and injured at least 8. Several vehicles parked on the street were damaged when police missed people pinned against them and instead hit the hoods, trunks and windows of the cars.
The crowd quickly dispersed and made their way to safe(r) spaces to regroup.
In the end, 4 were arrested, charged with misdemeanors and released the next day on iBond. At least 8 were injured, including the individual whose foot was broken and another whose hand was broken by the police.

Article in Windy City Times
(downplays number of injuries)

Arrests on Halsted: Radicals Clash with Police
by Yasmin Nair
2009-06-03
Reports of an event on the night of May 30 have surfaced amidst rumors that a group of straight people marched through Lakeview's North Halsted Street, and then set upon and attacked a group of gay individuals. What is known is that a gathering involving a large group of people resulted in several arrests.

Windy City Times has spoken to several sources who were at or around the supposed events. The main participants involved in the event were participants in a three-day convergence organized by a local radical queer group Bash Back! Chicago. The event took place from May 29-31. This reporter was a participant in the convergence ( but not in the nighttime events of May 30 ) and spoke to fellow attendees as well as members of Bash Back! and eyewitnesses.

Preliminary reports indicate that there was no straight onslaught or march upon gays/queers. Instead, the people we spoke to indicate that the trouble arose between police and Bash Back! convergence attendees. The only reports of straight people marching down Halsted came from those who admitted to only having heard that on hearsay.

The Bash Back! convergence was organized around several workshops and caucuses. Workshop topics included the growth of the AIDS pharmaceutical industry and the effects of intellectual property rights laws; the politics of passing; the ex-gay movement; gentrification and squatting and confronting sexual assault in queer communities. There were also several caucuses designed for the transgender community, genderqueers and cisgender people. ( “Cisgender” refers to “someone who is comfortable in the gender he or she was assigned at birth. )

Following a full day of such meetings, a group of convergence attendees numbering from 100-200 got on the Red Line el. There were approximately two to three cars filled with this group and, according to several accounts, members engaged in a peaceful but celebratory party on the train. According to one Bash Back! member, who self-identified as “Leo,” there were dancing and chanting of slogans like “This train is for faggots only” and “One in Ten is not enough, recruit, recruit, recruit!” Leo said that while some people who got on the trains did get off upon seeing the large group, several also joined in on the dancing. Bill Dobbs, an activist based in New York City, was on one of the cars and was with the group as it rode the train all the way down to the 95th/Dan Ryan stop and then back to the North Side. The group disembarked at Belmont.

Dobbs emphasized that he was in the middle of the crowd and, therefore, not able to see everything. He said that the group was “excited, with high energy, but pretty orderly.” He also noted that “people came out of bars and restaurants to see what the excitement was about.” According to him and Leo, the group moved up Halsted, and traffic was “accommodating” in letting the group move by. At one point, four or five police cars appeared. Police officers emerged from the cars and began to corral the group down Cornelia into a dead-end street. According to Leo, “there were two police cars who sectioned the block off and pushed us into a dark street corner. I ran out of the block so as not to be trapped.” He said that he saw altercations between police officers and group members.

There have been consistent reports of at least one injury, sustained by someone when a police car apparently ran over their foot. Dobbs said that he saw two police cars, one behind the other, and the gap between them widened at one point. According to him, one of the cars sped up to make up the distance and then slammed on the brakes. He also said that he saw somebody being arrested on the ground, and two people being taken to a police van and that he believed the police had truncheons out. Dobbs added that “from what I could see, the police were very aggressive and even dangerous and quite possibly unprofessional.”

According to Dobbs, Leo and several reports from the convergence, there were four arrests. Leo said that, to the best of his knowledge, the charges ranged from resisting arrest to assaulting police officers. All four were released the next morning.

Both felt that the response of the police was, as Dobbs put it, “over the top, from what I saw.” He said that “the police did not at all give a calm response and were too aggressive,” and that he did not hear them say, “clear the street.” Another witness who was not part of the group was Gary Airedale, a member of the musical group Flesh Hungry Dogs, who was loading a truck with fellow members for a show at Hydrate, 3458 N. Halsted. He said, “I saw a bunch of guys marching on Halsted; I assumed it was a gay march but it wasn't really organized. I saw lots of cop cars herd them down Cornelia eastbound from Halsted. There may have been a skirmish, but it was too dark to see.” Taylor Ross was also present as the events unfolded and spoke to members of the group afterwards. His second-hand reports corroborate the accounts of Dobbs and Leo: that “the police headed them off onto Cornelia.” Ross said that he heard people “were good about videotaping and taking down police officers' information.” He also felt that “the police overreacted; the situation could have been diffused in an easier way.”

The Chicago Police Department did not return a call requesting details and its version of events.

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Chicago Police Attack Queers at Bash Back!
Chicago Police attempt to reinact 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).

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. They drug queers into the street and proceeded to hit them with batons, the queers falling to the ground in attempts to protect their heads. Reports tell of at least five successful unarrests as queers watched each other's backs. One queer, after very nearly escaping a very determined cop, was cornered against a building. The cop, waving his baton in the queer's face, kept repeating, "It's over, do you understand? It's over. Take your mask off." The queer, obviously feeling like it was not over, took advantage of a lapse of attention from the cop and took off again, successfully escaping into the crowd.

It appears that the most-targeted individuals were those who conform less to binary systems of gender. This was evidenced in the continued targeting of one of the eventual arrestees, when a cisgendered person put herself between the cop and his target and, instead of being hit, was told, "Move it!"

A summary of the injuries suffered by people in the crowd (not just the arrestees)- a broken big toe, bruised ribs (three people, one of which developed into pneumonia), bruised kidney, sprained fingers with accompanying infection, separated ligaments in the shoulder, soft tissue damage to the elbow, and uncountable bruises, cuts and scrapes.

In the end, four people were arrested, and spent the remainder of the night being harassed and tormented in the jail. At the holding facility, still in Boystown, the queers were mocked for their choices of hairstyle, questioned without being Mirandized, and threatened with rape ("you won't like it when we leave you in a cell with Tyrone. He'll sure like you though.")

Each of the arrestees, now called the Fabulous Four, is facing a misdemeanor charge of Aggravated Assault of a Police Officer with Hands/Minimal Damage. Three of them are also facing combinations of Obstructing Justice, Evading a Police Officer, Refusal to Obey an Officer, and Resisting Arrest. All of their charges can be summed up in layperson's terms as, "Refusing to Allow Self to be Arrested for No Reason." For that, we must stand behind the Fabulous Four and support them throughout their court process. It could have been any one of us that was there that night, but certain people, even in a crowd of queers, were targeted based on their appearance, and we need to unite behind them.

The first appearance (arraignment) of the Fabulous Four will be on August 7th in Chicago. More information to come about how to best support them will come in the future- at this point we are not sure who will need travel fees, or if the charges will just be dropped altogether, opening the way for a quick civil case. In the meantime, take this month of the anniversary of Stonewall to think about what liberation of queers means, and at what cost to our community it comes, and look for things you can do, either as a queer or as an ally, to support us in our quest.