This week I have a great movie recommendation on Netflix for you all. The Trial of the Chicago 7 is a Netflix film that depicts the real story of the Chicago 7. To understand why the 7 are on trial in the first place, you’re going to need some context. The 1960s were a tumultuous period of history during which dozens of different social, economic, and political issues were being contested and protested in public.
The Chicago 7 were made up of activists protesting the Vietnam War: Abbie Hoffman, Jerry Rubin, Tom Hayden, Rennie Davis, David Dellinger, Lee Weiner, and John Froines. The Vietnam War was a very controversial conflict which the U.S. had no clear motive for entering, other than the destruction of communism. The conflict began when the Viet Cong began to rebel against the French who had colonized Vietnam. America decided to step in because the rebelling Viet Cong were in support of a communist and socialist based government. The controversy arises because thousands of young Americans were drafted into this conflict, forcing them to fight and die for a conflict America has no clear motive to be in.
The Chicago 7 organized a peaceful protest in Chicago 1968 to take place during the Democratic National Convention as Hubert Humphrey (who did not support ending the war) was nominated as the democratic party’s nominee for president. Although the protests were intended to be peaceful, they were not given a permit from the city or a safe place to protest. Because of this and multiple confrontations with the police, the peaceful protests turned to violent riots.
As a result, Abbie Hoffman, Jerry Rubin, Tom Hayden, Rennie Davis, David Dellinger, Lee Weiner, John Froines, and Bobby Seale were all arrested on the crime of crossing state lines to incite a riot. If you read the names carefully, then you likely noticed that there are actually 8 and not 7 now. That is because Bobby Seale, the cofounder of the Black Panther Party, was present in Chicago during the protests and even made a speech. However, I have not found any research to indicate he helped organize the protests in any way, but nonetheless he was arrested for organizing a riot. The film makes this fact extremely clear and highlights the gross mistreatment Bobby Seale faced while a part of the trial.
The reason I’m writing about this movie is because it is very loud in the present moment. Despite peaceful protesting being a protected right under the constitution, our government and police have never had a good history handling protests nor keeping them peaceful. This movie speaks directly to the current Black Lives Matter movement which is protesting police brutality.
The Trial of the Chicago 7 makes clear the exact point I try to relay to people critical of any protest that turns violent. That point is that no matter how peaceful the organizers want the protest to be, often it is not up to the protesters to keep an event peaceful. It is up to the police overseeing the protest.
It is pretty common for tensions to run high during any protest, especially because the need for protesting is often injustice and unfairness. Protests are often directed at the mishandling of an issue by the government, so in some way nearly all protests are critical of the government. So when the government sends the police or the national guard whose interests both lie with the government, we can see how tension also runs among those overseeing the protest as well.
The national guard and police are meant to defuse any violent situations that may occur, but just by the nature of their interests and their job, they can and have beaten nonviolent protestors. So we have the police who are often the very embodiment of what is being protested, overseeing the protest and doing their usual police brutality thing, and we have the protesters who are there to fight such injustice. Now when those protestors go and start a riot we are all shocked.
The Trial of the Chicago 7 speaks on the injustice of the inherently negative narrative surrounding protestors. It also highlights the failures of our court and criminal justice systems then and now. The Trial of the Chicago 7 is a movie that cannot be disentangled from our present moment and I think watching it is key to understanding how peaceful protests actually function in the U.S.
Trigger Warning: this movie is very intense and shows on screen police brutality, sexual assault, and racially motivated violence. Some parts are very hard to watch, but it is unflinchingly reflective of our present moment.