Photojournalist repeatedly shoved by police while covering Chicago protest

Independent photojournalist Madison Swart was repeatedly pushed and bruised by Chicago Police Department officers while documenting a pro-Palestinian protest coinciding with the nearby Democratic National Convention on Aug. 20, 2024.

A small gathering of protesters, unaffiliated with and more militant than other groups that had organized larger demonstrations earlier in the week, converged around 7 p.m. outside the Israeli Consulate in Chicago’s West Loop section. The demonstrators and police, who far outnumbered them, clashed repeatedly. The protesters were later ordered to leave the area and police began arresting them, Block Club Chicago reported.

Swart told the U.S. Press Freedom Tracker that she was repeatedly shoved by officers who used batons or bicycles as they moved in to control the crowd and make arrests.

“They were just trying to push the press back from taking photos of them arresting the protesters,” Swart said. “They were just shoving us back with their batons very forcefully.”

She added that there appeared to be significant miscommunications and inconsistencies between the officers and in their directives toward the press. “A lot of them were telling us different things about where to go, and then we would go there and we would get in trouble for going where an officer had told us to go,” she said.

Ultimately, Swart was in the crowd when she said police surrounded them using a technique called kettling, which is often followed by mass arrests.

“I didn’t even realize that I had been pushed and wasn’t allowed to get out until I tried to,” Swart said. “The officers told me that I couldn’t go through and I was like, ‘OK, but I’m press, I’m just trying to get out.’ So one officer told me to go over to that side but when I did another officer said, ‘Nope, you’re all under arrest.’”

In a clip shared with the Tracker, Swart and multiple other journalists can be seen standing across the street from the consulate when she tells officers that press had been directed there. One of the officers reviewed their credentials and then allowed them out of the kettle, at one point telling someone, “Yeah, you look like press, come on down.”

While Swart said she was released relatively quickly, at least three journalists were arrested that night, and others were shoved or pulled by officers.

“There seemed to be a blatant disrespect of the press in general from the CPD, even going so far as mocking a lot of the press, which I’ve never seen before,” Swart said.

When reached by email for comment, the Chicago Police Department directed the Tracker to CPD Superintendent Larry Snelling’s news conferences during the DNC, declining to respond to questions about officers’ aggression toward journalists and attempts to revoke press credentials.

During Snelling’s Aug. 21 news conference, he said that the department wants journalists to be able to do their jobs, but highlighted that the press must comply with police orders and step to the side when officers move in to make arrests. “If you don’t do that, it’s obstructing us and it makes it harder for us to take the people into custody that we’re trying to take into custody. And what we don’t want is for you to get caught in the middle of it and injured and hurt,” Snelling said.