Memorial Blockade: A Love Letter to Communities Resisting Police Violence
Toting a number of large gift-wrapped packages, a group of 16 Chicagoans walked into a crosswalk in the city’s financial district on December 15. After strolling into a formation that stretched from one side of Congress Parkway to the other, at the mouth of the Eisenhower Expressway, they unwrapped the packages, revealing a set of lockboxes – blockade devices that attach protesters to one another as they attempt to hold space – and locked themselves together. The lockboxes were unusually ornate, with white lights and paper and cloth flowers woven throughout their surface area. Once a box connected each person in two human blockade lines, the equipment was illuminated, and a disruptive vigil for Chicago’s fallen began.
I was one of those protesters.