CHICAGO (WBBM NEWSRADIO) — Fourteen members of a group protesting the war between Israel and Hamas Monday night in the Loop were arrested, and the lead organizer has questioned the constitutionality of those arrests.
It was the 33rd time in six months that protesters, organized by the U.S. Palestinian Community Network, have marched downtown.
This one was different, according to Hatem Abudayyeh, the network's national chairman. Police, he said, roughed up some of them.
"We hadn't experienced that at all in six months," Abudayyeh said. "We know that the police can be violent. We've seen them be violent before, in fact, last night we made the comparison to the violence that the police perpetrate against the Black and brown communities in this city all the time. They didn't kill anybody last night, but they attacked people."
The demonstration was among many that took place across the country on Tax Day, in which protesters criticized the use of tax dollars on the war.
Abudayyeh said they're escalating the protests, much like what a different group did when they shut down the expressway near O'Hare Airport during rush hour on Monday morning.
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