I’m sure I’m stupid for not knowing, but how does one find out about demonstrations ahead of time?
I always see stuff on the news afterward, or hear about something the day before, when I can’t go.
Googling on “Chicago-area demonstrations” doesn’t do much except historical stuff.
Let me pre-empt the smartass comments - yes, of course I care about what sort of demonstration I’d be in. It’s just I’m trying to keep politics out of GQ and what issue doesn’t seem relevant.
To be legal, protests/marches/demonstrations usually need a permit. I’m not entirely sure which city office in Chicago handles demonstration permits, but I’m sure if you call city hall, they can tell you and you can find out who’s requested permits to demonstrate.
Here’s one of the mailing lists I’m on. In my experience, if you go to a couple of demonstrations and sign petitions, etc., you will end up on more e-mail lists than you know what to do with.
If the cause is sufficiently important to you to demonstrate publicly, then you need to decide if you are committed enough to join the Society for a Free Pangea, or not. This will involve paying some dues, and sadly, putting up with some folks who are more interested in throwing down their choice of villains than in actually freeing Pangea. In fact, the biggest problem is that half the people at the rally before the demonstration will actually be from the Pangean Women’s anti-defamation League, the Allied Coalition to Reunite Gondwanaland, People Against Techtonics, and other splinter groups. Their goals may be unlike your own.
After a while you will notice that the actual people working to free Pangea are a very small part of the public organization. The demonstration serves to raise the level of concern for the Pangean People, and hopefully, raise some money, as well.
At the very heart of it all is a small group, the Pangean Peoples Liberation Army. They have been doing it for decades; they don’t even talk much anymore. But they are the ones who decide when and where demonstrations will happen. They decide other things too, but those things don’t get published as widely. The publicity for the demonstrations is left to the more widely attractive factions and fellow travelers.
(OK, once, long ago, I was Minister of War for the Pangean Peoples Liberation Army. We decided that the People were best served by not having a war, and I dedicated my ministry to achieving that goal. Of course, as you no doubt have heard, I failed. I have since given up politics, and the statute of limitation now applies to all my prior political activity.)