What is appropriate protest in a democratic society? There are many forms of dissent, including civil disobedience in which minor laws are broken, that Americans have come to accept over the decades as within the bounds of acceptable political expression. A masked mob gathering outside an individual’s home in the dead of night, beating drums, blowing horns and shouting hateful slogans isn’t one of them. Yet that’s what U.
S. Rep. Brad Schneider, the Democrat who represents much of Chicago’s northern suburbs, and his Highland Park neighbors endured from dozens who at around 3 a.
m. on June 29 to protest Israel’s war in Gaza. Highland Park police understandably weren’t staffed up at that hour to round up and arrest 40 demonstrators, even though they were unquestionably breaking laws.
We spoke with Schneider, who was home at the time, and what he described sounded harrowing indeed. Imagine being jolted awake at 3 a.m.
to the sights and sounds of a masked and angry mob right outside your doors. It wasn’t just Schneider who ended up targets of this mob. The neighborhood is predominantly Jewish, and once the rabble saw a sign in a neighbor’s yard that read, “We Stand with Israel,” they began yelling, “Zionists, go to hell,” the congressman told us.
Living close by is a 98-year-old woman, as well as a family with a baby, he said. So in many respects this wasn’t just an attack on a member of Congress for his policy positions. This was an attack on a neighborho.
