ABC news in Chicago reported tonight, August 7th, that Behind Enemy Lines had been included in a  DNC “threat assessment”. While we resent being called leftists, we’re grateful to ABC for putting together a pretty good hype video, but need to clear up the sloppy reporting and breathlessly repeated lies from law enforcement: Behind Enemy Lines has never, and does not call for “targeting” people with anything other than protest. The “fracas” at the United Center in May was Behind Enemy Lines protesting a DNC recruitment event, we were not “intruders”, the event was open to the public. No one grabbed any microphones (Chuck, there’s a video, on our own Instagram, there was no microphone!), no one, other than members of our group were “pushed or assaulted”, and no one “fled”, we were forcibly removed. 

This threat assessment is a lie, consistent with a pattern of hyperbolic lies spun by the DNC and their promoters including Brandon Johnson aimed at demonizing protesters. The real threat to people in Chicago comes from the CPD, the FBI, and the dozens of out of town police departments that the DNC and Johnson are welcoming to Chicago to subject Chicagoan’s to increased levels of repression and surveillance from trigger and baton happy cops. In Milwaukee during the RNC, it was an out of town cop who killed a man during the convention. 

At the time we staged our brief disruption in May, the death toll from the Gaza genocide was estimated at over 40,000. Today it’s estimated at more than 100,000. It was grotesque for the DNC to ask children to volunteer at a convention celebrating that genocide, and it’s grotesque to welcome Genocide Joe and Killer Kamala, the butchers of Gaza to Chicago. It was right to disrupt that volunteer event, and it’s right to do everything possible to shut down the DNC.