CHICAGO \u2014 The marchers had moved on, the chants had faded away, and the protest had ended. But Julie Wroblewski\u2019s job is just beginning.<\/p>\n
She walked carefully through a public park in this Midwest metropolis, combing over the flotsam left behind by the thousands of pro-Palestinian demonstrators who had crowded in hours earlier to denounce the nearby Democratic National Convention.<\/p>\n
She picked up placards and grabbed pamphlets, preserving history as it happened. During a hectic and momentous week here, her mission was vital but easily overlooked.<\/p>\n
Wroblewski\u2019s business card says she\u2019s the director of collections for the Chicago History Museum. In layperson\u2019s terms, she\u2019s an archaeologist of the present. If journalists write the first rough draft of history, Wroblewski is gathering material for the more polished version.<\/p>\n
In a city with a more explosive political convention history than anywhere else, museum professionals like Wroblewski have been hard at work this week, ensuring that a record of what unfolds inside and outside the United Center is documented for posterity.<\/p>\n
With the memory of the infamous 1968 convention hanging over the proceedings, Wroblewski and others have been considering what from the current moment could be important to museum visitors in the decades to come. As society\u2019s shared history becomes increasingly digital, living mostly on unstable and ephemeral formats, old-fashioned preservation work is even more important, she said.<\/p>\n
And while Wroblewski\u2019s profession might conjure images of quiet days spent amid dusty stacks of crumbling documents, it\u2019s intensely physical work. History happens outside, and the best way to record it is to see it up close.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf we just spent all our time sitting in the archives or behind the desk,\u201d she said, \u201cwe\u2019d end up with nothing in the museum, and history would have an end date.\u201d<\/p>\n
Wroblewski, 48, likes to call her job \u201cChicago History Museum CrossFit,\u201d and she\u2019s no stranger to 20,000-step days. That\u2019s especially true on weeks like this. The museum specializes in documenting social protest movements, so when big demonstrations erupt in the city, staff fan out to observe and collect.<\/p>\n
Earlier this week, Wroblewski arrived in Union Park, about a half-mile from the secured convention zone, as protesters wrapped up their rally and began a march. A police helicopter still thwapped overhead. She wore sturdy sandals, a dress and a hat with the word \u201cBooks\u201d stamped on it as she surveyed the detritus left behind.<\/p>\n
She was looking for artifacts that, in museum parlance, offered both \u201cevidentiary and informational value.\u201d Basically, does a given piece say something new about what happened at the event, who attended or the broader context in which it happened?<\/p>\n
But before she began, she offered a disclaimer: The items she collects, she said, are not meant to reflect a certain viewpoint \u2014 neither hers nor the museum\u2019s. Instead, she\u2019s looking to get a wide, representative range of perspectives.<\/p>\n
The first sign she pondered was glossy and official looking, stamped with the logo of the coalition that organized the demonstration. Along with \u201cEnd U.S. Aid to Israel,\u201d the sign called for \u201cCommunity control of the police now!\u201d Wroblewski considered it. The combination showed how many different causes were animating protesters, she explained, and she picked it up.<\/p>\n
The museum, a nonprofit founded in the 1850s, has a multistep process to decide what it will ultimately store in its collection. Because space is extremely limited, the choice is weighty.<\/p>\n
The next placard Wroblewski chose showed President Joe Biden, Vice President Kamala Harris and Secretary of State Antony Blinken with their eyes glowing like lasers, an homage to the \u201cDark Brandon\u201d meme popularized in recent years. The accompanying text accused the leaders of enabling the mass killing of Palestinian civilians.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis is very of its time,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
But Wroblewski wasn\u2019t just looking to acquire things. She wanted to make connections, too. She introduced herself to protesters and organizers, handed out her contact info and encouraged people to get in touch in the future if they\u2019d like to donate anything. The museum sees itself as a community resource, she said, and staffers want to distinguish it from institutions that have employed unethical or exploitative collection practices.<\/p>\n
One item she hopes will be donated: a handcrafted sign she\u2019d seen, shaped like a tank featuring the words \u201cWelcome to Chicago,\u201d evoking a placard with the same phrase seen in the \u201968 protests.<\/p>\n
The work can sometimes be maddening, especially when it feels like history is at risk of slipping away, either cast off by protesters or picked up by trash collectors.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere\u2019s probably a thousand things and a thousand stories or more that will end up in the trash because there\u2019s only so much you can collect,\u201d Wroblewski said. \u201cYou have to know that you\u2019re not getting everything, but you keep trying to do as much as you can.\u201d<\/p>\n
By the end of the week, her haul included five signs, three fliers highlighting the suffering in Gaza, a leftist magazine, a spoofed copy of the New York Times that accused world leaders of war crimes, and three dozen reference photographs of stickers, graffiti and other items too cumbersome to collect on the spot.<\/p>\n
Wroblewski and her colleagues aren\u2019t yet sure how they will display the material they gather from this week, but they hope to feature it as an exhibit, conduct an oral history project and make as much available for future researchers as possible.<\/p>\n
Until then, it will live in the storage rooms of the Chicago History Museum, a stately building of brick and glass that sits near the shore of Lake Michigan.<\/p>\n
On the museum\u2019s second floor, a newly opened exhibit called \u201cDesigning for Change\u201d showcases protest art from 1960s and \u201970s social movements in the city, including around the bloody Democratic National Convention in 1968.<\/p>\n
\u201cMuseums are the places that maintain our public record,\u201d said Charles Bethea, its director of curatorial affairs. \u201cWhen we\u2019re living through events, people have a different lens. Only time allows you to step back and analyze it from every angle.\u201d<\/p>\n
At a moment when debates about history \u2014 how it\u2019s told and from whose perspective \u2014 are fracturing so many parts of civic life, institutions like museums are especially vital, Bethea said.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s almost as if there are only a handful of professions that are the last bastions of truth,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Down the hall from the \u201cDesigning for Change\u201d exhibit is the museum\u2019s permanent 1968 installation, an arresting wall featuring pins worn by protesters, a battered Chicago police helmet and a looping video recapping the violence in and around the convention. While protests this week remained largely peaceful and never approached the mayhem of 1968, the parallels were still striking.<\/p>\n
On Wednesday afternoon, a couple of Democratic delegates from New Jersey wandered into the exhibit and stood in front of it, transfixed.<\/p>\n
\u201cI was born in 1967, one year before this happened,\u201d said Della McCall, from the city of Paterson. \u201cAnd here I am, 56 years later.\u201d<\/p>\n
She was in town to nominate a barrier-breaking candidate, and even though it\u2019s far too soon to know how this week will be viewed in another half-century, one thing is certain, McCall said.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re witnessing history,\u201d she added, \u201cright up close and personal.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
CHICAGO \u2014 The marchers had moved on, the chants had faded away, and the protest had ended. But Julie Wroblewski\u2019s job is just beginning. She walked carefully through a public park in this Midwest metropolis, combing over the flotsam left behind by the thousands of pro-Palestinian demonstrators who had crowded in hours earlier to denounce […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":8460,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8459","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8459","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8459"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8459\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/8460"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8459"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8459"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8459"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}