Chicago Black Friday Protest Meager Compared to Past Years

A small group of Chicago residents protested during this year’s Black Friday shopping day, but the mere one hour of protesting and the size of the crowd have dwindled compared to the past two years of protests.

Clearly, the whole concept of attempting to shut down Chicago’s “Magnificent Mile” shopping district has lost its allure for activists, as only about 100 protesters turned out Friday to demonstrate for just an hour before disbanding and giving up the fight.

For the third consecutive year, protesters gathered at Chicago landmark Water Tower Place shopping mall before walking south down Michigan Avenue to protest the Chicago police. As they marched, they chanted and yelled at shoppers entering and exiting the many stores in the heavily trafficked shopping area, the Chicago Tribune reported.

One shopper seemed relieved that there was not “really” anything going on. “When I heard them hollering, I said ‘let’s hope there’s nothing really going on,'” Constance Steele told the paper.

The marchers, however, were peaceful, and it does not appear they caused much disruption for retailers. Thus, this year’s march was a far cry from the last two years of protests that saw multiple arrests and violence, causing retailers to lose sales.

This year’s effort was understated, indeed, compared to last year. Last year, there were far more protesters, the protests lasted much longer, and the affair was raucous enough for police to arrest at least three demonstrators.

In 2016, the protesters bottled up shoppers on Black Friday for several hours, causing retailers to lose sales. Three protesters were also arrested after trying to block shoppers from entering the Crate & Barrel store on Michigan Avenue.

But 2016 was mild compared to the troubles protesters caused in 2015, the first year of the anti-police protest.

For the first Black Friday protest in the Windy City, hundreds of protesters shut down the Magnificent Mile shopping district for hours on end. Protesters linked arms in front of stores to prevent shoppers from entering, and the Chicago Police Department arrested about half a dozen on misdemeanor charges.

Worse, retailers reported that tens of thousands of dollars were lost to the protests. According to a 2015 report by the Tribune, stores lost between 25 and 50 percent of their normal Black Friday sales during the protests that year.

But with the 2017 protests now concluded, it is obvious that the whole scheme has resulted in diminishing returns and increasing disinterest, even among the protesters.

Follow Warner Todd Huston on Twitter @warnerthuston.