COV4 Statement about the 3/28/15 Pool Event
We send much appreciation to everyone who attended COV4 with special thanks to those who helped make the convergence a more safe, transformative, and accountable space. The COV4 organizing team would like to transparently address an event that happened at COV4 on Saturday evening by the hotel pool and clarify any misunderstandings and misinformation distributed via Twitter and other social media. We also want this to serve as an opportunity to build our collective capacity to hold political spaces under conditions of state violence.
“No Police” Agreement With Hotel Staff
As we are all aware, creating conference space given available options requires strategic, creative, harm-reductive and transformative work. For the COV4 organizing team and especially the local Chicago team, safety and healing justice plans included investing hours in relationship building with the Hyatt Regency McCormick Place staff. Before the conference started, the local COV4 team negotiated with and trained hotel staff so that they understood our safety and accessibility priorities, including our strong commitment to not call the police throughout the conference should an incident or emergency arise. As such, an agreement was made with the hotel to immediately contact the COV4 safety team before any calls to hotel security or the police. Throughout the weekend, the COV4 safety team (which consists entirely of Black people based in Chicago and other people of color, all invested in abolitionist QTPOC politics) responded to requests from the hotel during the hours of the conference, up to 2am.
Hotel Pool Event
On the evening of Saturday, March 28th, our safety team received a panicked call from the front desk manager, who is a queer man of color and who identified as a strong ally to the conference. He said that members of the hotel security team called the Chicago Police Department (CPD) on our participants because they were swimming topless in the public hotel pool and because the pool area was at more than double patron capacity. He also informed us that hotel security did not follow our previously negotiated terms about security not calling the police. Having the police called on anyone at or near COV4 was one of our worst case scenarios coming true.
Immediately after hearing what happened, three members of the COV4 safety team raced to the pool area. The hotel security staff informed us that we had 10 mins before CPD arrived. The safety team took that to mean that unless the pool area was emptied out, people would be arrested. Hotel security also told us the pool was officially closed and that the only option was for people to leave quickly. At this point, the safety team texted out to Cop Watch members and local social justice movement lawyers who have experience dealing with Chicago Police. Three lawyers -- one Black, one South Asian, and one white ally, all experienced police negotiators and police and prison abolitionists with over 15 years experience representing political prisoners and activists in the City of Chicago -- immediately began speaking directly with hotel security in an effort to de-escalate the situation and rescind the call to police.
Terrified by the possibility of any CPD involvement and understanding what this could mean given local Chicago experience with the CPD, the local safety team sent out an emergency text to all INCITE! national members and all COV4 national and local planning committees to come to the pool area to support our community in the event the police showed up. INCITE! and COV4 organizers at the hotel arrived within minutes and other members drove in from other parts of Chicago to support.
After requests for more support were sent, the safety team went inside the pool area to speak with our community members and related that -- “We need someone to quickly tell us what’s happening — we have spoken with hotel security who have said that the police will come in 10 mins or less and we are very worried.”
What we heard from people still in the pool area was that everyone was enjoying the pool and was chill until 4 white hotel guests complained to the hotel staff. People said that at this point, hotel security walked in and was racist, sexist and transphobic. We heard that the situation escalated and the hotel security staff threatened to call the police.
The COV4 safety team was mostly concerned that police were imminently arriving and asked if people would leave the pool area so that we could strategize the best method for holding the hotel security accountable and getting the pool time back without any clashes with police. (We already had experienced Black and Asian, trans and not trans Cop Watch volunteers outside the hotel and outside the pool area to document and attempt to de-escalate any potential police activity.)
Most people at that point had moved out of the pool area and into the adjacent fitness area. The security guards left the space and the front desk manager was present and explained that he had intercepted and canceled the CPD request and that the police were no longer coming. One of the lawyers then went to update COV4 attendees waiting outside in the hallway while the other two stayed in the pool area to witness ongoing discussions with hotel staff in case police showed up despite the canceled call and to offer support to conference participants in the pool area.
Community members who were present at the pool party asked to dialogue with the front desk manager about why they were asked to leave the pool. He engaged in dialogue with them for nearly 30 minutes. In addition to the efforts of the COV4 safety team, one of the conference attendees targeted by the hotel security actions held down a discussion with the front desk manager. This person helped negotiate the re-opening of the pool. COV4 safety team thanked this person, asked if they were okay, and if they needed anything. This person said they needed some time to take some breaths.
COV4 safety team members, along with COV4 participants with experience in safety interventions, convened throughout the evening to debrief the situation, engage in harm reduction strategies, and strengthen safety planning and legal defense to prevent any further harm to our community. A COV4 organizer stayed at the pool with other conference attendees until it officially closed at 10 pm.
During our COV4 safety team debrief we took action steps:
Missed Opportunities:
Apparently, there are some on Twitter creating or spreading a false story that COV4/INCITE called the cops. We hope this transparent accounting of what actually happened will motivate others to amend their incorrect or untruthful tweets.
The entire COV4 collective is extremely grateful for the quick response of the local Chicago safety team, who know intimately how violent and dangerous a call to the CPD is. We are also very grateful for our allies in Cop Watch, who responded and organized in the moment and who were very helpful in adding to our people power. We very much appreciate the attorneys who stayed on-call throughout the night, as well as other conference attendees who acted to de-escalate the situation and support people who were present. Finally, we thank those at COV4 who offered frank, constructive, and engaged feedback about this event.
Our goal is to support radical spaces in which there is mutual respect and accountability, as well as honest and humanizing dialogue even under the most intense circumstances. We are very open to continued feedback about how we could have handled things better and recommendations for the future. We have created a post-COV4 online survey for attendees and we encourage you to ask questions or offer feedback there or directly at cov4incite@gmail.com.
- COV4 Organizing Collective
We send much appreciation to everyone who attended COV4 with special thanks to those who helped make the convergence a more safe, transformative, and accountable space. The COV4 organizing team would like to transparently address an event that happened at COV4 on Saturday evening by the hotel pool and clarify any misunderstandings and misinformation distributed via Twitter and other social media. We also want this to serve as an opportunity to build our collective capacity to hold political spaces under conditions of state violence.
“No Police” Agreement With Hotel Staff
As we are all aware, creating conference space given available options requires strategic, creative, harm-reductive and transformative work. For the COV4 organizing team and especially the local Chicago team, safety and healing justice plans included investing hours in relationship building with the Hyatt Regency McCormick Place staff. Before the conference started, the local COV4 team negotiated with and trained hotel staff so that they understood our safety and accessibility priorities, including our strong commitment to not call the police throughout the conference should an incident or emergency arise. As such, an agreement was made with the hotel to immediately contact the COV4 safety team before any calls to hotel security or the police. Throughout the weekend, the COV4 safety team (which consists entirely of Black people based in Chicago and other people of color, all invested in abolitionist QTPOC politics) responded to requests from the hotel during the hours of the conference, up to 2am.
Hotel Pool Event
On the evening of Saturday, March 28th, our safety team received a panicked call from the front desk manager, who is a queer man of color and who identified as a strong ally to the conference. He said that members of the hotel security team called the Chicago Police Department (CPD) on our participants because they were swimming topless in the public hotel pool and because the pool area was at more than double patron capacity. He also informed us that hotel security did not follow our previously negotiated terms about security not calling the police. Having the police called on anyone at or near COV4 was one of our worst case scenarios coming true.
Immediately after hearing what happened, three members of the COV4 safety team raced to the pool area. The hotel security staff informed us that we had 10 mins before CPD arrived. The safety team took that to mean that unless the pool area was emptied out, people would be arrested. Hotel security also told us the pool was officially closed and that the only option was for people to leave quickly. At this point, the safety team texted out to Cop Watch members and local social justice movement lawyers who have experience dealing with Chicago Police. Three lawyers -- one Black, one South Asian, and one white ally, all experienced police negotiators and police and prison abolitionists with over 15 years experience representing political prisoners and activists in the City of Chicago -- immediately began speaking directly with hotel security in an effort to de-escalate the situation and rescind the call to police.
Terrified by the possibility of any CPD involvement and understanding what this could mean given local Chicago experience with the CPD, the local safety team sent out an emergency text to all INCITE! national members and all COV4 national and local planning committees to come to the pool area to support our community in the event the police showed up. INCITE! and COV4 organizers at the hotel arrived within minutes and other members drove in from other parts of Chicago to support.
After requests for more support were sent, the safety team went inside the pool area to speak with our community members and related that -- “We need someone to quickly tell us what’s happening — we have spoken with hotel security who have said that the police will come in 10 mins or less and we are very worried.”
What we heard from people still in the pool area was that everyone was enjoying the pool and was chill until 4 white hotel guests complained to the hotel staff. People said that at this point, hotel security walked in and was racist, sexist and transphobic. We heard that the situation escalated and the hotel security staff threatened to call the police.
The COV4 safety team was mostly concerned that police were imminently arriving and asked if people would leave the pool area so that we could strategize the best method for holding the hotel security accountable and getting the pool time back without any clashes with police. (We already had experienced Black and Asian, trans and not trans Cop Watch volunteers outside the hotel and outside the pool area to document and attempt to de-escalate any potential police activity.)
Most people at that point had moved out of the pool area and into the adjacent fitness area. The security guards left the space and the front desk manager was present and explained that he had intercepted and canceled the CPD request and that the police were no longer coming. One of the lawyers then went to update COV4 attendees waiting outside in the hallway while the other two stayed in the pool area to witness ongoing discussions with hotel staff in case police showed up despite the canceled call and to offer support to conference participants in the pool area.
Community members who were present at the pool party asked to dialogue with the front desk manager about why they were asked to leave the pool. He engaged in dialogue with them for nearly 30 minutes. In addition to the efforts of the COV4 safety team, one of the conference attendees targeted by the hotel security actions held down a discussion with the front desk manager. This person helped negotiate the re-opening of the pool. COV4 safety team thanked this person, asked if they were okay, and if they needed anything. This person said they needed some time to take some breaths.
COV4 safety team members, along with COV4 participants with experience in safety interventions, convened throughout the evening to debrief the situation, engage in harm reduction strategies, and strengthen safety planning and legal defense to prevent any further harm to our community. A COV4 organizer stayed at the pool with other conference attendees until it officially closed at 10 pm.
During our COV4 safety team debrief we took action steps:
- We asked for the white hotel security guards to be removed from staffing our conference. The hotel switched our point person to another man of color who worked for the hotel (head of security) who also supported the conference’s no police policy.
- We filed a grievance with our hotel event manager and front desk manager about the white security guards and their threats to call CPD.
- We expanded the COV4 safety team so that we could be on-call until 4am (instead of 2am).
- We spoke with numerous community members to hear how they were feeling and to let them know what we were doing in 1 on 1 conversations.
- We extended that night’s dance party from 1am to 2am and kept the party room open as a public space until 4am where community members could gather and have fun (to provide a space to relax and party and reduce the risk of complaints that could increase the chances of more clashes with security).
- The legal team was on-call until 3am and studied relevant statutes to be prepared to fight for people in the event of another police scare.
- We tweeted out that we were available for talking to anyone who wanted to about what happened and where to find us for more support.
Missed Opportunities:
- If we had had prior knowledge about the pool party, we would have created a specific safety plan & coordination for the event, or worked with the event manager to have a private pool party after hours.
- Better attention to and follow up with those most harmed by the hotel security action.
- We were not able to let everyone know we had filed a grievance or share the de-escalation processes taking place during and after.
- We were not able to follow up with people to let them know hotel security was forwarding all calls to us to handle internally until 4am.
- We should have framed the goals of the safety team from the beginning of the conference so people knew our mission and purpose was no cops—not to police our people.
- We now have a clearer understanding of the need to talk clearly about and prepare for the multiple meanings of safety, from personal safety in response to emotional triggers to systems responses such as the pool incident to the particular safety issues relevant to Chicago that might be understood by Chicago people but not those visiting Chicago.
- Given the national/international nature of the conference, we would have engaged in more national or cross-regional conversations and coordination about safety in preparation for the conference.
Apparently, there are some on Twitter creating or spreading a false story that COV4/INCITE called the cops. We hope this transparent accounting of what actually happened will motivate others to amend their incorrect or untruthful tweets.
The entire COV4 collective is extremely grateful for the quick response of the local Chicago safety team, who know intimately how violent and dangerous a call to the CPD is. We are also very grateful for our allies in Cop Watch, who responded and organized in the moment and who were very helpful in adding to our people power. We very much appreciate the attorneys who stayed on-call throughout the night, as well as other conference attendees who acted to de-escalate the situation and support people who were present. Finally, we thank those at COV4 who offered frank, constructive, and engaged feedback about this event.
Our goal is to support radical spaces in which there is mutual respect and accountability, as well as honest and humanizing dialogue even under the most intense circumstances. We are very open to continued feedback about how we could have handled things better and recommendations for the future. We have created a post-COV4 online survey for attendees and we encourage you to ask questions or offer feedback there or directly at cov4incite@gmail.com.
- COV4 Organizing Collective