For months, many analysts anticipated mass, violent protests reminiscent of the infamous 1968 DNC, which saw the climax of the 1968 anti-Vietnam War protests. However, those expectations were squashed when pro-Palestinian protesters failed to show up in large enough numbers to capture the media attention needed. Though dozens of arrests took place, the protests were a pale shadow compared to their 1968 counterpart.

While organizers expected tens of thousands of protesters to converge on the city, police officials said the number of protesters peaked at around 4,000, according to the Washington Post, well under half the peak of the 1968 protests. Compared with the 600+ arrests in 1968, police counted just 72 arrests this time around. One person was killed, and more than 100 injuries on the protesters and police sides were reported in 1968, compared to no deaths and very few, if any, injuries reported this time around.

Aside from the smaller number of protesters, a media spectacle was also averted by the increased police discipline. Much of the drama in 1968 revolved around over-zealous police and National Guard beating protesters and roughing up journalists. According to the New York Times, the Chicago Police Department spent several months ahead of this year’s convention training in de-escalation tactics, cognizant of the bad optics of the 1968 protests.

“Let’s stop talking about 1968,” Police Superintendant Larry Snelling said. “It is 2024.”

Protesters were also much more committed to peaceful gatherings in 2024, with most groups promising as much beforehand.

“We intended to have a peaceful, family-friendly march,” Faayani Aboma Mijana, spokeswoman for the March on the DNC coalition, told the Washington Post. “And that is what happened.”

The failure of significant numbers to show up could have also been shaped by the switch from President Joe Biden, who was cast as the face of United States support for Israel, to the more ambiguous Vice President Kamala Harris as the Democratic nominee. Though some groups have debuted the nickname “Killer Kamala,” they have struggled to connect her to the violence in Gaza as intimately as they did “Genocide Joe.”

“If President Biden would have remained at the top the ticket,” controversial Chicago city councilmember Byron Sigcho-Lopez told the New York Times, “I think that we would have seen not only 30,000, probably more than 30,000 people, outside protesting the president.”

In April, Sigcho-Lopez was among more than 450 left-wing activists who attended the “March on DNC 2024” meeting, where 75 different organizations planned how to disrupt the DNC convention. At the event, speakers outlined how to best carry out illegal actions, burned an American flag, and conspired to re-create the events of 1968.

Four months later, their plans came to nothing. Pro-Palestinian protests played only a marginal role, with the only notable event being a protester storming the DNC stage and shouting “Free Palestine!” well before proceedings began.