Hundreds of people gathered on Sunday to march in support of police near the Oak Brook Center mall:

King took to Facebook a few weeks back to recruit backing for a community march that would support police officers. She envisioned it as a kind of counterprotest — a response to the marches against police brutality that have taken place in the Chicago area and around the country in recent months…

The march stepped off from a parking lot at Oakbrook Center mall, moved south on Route 83, then headed east on 22nd Street, ending in a parking area on the other side of Oakbrook Center.

Marchers yelled “Go blue!” as they walked, and they held up signs that said “Blue lives matter” and “Blue protects, serves and defends us all.”…

Oak Brook police closed portions of Route 83 and 22nd Street to accommodate the march. Marchers expressed their thanks to the officers as they walked by.

Why is this setting particularly interesting? Here are a few reasons:

1. According to the Census, Oak Brook had 8,041 residents in 2013 and the median household income was $135,880.

2. Oak Brook Center is one of the largest shopping malls in the Chicago region and one of the more upscale.

3. The community has low crime rates.

4. According to Wikipedia, “it is home to the headquarters of several notable companies and organizations including McDonald’s, Ace Hardware, Blistex, Federal Signal, CenterPoint Properties, Sanford L.P., Tree house Foods, and Lions Clubs International.

5. The history of Oak Brook was influenced by one influential landowner: “It is sometimes referred to as Paul Butler’s realized dream. As the largest landholder, he had consulted with such experts as Robert Kingery of the Regional Planning Commis­sion, Carl Gardner Associates, and Garson Rohrback of General Planning & Research…A unique feature is the village-owned 270-acre Oak Brook Sports Core, purchased from Paul Butler in 1977 pursuant to a vote by the residents. The Sports Core now boasts an eighteen-hole golf course, bath and tennis club, polo fields, other recreational areas, all sup­ported by user-fees and available primarily to Oak Brook residents. The Sports Core was originally developed by Paul Butler, who was instrumental in bringing polo, the so-called sport of kings,” to the midwest. Mr. Butler, whose accidental death, the day after his 89th birthday in 1982, proved a great loss to the village, had always been an enthusiastic sup­porter of excellence in all fields of athletics. The Sports Core has over the years been the location of numerous fashionable benefit horse shows, international polo matches, golf tourna­ments and other events for which Oak Brook was noted long before it developed residen­tially and commercially.”

All together, Oak Brook is a wealthy suburban community with a significant retail and office base and a history connected to polo fields. If the recent protests regarding Ferguson and New York City are about police conduct and more broadly about race, Oak Brook, Illinois is (1) a community removed from these everyday concerns and (2) is exactly the sort of protected place that represents the white establishment. To hold a march in favor of police could be construed then as advocating for the status quo in Oak Brook and similarly safe and well-off places.

(An alternative explanation might be that Oak Brook is near multiple highways, making it easy for marchers to travel to the community.)