Bricks did not mysteriously appear in Chicago before the Democratic National Convention

For years, social media users have been laying down a foundation of misinformation — brick by mysterious brick. Now, with the Democratic National Convention in full swing, some social media users are again making baseless claims about piles of bricks, assertions that began more than four years ago. 

In mid-August, multiple X users reposted videos of a person discovering pallets of bricks outside of a hospital and asking about their purpose. "Pallets of bricks left all over the streets of Chicago before DNC," the caption of one post says, and then referred to the Black Lives Matter movement and George Floyd, an unarmed Black man whom a Minneapolis police officer murdered in 2020. "Just like how brick pallets were seen all over the streets of Los Angeles right before the BLM Floyd riots."

The same video was shared Aug. 21 on Instagram, claiming to be taken recently. 

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(Screengrab from X)

But the video was not taken during the 2024 Democratic National Convention, which has been taking place in Chicago from Aug. 19 to Aug. 22. The video was posted on TikTok in June 2020 and taken outside of the Ascension Saint Elizabeth hospital in Chicago, more than 2.5 miles away from the United Center, the DNC’s main programming venue.

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PolitiFact rated a similar claim False about pallets of bricks being found near locations of DNC-related protests.

A spokesperson from the DNC Joint Information Center, a coalition of law enforcement agencies that coordinate convention security and safety, told PolitiFact in an email Aug. 20, "Earlier reports of brick pallets were unsubstantiated and confirmed to have been false." 

The posts also say that bricks were found near Black Lives Matter protests in 2020 to incite violence. PolitiFact fact-checked those claims in 2020, finding that officials in cities across the U.S. said there was no connection between pallets of bricks and Black Lives Matter protests. 

Some of those brick piles were for planned construction sites or had been there before Black Lives Matter demonstrations began, NBC reported in 2020. 

Pro-Palestinian protests during the 2024 DNC have taken place near the United Center. We found no credible reports of bricks being used during those protests. 

We rate the claim that pallets of bricks were left all over Chicago’s streets before the DNC False. 

PolitiFact Contributing Writer Caleb McCullough contributed to this report.