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Chicago Denies Parade Permit for NATO Summit Protest
Police 'training for urban warfare'
UPDATE: The City of Chicago has denied a parade permit for the Coalition Against NATO/G8 to protest the NATO summit -- after granting a permit to the very same group to march against the now relocated G8 summit. The parade application was the same as the one the city approved for a Saturday, May 19 protest against the G8 summit, which President Obama has now moved from Chicago to the remote presidential retreat at Camp David, Maryland.
Mayor Rahm Emanuel — who has had a battle of words over protest restrictions with activists since the original plans to host the G-8 and the NATO summits were announced last year — has repeatedly insisted that protesters’ First Amendment rights will be respected. But the Chicago Department of Transportation says that are not enough police to both regulate traffic and protect lawful protesters for a Sunday, May 20 NATO protest. The city proposed an alternative route away from McCormick Place, where the NATO Summit is being held. The Coalition Against NATO/G8 rejected the proposal Monday, but is open to negotiating an alternative route with the city.
The Chicago Tribune reports:
After approving a parade permit for a group protesting the G-8 and NATO summits in Chicago, the city has denied an identical application by the same group seeking to move their parade one day later in the wake of the White House’s decision to move the G-8 conference.
The demonstrators asked to move their march from Saturday, May 19, after word came that the G-8 meeting scheduled to start that day had been moved by President Barack Obama to Camp David. The protesters filed a permit that was identical to the one the city approved for Saturday, except the date of protest was moved to Sunday, May 20, when the NATO meeting is set to start.
But this time the city rejected the request, citing a lack of police officers as well as other security and logistics complications from the very summit the demonstrators are seeking to protest. [...]
Protesters, including the permit applicant, Andy Thayer, met with city officials today to discuss the city’s proposed alternative route. Thayer said they rejected the alternative, but will continue meeting with the city.
“Hopefully, we can work something out," Thayer said.
Although the same route had previously been approved for the first day of the G-8 summit, the denial states the city can’t handle such a demonstration on the first day of the NATO summit.
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As a NATO Summit in Chicago approaches, Occupy activists have begun organizing and preparing for what some are hoping "has the potential to be one of the biggest actions in the country in the last decade". After a weekend of Occupy anniversary protests, which resulted in police violence and mass arrests, Occupy organizers hope to focus all energy on NATO.
A Chicago demonstration was originally scheduled to protest the G8 summit. However, the White House moved the G8 to Camp David in anticipation of protests, leaving the NATO summit as the most accessible target for protesters. As the NATO summit begins May 20 protesters are conducting training sessions and organizing across the country months in advance.
Occupy Chicago members celebrating the G-8 flight from Chicago (Photo: Heather Charles /Chicago Tribune)
* * *
Occupy Protesters Organize for NATO Summit in Chicago (Chicago Tribune):
After a long weekend of protesting aimed at reinvigorating their movement, Occupy leaders from around the country set their sights on their biggest target of the spring — the NATO summit in Chicago.
Meeting in a sunny city park Sunday, they echoed the rallying cry of other protest groups: President Barack Obama's decision to drop plans for holding the G-8 economic summit in Chicago the same weekend as NATO was a victory that should encourage even more demonstrators to show up in May.
"G-8 left, I think, directly out of fear," said Brian Bean, a Chicago demonstrator who came to St. Louis to organize people for the NATO summit.
"What they are worried about is that, in an election year, the possibility that there's actually working-class resistance in the United States and globally and what that would look like in Obama's home city."
In between protests targeting agribusiness giant Monsanto Co.and the foreclosure practices of St. Louis-based Wells Fargo, organizers from Chicago encouraged movement leaders from nearly 20 other cities to talk up the NATO summit when they return home. They also compared notes on the nuts and bolts of protest practices.
"We're trying to plan a summit and we're trying to learn everything really fast," said Zoe Sigman, 22, who lives in Humboldt Park. [...]
Sitting at a picnic table under the Tower Grove Park cupola, Sigman and Bean asked for ideas from the crowd about how to coordinate housing and transportation to Chicago.
Bean said Chicago police have been "training for urban warfare," making it unlikely Occupiers were going to be successful in any effort to camp in public spaces. [...]
Sigman encouraged Occupy members from around the country to go back to their cities and host "teach-ins" to educate people about the functions of NATO so potential demonstrators would understand the message of the protest.
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99 Comments so far
Show AllAs TapMeYouFascists stated above, the cops now have their super duper heat gun and other "non-lethal" military tools, so not only will the demonstrations not change the 1%, but members of the 99% will get hurt, maybe killed.
I would like to suggest something to any Occupy member who reads here. America depends on cars. Instead of only protesting the building where NATO has its meeting, break down a whole bunch of cars in strategic locations around Chicago. Make it so nothing can move, so nobody can go to work, so the NATO people can't leave their hotels.
Just a few cars broken down at strategically time intervals in selected locations would cause more disruption than a million protestors.
You can protest in cages all you want but as soon as you slow down an Automobile -!! Whoa! now you are in trouble! Interfering with the sacred of sacreds of American Life and Death! lol
This idea will work. The cops won't hurt the drivers because traffic cops are different from SWAT type cops (not that much, but different enough).
i made the same observation about freeways and demonstrations in september 2010 (a year before OWS).
We Need Your Ideas: A Call for Direct Action in the Climate Movement http://www.commondreams.org/view/2010/09/14-11
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Posted by iowablackbird Sep 14 2010 - 2:34pm
has anyone thought about parking the car in traffic w/ about 20 or 30 friends and accidentally losing the keys. maybe those cars could accidentally stop in nonlinear ways making it more difficult to tow and maybe people in other cities simultaneously could accidentally do the same. I5/I95/I80/I10...hmmmm
...peace...
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and the rebuttal...
Posted by iowablackbird Sep 14 2010 - 7:49pm
"Doesn't sound like Peace to me. Sounds more like war and hate. Sounds more like aggravating people when you want to do the opposite."
aggravating people ? are you kidding ? people need to be aggravated quite a bit considering the amount of oil americans are consuming and the global consequences of that consumption. shutting down key arteries (interstates) seems like an effective way to draw attention to a matter of such importance.
also, such an action would send a message to people living outside the US that all americans aren't crazy, rabid materialist (unfortunately we are); and that americans are willing to go to jail (like dr king) to support their principals. that's the commitment that's lacking, that's what amplified the meaning of the civil rights struggle was people's willingness to cross lines, to be incarcerated.
it's also why a single day of marching to the bank in NY or in SF is not going to create drastic change (remember the anti-war demonstrations in the past 7 years)unless the action is sustained over a period of days in multiple cities.
it doesn't have to be 'war and hate' (?), people willingly giving up their property (cars) and willing to go to jail (civil disobedience) in multiple cities simultaneously is not war (your interpretation), it's a statement of principal, that americans understand (as we as a nation are extremely scared and brainwashed, and believe going to jail for our principals is tantamount to crime - fear).
it's insulting to suggest the participants of the civil rights movement were late liberals who took a saturday off to go to a really really really big demonstration for the day. using the term (as the article does)'Direct Action' is the equivalent of green washing - if it doesn't entail sacrifice (i'm thinking of people who lock themselves together w/ bike locks and w/ pvc tubes to obstruct buildings). the authors of this piece are attempting to claim a word (i would say blocking logging roads or sitting in old growth trees that are slated for cutting or obstructing a road to a coal mine is 'direct action'). and no it shouldn't be announced ahead of time - it should just happen, surprise actually can be an advantage.
but...
"We'll need to do our work certain that law enforcement is looking over our shoulders; our method can't be surprise."
that's just bullshit.
i like the idea of a unified coalition of resistance using the general strike - employing the strike until a new constitutional convention is called that will embrace the 10 key green values - and i'd love to participate in such a single minded endeavor.
but, that shouldn't discourage people from using many different tactics - (also general strike or 100,000's of people on the street will impede the flow of traffic)- in fact people should embrace as many tactics as they can.
also..
"Sounds like when people are caught in traffic they'll leave their cars running and create even more pollution"
great point. we'll find people whose sole purpose is to turn off those cars.
anyway, it's all just rhetoric - right rico ?
...peace...
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as tj noted above, chicago (a city i'm very familiar with) is exceptionally vulnerable to this tactic : six expressways, four tollways, one toll bridge, and one freeway. about 50 old dilapidated cars running on their last leg could effectively shut down the city and overburden the entire metro.
how many civilians have been killed by NATO in afghanastan ? why are we wasting precious resources, during this recession, on war ?
...peace...
If Chicago refuses the parade permit (only in the USA do the people have to receive permission from the government to exercise their first amendment rights to political speech), then I think all 100,000 or more of the intended marchers should get in their cars and do in the traffic in Chicago for a month or two.
The "first amendment rights to political speech" only exist where the First Amendment exists: in the US.
On the other hand, we don't have to ask permission...it's just something they've coerced us into doing. It's all part of the process of reducing us to serfs.
Surely you're joking. They've never lost so far, so why should it be different next time?
They must be the victims, paradoxically, in order to succeed.
I believe that this falls into the category of pious hope rather than reality. History in the US shows no example of such an outcome. The wealthy elites ruled in colonial times, and they continue to rule today---their hegemony possibly even more entrenched now than then.
We've made small, local gains, but Occupy aims to change the whole system, which is a kettle of fish of a different color.
He was eligible for Israeli citizenship, by accident of birth, and renounced it when he turned 18 and was able to do so.
He is a cretin, but his being Jewish is not relevant.
Ethnicity is a factor for determining eligibility for citizenship in many countries. Ireland and Germany come to mind. But we don't question the loyalties or make insinuations about Irish-Americans or German-Americans.
Do you have any support for that claim, Mike? He served the Zionist army as a civilian during one of their wars, which suggests that you're mistaken.
In his first Congressional primary campaign, a nasty battle over the prize Democrat seat, the president of the Polish American Congress, Ed Moskal, who was supporting Emanuel's main rival, claimed that Emanuel was secretly an Israeli citizen and served in the Israeli army. Moskal also called Emanuel a "millionaire carpetbagger who knows nothing" about "our heritage." Emanuel served as a noncombatant in the Israeli army during the first Gulf War and is not an Israeli citizen. Emanuel strongly denied both claims and brought a coalition of Chicago clergy together to denounce Moskal's allegations.
http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Rahm_Emanuel
There has been an ongoing rumor campaign against him, with all of the extreme right wing, white supremacist and neo-Nazi sites spreading the disinformation. Many liberals and progressives, alarmed and disappointed that he was appointed to the Obama administration - with good reason - have been willing to think the worst of him, whatever that might be, and have been uncritical of the anti-Semitic disinformation that is being spread around.
From James Zogby, founder and president of the Arab American Institute:
"Some charged that Emanuel was an Israeli citizen or a dual U.S.-Israeli national (he is neither, he was born in Chicago in 1959); or, they alleged that he served in the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF), losing his finger confronting a Syrian tank during the 1982 Israeli invasion of Lebanon (he did not serve in the IDF, and lost his finger in a freak accident while working as a teenager in an Arby's restaurant). A few accused Emanuel of skipping U.S. military service to join the IDF in 1991 (also not true -- in the midst of the 1991 Gulf War, while U.S. forces were manning Patriot missile batteries in Israel and the Arab Gulf, Emanuel volunteered for a few weeks, as a civilian, doing maintenance on Israeli vehicles). The most recent story alleges that Rahm Emanuel was fired from the White House in 1998 after being implicated by the FBI, together with Monica Lewinsky, in a Mossad plot to spy on then-President Clinton (a total fabrication, compliments of a shady character who claims to have been a U.S. intelligence official and is a purveyor of many bizarre tales)."
Israeli nationality law explains how Emanuel is considered an Israeli citizen under Israeli law despite being born in the US and whether he chose to be or not.
"A child born to an Israeli citizen (including children born outside of Israel as first generation out of Israel) is considered an Israeli citizen. Persons born outside Israel are Israeli citizens, if their father or mother holds Israeli citizenship, acquired either by birth in Israel, according to the Law of Return, by residence, or by naturalization."