from Democracy Now!
Legendary Chicago activists Bernardine Dohrn and Bill Ayers talk about this week’s protests in Chicago, where NATO will hold its largest summit to date. Thousands of protesters from a diverse coalition of organizations including unions, antiwar groups, immigrant rights organizations and Occupy are expected to march in the streets. Chicago is preparing a massive security operation, with the Department of Homeland Security declaring the summit a “National Special Security Event.” Civil liberties advocates have warned it could provide the first public test of a new law that expands the ability of the Secret Service to suppress protests in or around certain restricted zones. “We think that NATO should be meeting in an underground bunker or on a remote island,” Dorhn says. “[Chicago] is being treated as really a practice military zone … [while] we don’t have money here for community mental health clinics, we don’t have money for public libraries or for schools, we don’t have money for public transportation… We want peace and not permanent wars abroad and military war games and [the] national security state at home.”
Part 2 of this report after the jump …
