Posts tagged ‘Occupy Chicago’

As NATO Meets in Chicago, Activists Condemn “Militarized Arm of the 1 Percent”

by , posted on Wednesday, May 16th, 2012 at 11:45 am

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 …

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Close Guantanamo. 10 Years Too Many

by , posted on Friday, January 27th, 2012 at 10:57 pm

This event in Chicago, on January 11, 2011, marks the tenth anniversary of the opening of Guantanamo detention center. Prominent speakers share perspectives on the impact of these ten years on the nature and realities of our democracy. Prominent voices from the occupy movement, from social, humanitarian and immigrant rights movements as well as from a victim of torture bring to light of day information we all need. This demonstration is a ceremony of not forgetting. The NDAA makes all Americans vulnerable to the same treatment given the Guantanamo detainees.

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Occupy the Globe

by , posted on Friday, October 7th, 2011 at 12:02 pm

The Occupy Wall Street movement is spreading beyond U.S. borders. I saw a few references to Canadian occupy events earlier this week, but this morning I saw this story on CNN.

It includes references to Occupy events – some of them long-term occupations, some planned as solidarity marches on October 15 – in Melbourne, Sydney, Brisbane and Perth in Australia, London, Hong Kong, Beunos Aires, Madrid, Dublin, unspecified city/cities in Italy. And that’s just in this story.

I can’t find a reference to global events specifically on the Occupy Together website, but could be I’m just missing it. They do say on their website today that there are now Occupy meetups in 890 cities.

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#OccupyChi, The Energy, The Challenges and The Saboteur

by , posted on Thursday, October 6th, 2011 at 9:26 am

So I went to Occupy Chicago yesterday. My company has an office just about a few blocks from what Occupy Chicago is referring to as HQ (Outside the Chicago Board of Trade and the Fed on Jackson and LaSalle), so I worked there yesterday instead of in my standard office, making it easier for me to join them that evening. I could barely focus on work that day, I was so excited.

I spent the bulk of my work day squeezing work in between periods of checking the Occupy Wall St and Chicago Facebooks and websites. It was maddening to try to follow the very sporadic and uninformative updates from Occupy Chicago. There was no information on where they were, how many they were or what they were doing for most of the day. I saw in the comments a woman say there were only 4 people who were there when she drove past.

I was worried I was wasting my time.

Then I saw this on these very same interwebs.

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I decided standing up to the 1 percent (those fuckers) would never be a waste of time. So I went (and left work an hour earlier than I honestly should have) and don’t regret a moment of it.

So here is my first hand perspective and play by play, including my account of the saboteur, pics, some helpful links, etc.

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Occupy Chicago

by , posted on Wednesday, October 5th, 2011 at 11:09 am

I’ve been watching the Occupy Wall Street movement for only about the last two weeks or so. While that’s admittedly a long time in their brief history I have to admit I spent much of it shaking my head at their lack of organization or indeed any clear articulation of what it is exactly that they are protesting. I thought the generalized messiness of it meant it was doomed to end “not with a bang but a whimper.”

I’ve changed my mind.

To me, it’s starting to have the feel a movement that has staying power. And I don’t think that’s least because they managed to get 700 people arrested in one day on the Brooklyn Bridge – but I’ll get back to that, because I think it may hold a lesson for the organizers of Occupy Chicago and this post is dedicated to them.

But first I want to get back to the two main reasons I initially conciously discounted this movement: disorganization and lack of clearly stated mission. And I want to acknowledge and address what I am now beginning to suspect was an unconscious objection: the youth and inexperience of those involved in this movement.

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