This is my first report from the Chicago Spring #NoNATO protest.
ChicagoNow.com, a local Chicago blogging platform is reporting that the NATO demonstrations were a failure. This obviously biased republican blogger base obviously doesn't know how to count. This Article makes very clear through pictures that the demonstrations were larger than reported. And while the violent and the sensationalists were craving more open confrontation I think it indicates a spiritual and moral illness in the parts of society watching the social uprisings across the world.
That there was violence on behalf of the police is without question, as women, especially smaller women were targeted. The most I saw were some protesters trying to push past police lines, and one incident where a protester was attacked with a bicycle by police after attempting to move the bicycle.
However, I want to focus on two things with this post, first, I want to discuss the state of intimidation tactics used in Chicago, and second, I want to discuss the visceral denigration of this weekend's actions by both the right and the left, participants and outsiders.
We arrived in Chicago and made our way to the convergence center before catching up with a march going on on Friday, however, as we attempted to join this march, we noticed a massive police presence all across the city. We saw black Department of Homeland Security MRAP vehicles driving down the streets of Chicago as if they are an everyday occurrence. This is not the one I saw, it drove by too fast for an accurate photo, but it was like this one. There were two of them roaming the streets of Chicago.
This combined with hundreds of police cars, DHS vehicles and incarceration vans roaming the streets, flashing their lights violating traffic laws at whim and otherwise making a general nuisance of themselves created a sense of intimidation.
The roving bands of secret service operatives, as well as the heavily armored police streaming out of buses and established one or two blocks from the protests made for serious concerns as scouts would report police locations. The state of intimidation was persistent, as raids were going on and streamers were targeted by Chicago PD.
Never before have I seen so many police officers in one place, and despite the media reports coming from mainstream sources, the police were not passive. There were multiple times when ranking officers lost control of their men and women. Especially Sunday when hundreds of officers established a kettle, forcing protesters into a tight space off Cermak and Michigan.
Ultimately, the police established an over-reactionary aggravated presence, and while demonstrations sought mostly to be peaceful with a few outliers here and there the only real threats seem to have been those manufactured by police in order to scare off protesters.
We find ourselves in a strange dystopic reality, where the police infiltrate, and arrest others for their schemes, where the FBI busts other FBI plots a sort of patsy-state, where the FBI is culling participants into militancy to legitimate their ever expanding surveillance and intelligence machine.
The second thing I'd like to discuss in brief is the internal and external reactions to this weekend by those who claim that this was a dud, or a fizzled out event and that Occupy/Anti-NATO sentiment isn't strong enough. It seems that American culture especially in regards to social movements has become married to the idea that either large numbers or violence and riots are the only way to make a difference, at least in some circles. I noticed some bloggers and tweets saying that this action was too small, too poorly organized etc.
First of all, let me say this: This event was the largest Anti-NATO protest ever held in the history of the alliance, and that the war-machine becomes questioned more and more by average citizens, by those who have never engaged in activism and other anti-imperial activities is not only noteworthy, but crucial to our future. That Chicago police had to manufacture a terror plot to deflate the weekend's spirits, and then failed at doing so as the rallying cries went out and military veterans threw down their medals is critical to examine and pay attention to.
Violence is the tool of the desperate or the powerful, and it's not a very effective one. So, that Chicago PD and various voices across the spectrum were disappointed at not seeing riots this weekend shows me a lack of imagination on the part of reactionaries. Just because the mainstream media didn't capture this past weekend's events accurately does not mean nothing happened. Just because media sources focus on conflict does not mean that our voices are being drowned out, the curious are listening, and we're making a difference as a movement.
That we long for bloody struggle instead of respecting peaceful protests as a viable alternative shows me that we've internalized state repression as a norm for measuring the success and failure of demonstrations.
To create a vision for change isn't going to be a series of watching protesters getting their heads bashed in. Nor is it going to be in encouraging those actions. True vision has to move beyond violence, beyond the bloodlust bred into our appropriation of populist action. To measure actions in terms of violence means to accept the state's narrative.
If we truly rally behind reframing the narrative from the bottom up, we'd measure our success not in terms of how many arrests occurred, etc., but how many bonds were forged, how many new alliances made, how many citizens were touched by the events at the #NoNATO summit.
The visionary process requires that we must jettison the history of violence thrust upon us by the state, and recognize that the veterans that spoke made a difference, despite mainstream media ignoring those stories. That each soldier speaking out actually made police call in sick, and stay home from work for the day. We must continue to build alter-narratives, our own stories that highlight our visionary struggle, and that really reflect the way in which the people stand together, opposing the NATO terror machine.
As we move forward towards the National Gathering in Philadelphia on July 4th, hosted by Occupy Philly, It is my sincere hope that we begin to measure our movement in terms of solutions, democratic innovations and social constructs that facilitate a people's future, rather than the amount of sensationalist headlines generated by the mainstream media.
Your thoughts?