Police Issue Citations to 43 Occupy Chicago Protesters

Chicago Police issued citations to 43 Occupy Chicago protesters, who blocked the intersection of Jackson Boulevard and Clark Street downtown. About fifty members of the group Jane Addams Senior Caucus sat in the intersection near Federal Plaza around noon today and chanted "The people, united, will never be defeated."

Occupy Chicago says the group of seniors -- at least one was 100 years old, four of those cited were in assisted mobility devices -- were protesting possible cuts to federal programs, including social security, medicare/medicaid and HUD programs. About 1,500 people participated in rallies outside Senators Mark Kirk and Dick Durbin's offices today. The Tribune writes:

The protests lasted about an hour, and while there were some claims at first that people had been arrested, police said protesters were cited for impeding the flow of traffic and let go without arrest.

Durbin and Reps. Jan Schakowsky, Danny Davis, and Mike Quigley all joined the morning rally, and they pledged to oppose cuts to program funding and to try and make Kirk (R) do the same.

There are four videos of the protests and police interactions on the Occupy Chicago YouTube site.

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By Samantha Abernethy in News on November 7, 2011 5:30 PM 0 Comments

Comments [rss]

Navin_Johnson

BTW, bravo to these senior citizens. It's real contrast to the other selfish boomers who enjoy their entitlement programs while at the same time want to see other people's dismantled. The idiot boomers who still believe in removing regulations and supply side, and there are a ton of them.

slickpoetry

Props to the CPD for handling this situation professionally and with proper due care.

furytrader

Don't tell me, next they started chanting, "Hey Hey, Ho Ho {insert one of 6,000 leftist targets here} Has Got To Go!"

Maybe they could take some of the $500,000 that the Occupy Wall Street crowd is fighting over in New York City and hire somebody to write some new chants?

Kevin_Robinson

"Hey Hey, Ho Ho {insert one of 6,000 leftist targets here} Has Got To Go!"

I hope one of those 6,000 leftist targets was the notion that senior citizens and retirees should have to accept cuts to social programs that they have paid into their entire working lives but shouldn't be able to access because the mega-rich and the mega-corporations need more tax breaks.

ChicagoD

This. Pisses. Me. Off. They paid for old people to get these benefits when they were working. We are working *now* for the current generation of old people. *Someone* will have to be the first generation to experience reform in these programs. Things like means-testing Social Security are right, and frankly, since it's our dime, I don't want to hear about how rich seniors "paid" for those benefits. They did not.

This has basically nothing to do with corporate tax breaks. It has to do with the baby boomers not having had enough kids to support their retiring asses. Such is life.

Navin_Johnson

Boomers are the ones who enjoyed the fruits of more progressive policy: stable economic times, egalitarian tax structures, strong labor and so on. They're also the same ones who couldn't leave well enough alone and (voted) ushered in the supply-side Reagan era and helped create the economic nightmare we're in now. They piss me off to no end, but that doesn't mean that austerity is necessary or the way to go. Reconsider benefits for those that don't need them, sure, but a lot of people do need them. Kids should not have to be "assets" to support the elderly either, although, I guess it is kind of comically appropriate as we increasingly become a neo-feudalist state.