Final Thoughts On NATO
By Chuck Sudo in News on May 22, 2012 10:30PM
"...Back to Chicago; it's never dull out there. You never know exactly what kind of terrible shit is going to come down on you in that town, but you can always count on something. Every time I go to Chicago I come away with scars." - Hunter S Thompson
Aaroncynic and I have been discussing the good, bad and the bloody from the NATO summit for much of the afternoon. For those of you who have been reading, Aaron's position is clear and having been in the thick of the protests for most of the weekend, he's able to provide one angle and hasn't been shy doing so
As for me, well, I like to analyze things a little longer as I enter my mid-40s. There was a time when I would have jumped in the fire, if I believed in the cause deeply enough. Nine years ago we took to the streets to protest the Bush administration's buildup to the Iraq war with a clear message and purpose. We saw the same police and state troopers in the same gear, clutching the same clubs.
But there was no fear. The mood on the streets was tense, sure. But the cops kept their distance, the protesters (for the most part) didn't antagonize, and the march went off without a hitch.
Flash forward to last weekend and media outlets across the city asking, "what are they marching for?" President Obama moving the G8 Summit to camp David took a lot of wind out of the sails of protesters and may have actually kept a few of the estimated 55,000 protesters Adbusters said would descend on Chicago away. With G8 out of the picture it was much harder for protesters to convey their anti-NATO message. A process, mind you, that became harder still with every group with an axe to grind trying to take advantage of the larger stage to shine a light on their individual fights.
The two major differing protest philosophies, as The Nation's Allison Kilkenny wrote, were the established protesters and those who embraced "Black Bloc" tactics.
"NATO has been a weird mix of two normally separate and entirely autonomous events: permitted marches, run usually by unions, and the black bloc’s runs, which are complete anarchy by anarchists who lead police on wild goose chases through the city."First there was the event organized by National Nurses United at Daley Plaza, an entirely peaceful demonstration of around a thousand individuals, including rocker Tom Morello, who demanded the US government start properly funding health and stop funding death with an ever-expanding military budget. Also, the nurses were pushing the Robin Hood tax, a small trading tax on Wall Street that would raise badly needed revenue.
"Contrast the totally adorable image of middle-aged nurses dancing around to James Brown in their red NNU shirts and Robin Hood green masks and hats with the chaos of the black bloc run Saturday night. Contrary to the stereotypical image of the property damaging anarchists presented by the media, this group appeared satisfied to merely race around the city, leading the Chicago police on an unending parade."
The Tribune ran a story today that it was the Police Department that led the protesters in a continuous circle.
"But as the march approached, police let it pass, reforming their line to repeat the scenario when the march turned in the South Loop and came back toward Congress again."This time, police in riot gear backed up the horses, and things got tense as protesters demanded to pass through. They were bottled up as the crowd surged ahead, but officers eventually relented.
"It was one of many times that protesters thought they had won a victory.
"In fact, the standoff had actually been part of police strategy to buy precious time to move others into better positions up the street.
"Holding ground while forces sprinted ahead to secure the next stretch of a march was all part of the training and planning police went through, McCarthy said.
"'The bicycles as a useful tactic in these events is unbelievable. And I can't imagine how these guys are going to be able to walk for the next week,' McCarthy said.
"The Saturday night march eventually made its way to the heart of the deserted financial district at LaSalle Street and Jackson Boulevard, where protesters sat down. 'Let's go to Obama's hotel!' screamed one protester hanging on barred windows of the Federal Reserve Bank building. 'It's across the river!'
"Again, the marchers were thinking of getting across the bridge.
"But the group would never get near the Sheraton well to the north, where Obama was staying. Instead, helmeted police surrounded the group on three sides, raising tension before releasing the side that aimed the crowd west on Jackson, out of the center of the city.
"They would not get near the Michigan Avenue Bridge again that night."
Kilkenny laid the blame for Saturday night's violence at the feet of the Chicago Police Department. But the Black Bloc didn't take the aggression laying down and, as our other source in the field told us, instigated the violence Sunday. That doesn't mean the Police Department's response should have been what it was, nor should the rhetoric have been about how the protesters deserved their bloody skulls and broken teeth and how that passed for "restraint" by the police.
Those who practiced Black Bloc tactics have enough blame to shoulder for Sunday, as well. Limply tossing a group into police in an effort to crash their ranks may not be as overtly aggressive as a billy club to the skull, but to me it's still aggression. The Black Bloc protester who told Time Out Chicago's Jake Malooley they were "the ones that have balls" epitomized the groups overall lack of planning. The tactics didn't work in Seattle. They didn't work in Pittsburgh. Ultimately, they didn't work in Chicago.
I imagine those running point for the protests like CANG8's Andy Thayer are very happy with the violence. They likely aren't as happy with the turnout at the protests, either. Media reports had attendance at Sunday's rally at Grant Park at 3,000 people. Press releases from protest groups estimated the crowd at 15,000.
And those images broadcast by local television stations—except CBS2, which decided not to preempt 60 minutes— were accompanied by analysis that lacked bite and, in the case of WGN, at times served as an op-ed in favor of the Police Department. Two images from WGN's coverage stood out most: a shot of CTA buses with "Chicago is... My Kind of Town" chyrons framed behind riot gear-clad police and ambulances, and cops dragging away a bloodied protester in a Batman t-shirt as Micah Materre, Lourdes Duarte and Robert Jordan said, "This is what democracy looks like."
Technically, they aren't wrong, but still...
Robert Feder agreed the overall coverage wasn't local television's greatest moment.
"Television stations had their cameras and reporters in the right places, to be sure, but fell short when it came to conveying a meaningful narrative. Without a ’68-style cataclysm to cover, they ultimately came off as relieved, let down and maybe just a little bit embarrassed by all the alarmist hype. Sort of how I felt after Y2K."
Finally, the message. What were they fighting for? I have an idea. This particular movement, which hoped to build on the momentum of the Occupy movement, may have hit a bog. But it's still in its nascent stages and a few hiccups are expected. Maybe the Occupy movement can study what Thayer and CANG8 did right and add that to their movement. To Occupy, NATO is another arm of the one percent; the military arm. Without the G8 summit to coincide in Chicago, they had a very hard time trying to tie the two together and reach the people they were trying to.
The scars will eventually fade.