Undeterred by Jail, Occupy Chicago Back at Grant Park
By Chuck Sudo in News on Oct 17, 2011 2:15PM
Emboldened by the arrests of 175 protesters who set up a tent city in Grant Park Saturday night, Occupy Chicago returned to Grant Park yesterday chanting the now-familiar refrain, "This is what Democracy looks like."
The arrests may have put some wind in the sails of the nearly month-long movement but their transparent attempt at civil disobedience, particularly its location, have us scratching our heads here. It also may have tested the resolve of some of the protesters.
Occupy Chicago organizer Kevin Ho said the tent city was divided into three color-coded groups: red for those who didn't want to be arrested; yellow for the undecided and green for those who were staying in Grant Park all the way to jail.
If Occupy Chicago wanted to engage in civil disobedience to attract attention to their cause, wouldn't their permanent base of protest location at the Federal Reserve building been a better choice? That location, in the heart of the city's financial epicenter, is perfect to tie their message to their actions. It seems to us they could just as easily set up their tent city on the sidewalk or, better, at Chase Plaza, since the giant banks are one of the groups the movement has galvanized against.
Then to ask supporters to call 311 to ask for the arrests to be halted, when civil disobedience was the objective all along, seems a bit disingenuous.
The Tribune reports Mayor Emanuel was kept abreast of the situation in Grant Park Saturday night with regular reports from Police Superintendent Garry McCarthy. The Tribune also believes Saturday night's arrests could serve as a dry run to handling the inevitable flood of protesters next year for the G8 and NATO summits.
With the recorded accounts of violence at Occupy Wall Street and Saturday's solidarity protests in Rome becoming violent, Emanuel and McCarthy have to know eyes are on Chicago to see if the Police Department goes '68 Democratic Convention on the protesters. Aaron Cynic and Chris Bentley, in their reports from the protests, has written of a wary relationship between the two parties. Monitoring the #occupychicago and #occupychi Twitter hashtags regularly, we've seen moments where the chatter increases whenever it seems as though a cop looks at someone on LaSalle and Jackson wrong.
Lots of hay has been made about the lack of a message with the Occupy protests, which is bunk: the message is pretty clear if you wish to listen. Our question is with the resolve of the protesters if the arrests become more frequent.