Students learn lessons during Chicago NATO protests
Demonstrators with Occupy Chicago march through the streets in Chicago.
Upwards of 15,000 protesters marched through the streets of Chicago May 20-21. The amalgamation that included students, workers and activists were there to rally around the NATO summit, the first held in America outside of Washington, D.C.
Activists were aware that such a protest would not bring one of the world’s most powerful military alliances to its knees, but the experience of seeing thousands of people with similar ideas in the same place was encouraging and invigorating.
Most protesters acted in small ‘affinity groups,' often replete with a legal specialist and medical aid, to ensure safety and reliable contacts in case of police action.
“I was part of a small [affinity group] full of un-arrestable people,” said student Eric Johnson. “I marched a lot, with big crowds of people.”
The largest march took place on the first day of the summit, and the mass of people stretched for blocks.
Another protester, Francis Salazar, came to “put the city at a standstill and not allow business as usual… but the cops did that for us.”
A police blockade in the downtown area halted commerce for many local shops and businesses.
This reaction to the protest “helped disrupt the city and educated people at the same time that we are living in an unjust system,” Salazar said.
When asked if he protested peacefully, his response was: “that is binary that I won’t feed into… I saw protesters try pushing through police lines to march on the convention center. But the real violence came from the police.”
Almost all protesters were unarmed, although some members of Black Bloc, a group known for its destruction of property, were seen with baseball bats.
The common riot policeman carries a truncheon and a shield. A wall can be formed around large groups of protesters, a process known as ‘kettling.’ People are arrested when the wall suddenly opens, allowing auxiliary policemen to run forward, grab individuals and pull them from their affinity group before the wall closes again.
Trucks equipped with Long Range Acoustic Devices (LRAD) were also on hand. These vehicles emit a high frequency sound designed to upset the fluid in one’s inner ear. This causes protesters to lose balance and fall to their knees, making arrests much easier.
Yet the police refrained from using the LRAD and other controversial tactics such as tear gas.
Craig Futterman, a law professor at the University of Chicago, praised the CPD for exercising “an extraordinary amount of restraint… they had all that (available for them) and they didn’t go there.”
“I saw many bloodied protesters, many of whom required stitches, and I saw one run over by a police van who ended up in the hospital,” Johnson stated, adding that he did not see any injured police.
Although the National Lawyers Guild reported over 70 instances of police brutality, Chicago witnessed considerably less violence than cities which have hosted similar summits, such as Toronto in 2010 and Seattle in 1999.
Chicago’s Police Superintendant Garry McCarthy said that Chicago’s action can be guide for other cities, “and that is to be patient and tolerant.”
Police supporters view these instances of police brutality as unfortunate mistakes brought out by stressful circumstances, while critics see this violence as an inherent consequence of granting law enforcement so much power.
“These summits are increasingly becoming more policed, with more cameras, weapons, under cover surveillance, kettling and scare mongering.” Malatesta warns. “We are at a crossroads, where we must intensify our actions or get subsumed by our country's increasingly paranoid and defensive elites.”
This dynamic between protesters and police was seen in other cities during the G20 conferences, and is unfolding in Quebec’s Student protests. These confrontations reveal the conflict between individuals attempting to alter the status quo and officers trying to retain order.
Jeremy Goldman is a Summer 2012 Paste BN Collegiate Correspondent. Learn more about him here. Reach him via e-mail at jeremy.goldman@tufts.edu
This story originally appeared on the Paste BN College blog, a news source produced for college students by student journalists. The blog closed in September of 2017.