-------- Original Message -------- Subject: (en) US, demo in Chicago Date: Fri, 21 Mar 2003 15:56:20 +0100 (CET) From: Worker <a-infos-en at ainfos.ca> Reply-To: a-infos-en at ainfos.ca To: <a-infos-en at ainfos.ca>
________________________________________________
A - I N F O S N E W S S E R V I C E
________________________________________________
I just got home from the demo in my town. It started off at 5pm, speeches and so on. I got there at 5:30 and it was very crowded, already people were having a hard time fitting in the plaza. The crowd was fairly mixed- assorted vanguardist space aliens sellling newspaper, religious peaceniks, Puerto Rican nationalists, Palestian groups anarchists, labor folks, a lot of students - both university and school kids, including some JROTC (military training program), and a lot of other people.
Lots of great banners, both printed and home-made, including a group of teachers against the war, and public health workers against the war, both of which were exciting because not many links are being made between major cutbacks here in education, health, and housing, and the 'war on terror' and the war on Iraq.
Around 6pm or so the rally started to march, it split into two marches going up different streets. The one I was with got stopped by a police line a block away. After a few minutes of tension protesters pushed passed the cops and the cops backed off.
Lots of fun chants - 'Whose streets our streets' became 'whose planet our planet'. The two marches converged at the entrance ramp to Lake Shore Drive, sort of like a highway, a big high-traffic road which affords a great view of the city and the lake the city sits on. We faced off another police line, and eventually got past them until we were on Lake Shore Drive, occupying the northbound ramp (four lanes.) We marched up that for a while and people started climbing over the concrete barrier and taking the lanes of southbound traffic as well. For a while the cops tried to stop people, but enough people got there that the police had no option but to let us go (Chicago's fine local collective - the Brick Collective - of the Federation of Revolutionary Anarchist Collectives, Great Lakes, helped spur people to occupy those lanes by leading the charge with their black and red flags and banner and black bloc dress). Once the drive stopped being highway style ramps we started occupying the streets that ran parallel to it as well. Eventually we cut across a park and were finally halted by a massive police presence.
We stood and listened to drums and chanted and such for quite a while as more police amassed. The cops boxed a lot of people in and many people started leaving as more and more cops showed up. The folks who were boxed in eventually marched back around to another intersection where they were held again by police. I ran into this as I was trying to walk toward my home. Last I knew the police were arresting people and a friend just called to say that people are still boxed in right now and are waiting for police to bring in new buses to put people one -the word is two police buses filled with arrested people, probably about 100 people.
Estimates I heard for turnout were between 1,000 and 3,000 people, but I think there were more than that as this is the biggest demo in Chicago I've been to.
It was interesting that so many people marched - more than were at the rally, a number of people kept saying "where did they all come from?" People on the sidewalks were very supportive and applauded and joined in a lot. Over all the whole atmosphere was very festive and fairly militant compared to most actions here. Tomorrow morning there's civil disobedience and then another rally in the evening. Apparently the bourgeious (sp?) press is giving this a lot of coverage, whatever that means, saying it's the biggest or one of the biggest of the day's actions in the US.
I'm told a lot of high school (and in one instance, kids as young as 11 to 13) have been walking of school and holding spontaneous demos. That was the most part of tonight, all the different ages of people (and the racial composition was more diverse, ie less white, than usual actions here) and the spontaneity of it all - no one was leading it so much as we all just marched where we wanted (until the police finally stopped us.)
All in all it was highly spirit-boosting event after a day spent listening to radio reports in the car of the war. I'd love to hear more from San Francisco and anywhere else. N.
*******
********
****** The A-Infos News Service ******
News about and of interest to anarchists
******
COMMANDS: lists at ainfos.ca
REPLIES: a-infos-d at ainfos.ca
HELP: a-infos-org at ainfos.ca
INFO: http://www.ainfos.ca/org
-To receive a-infos in one language only mail lists at ainfos.ca the message:
unsubscribe a-infos
subscribe a-infos-X
where X = en, ca, de, fr, etc. (i.e. the language code)