what chicago learned from '68

[mopinko]

every demonstration/march that i have been to has had the kind of wall to wall cops that were out this weekend for the nato protesters. because what the cops learned was that when you are hugely outnumbered and things get a little out of hand, bad things happen. cops being cops, they panic and attack. that is what happened in '68. that was a long time ago. most of those that participated are old or dead. please stop tarring my city with it.

nothing like that has been allowed to happen since. the marches that we had around the iraq war were the same. one of the marches grew to the point where the protesters had sort of a mind of their own, and they left the route, and walked up and closed down streets. no one was hurt. because they were truly peaceful marchers.
yesterday thousands marched peacefully and went home unharmed. i watched some of the live stream, several friends watched all day. there were a few people trying to rile up police. i don't know what happened to lead to the thrashings that were dished out, but we all knew as soon as we saw it that that would be the story of the day.
and i come here this morning and see a post calling for my mayor, who was elected with 70% of the vote, to resign. because he presided over a week of demonstrations, some small, some huge, and a couple of people managed to cause enough of a scuffle to need some stitches.

well, guess what? i think they did a good job. the level of anger floating out there now is so high. it could have easily gone so badly. i don't think most people understand what "downtown chicago" really means as far as the amount of damage and casualties that would result from any level of violence. i have seen the good and the bad of chicago cops. imho, they did a great job.

and i'll keep my mayor, thanks. most of us that live in the real world of shades of grey like him fine. those that live in a world of black and white, maybe not so much. but it is my town, my mayor, and a handful of minor injuries is not enough to overturn democratic elections.

[Cary]

1. Good post.

Rahm has indeed been doing a good job.

[mopinko]

2. he inherited a mess, like his former boss.

he has a lot of shoveling out to do. he is doing a good job of getting input from others, aldermen, etc. and he is making tough choices, but also tough deals. i have no doubt that the guys who handed back their tif money last week got a little "encouragement". and i don't think he will be taking old man rickett's phone calls for a long f'ing time. and i think that first conversation would need a lot of bleeps for prime time. ah to be a fly on the wall.

[nobodyspecial]

3. Funny how so many people criticizing the response are not those who live or work here

My take was that the police were trying to avoid confront at all costs. I saw video of what happened before the violent clash. I'm not sure what people expected -- the cops would just step aside and let them storm McCormick Center. The cops tried to hold back but then the protesters began tossing bottles, hitting and tossing fencing. The blows didn't come until then.

My take is that the agitators -- not the peaceful protesters -- were itching for a fight and hellbent on provoking a response. They need that to fit their narrative. What good is a protest without images of head cracking and blood?

But, as I'm continually reminded here, all cops are evil thugs and I'm just a corporate tool to think that out-of-town protesters shouldn't be given free reign over the city. I just don't understand what some think should or expect to happen.

[coalition_unwilling]

6. Don Lemon of CNN disagrees with you. According to someone who was watching, Lemon

Last edited Mon May 21, 2012, 10:51 AM - Edit history (1)

said words to this effect: ""Does anybody deserve that?"

N.B. Lemon was watching the same protests you were.

[rhett o rick]

4. I think you are speaking too soon. Police orchestrated protests arent real protests.

They are feel good marches with middle class mom's wearing their LLBean and drinking Starbuck's while they follow the police around, then drive home to their middle class suburban homes in their Subaru's.

Nothing comes of these marches. Unless there is violence, they get no mention in the corporate media.

I have been in my share of these "protests" where there is a police-person for every protestor leading us around a prescribed path thru the poor section of the city so it wont upset sales at Neiman Marcus.

Protests are aimed at change and will escalate until there is change.

I neither condone nor prescribe violence and I believe things would get worse if there is violence, but how else are you going to get the attention of our greedy Congressional representatives?

[mopinko]

9. what do you mean police orchestrated protests?

[rhett o rick]

18. I can see how what I said can be misleading. What I mean is the police grant the permit,

subscribe the route and escort the protestors along the route. I have been in many of these events and it hit me that we were in a parade not a protest.

[99Forever]

10. Unfortunately...

... you are correct. Tho we would all prefer that our voices would be heard and listened as we peacefully protest, but as history shows again and again, it just doesn't happen that way. There will be violence. Hell, the police mob thugs are already committing violence on those of us they swore to protect. At some point it will turn. We are many, they are few. This is hardly the first time this battle has been fought and likely (and sadly) won't be the last. Today's version of "the royal elite" are no different than those that came before them and will likely need to suffer the same sort of fate as Marie A before they will give up their stranglehold on us.

So be it.

[rhett o rick]

19. Unfortunately...

there are those among us that say they are our friends yet are willing to accept 20 lashes instead of the 50 meted out by our overlords. I say give me the 50 or freedom.

[coalition_unwilling]

5. When will they

ever learn, when will they ever learn?

http://www.democraticunderground.com/1002710303

[mopinko]

8. did i say nobody got hurt?

no, no i didn't. i said that the marches- a weeks worth- were 99.9% peaceful, but the bleeding guy gets the front page.

[coalition_unwilling]

11. Your tax dollars hard at work:

[mopinko]

12. thanks for proving my point. nt.

[coalition_unwilling]

13. Hunh? With a picture of a pig delivering a haymaker paid for with your tax dollars, I'm

"proving your point"?

Oy vey.

[mopinko]

14. yeah, my point that the one act of violence out of a week of peaceful protests

becomes the story.

[coalition_unwilling]

15. You and I use the phrase 'one act of violence' far too

differently for there to be much further use in discussing this event.



Have a good life.

[Rex]

30. LOL!

Good job! PWNED!

[11 Bravo]

22. Daily Kos has a series of pictures taken leading up to the one you have chosen to make your point.

They show the African-American cop in the background of your pic having a stick broken over his head by a protestor. I guess you decided that little nugget didn't deserve to be mentioned.

[HiPointDem]

25. the photo apparently didn't deserve to be linked or pasted by you, either.

why don't you do so rather than making people go to that bloated site and attempt to find it?

[11 Bravo]

26. Because I'm old and borderline computer illiterate. There's a post by wndycty on the front page ...

right now detailing the event. Feel free to check it out.

[HiPointDem]

29. if you want me to check out the picture or the report, link it. you're apparently not computer

illerate enough to be posting on a computer.

don't tell me to go and search for something you claim exists and in the form you say. link it.

[nobodyspecial]

33. Look here

http://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=view_post&forum=1002&pid=712548

[Mc Mike]

39. Fire posted a vid from ABC 7, Chi, 2x

Says ~ min 12 sec 45 (14 min vid) that the bb s were travelling west along with dispersing protestors, and were forced back east by the police. They were already blocked to the south, and east. That 'kettling' makes a dispersal order unhelpful.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=view_post&forum=1002&pid=710141

Wnd's eyewitness accounts are only good for the part of the field s\he was in. The photo sequence is incomplete, because it starts with the white shirted officer's helmet already off, which doesn't necessarily show an unprovoked attack on that officer. Doesn't show either side before the start of the altercation. When I see an officer with an old-style night stick, instead of the Okinawa-style grain grinder model, I think that officer is harking back to the 'good old days' of police-community relations. My opinion may be wrong, but that officer's bosses created the whole situation with the kettling.

There was no legit reason people couldn't march south in the first place. In Pgh.'s G-20 (the 9-25-09 march), the cops arbitrarily enforced bridge and street closures which clearly contradicted my State Rep.'s official route info, and the official established 'free speech' zone directly E-NE of the Convention center. Nobody was allowed to even approach the area. The cops were Keystone to a Chinese Fire drill degree. The field commanders made up the rules on the fly, to make a moving and constantly enveloping kettle around the legally permitted marchers, with overwhelming manpower on all sides, as they shunted the protest across the river from the G-20 site, tastefully out of the range of the WB and IMF big-shots.

If I saw a protestor launch an unprovoked attack on a cop, I'd do my best to restrain them, before the cops responded to the attack by ravaging the rest of the innocent protestors. All cops aren't bad, but they're bad in large groups, listening to their pin-head bosses. I don't want any physical harm to come to women or men who are on the job. But there isn't a large casualty list on the law enforcement side, and there is one on the protestors' side.

Either cops start the violence, or u.c. cops start the violence, or some agro protestor whose brain is in pawn to the system (so s\he is working for that cop system) starts the violence. So now it's obviously time for all DU hands to call each other cops, and pick which of the 3 flavors of cop they want to back, against other DU people. Sweet mother of mercy, we could screw up a 2 car funeral.

(cross posted as a re to posts 53, 60 in the link you just posted. That's ME screwing up a 2 car funeral. Sorry. Har har.)

[11 Bravo]

34. Sorry, noob, I have neither the time nor the inclination to do your homework for you.

The post by wndycty is on the front page. It requires a single fucking click to access. Sorry you find that such an onerous "search", but if you can't be bothered to do so, then stop pretending you're interested in context, (and by all means continue to cling to the mother of all losing internet discussions ... demanding a link.)

[Mc Mike]

37. +1. NT

[KharmaTrain]

7. I Expected This...

I also watched various streams as well as the extensive local television coverage (Channel 9's reporters were attrocious...all but hoping for a confrontation) as well as speaking with several friends who were there as protesters, media types and just plain residents. Mo...I'm proud of how things went over the weekend and how the CPD have learned a lot not only from 1968 but from dealing with the Occupy Chicago demonstrations last fall. For the most part marchers could and did march wherever they wanted around the downtown area and in neighborhoods that had nothing to do with NATO. I still don't understand what the march in Lincoln Park was about other than it was close to the best bars around to party at. Anywho...police and organizers did work together to make the demonstrations peaceful. The rally at Cermak & Michigan went without any interuption...it wasn't until not only police but march organizers asked the group to disperse that things got bad. The protesters knew they couldn't head east on Cermak and the few fools who tried were the ones who ran up against the billy clubs...and it looked like some were spoiling. Be them "black bloc" (Channel 9 kept refering to them) or just plain morons who wanted to create the videos the corporate media (and local media) for that matter were looking for.

This isn't a popular opinion here, but these days I feel I can't climb into the Occupy groupthink that occurs in this place...however the CPD did not react anywhere near how they did in 1968 or the Days of Rage riots in '70...I was around for both. Also, sadly, the numbers of protesters at the NATO summit were nowhere near the numbers that were here in '68. While I support the demonstrators and and sympathetic to many of the causes they're protesting about, the truth is this wasn't some wild "hippie" riot the corporate media would love to portray nor the police riot either.

While I also cite disagreements with Rahm...his handling of this situation isn't one of them. This diverts attention away from the messages those marching yesterday want America and the world to hear.

Cheers...

[socialist_n_TN]

17. Didn't the clash occur when the protesters attempted........

to actually GO where the NATO meetings were taking place? If I'm right about that, how is this any different from the "Free Speech Zones" that Bush set up for the anti Iraq War protesters back in the early Aughts? Funny I always thought that the whole fucking country was a "Free Speech Zone". At least the public streets anyway.

How much good does it do to protest against power if power kettles you into an area where the can't see or hear you?

[Egalitarian Thug]

23. Bill Clinton created the Orwellian "free speech zones". n/t

[HiPointDem]

27. "Many colleges and universities earlier instituted free speech zone rules during the Vietnam-era

protests...

During the 1988 Democratic National Convention, the city of Atlanta set up a "designated protest zone"... A pro-choice demonstrator opposing an Operation Rescue group said Atlanta Mayor Andrew Young "put us in a free-speech cage."...."Protest zones" were used during the 1992 and 1996 United States presidential nominating conventions...

"The [National Lawyers] Guild, which has a 35-year history of monitoring First Amendment activity, has witnessed a notable change in police treatment of political protesters since the November 1999 World Trade Organization meeting in Seattle. At subsequent gatherings in Washington, D.C., Detroit, Philadelphia, Los Angeles, Miami, Chicago, and Portland a pattern of behavior that stifles First Amendment rights has emerged..."

The most prominent examples were those created by the United States Secret Service for President George W. Bush and other members of his administration.[3] Free speech zones existed in limited forms prior to the Presidency of George W. Bush; it was during Bush's presidency that their scope has been greatly expanded...

(reference for that claim = aclu)

http://www.aclu.org/FilesPDFs/dissent_report.pdf

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_speech_zone

[Egalitarian Thug]

32. Thanks. I remember them trying it at protests with my parents, but they never worked.

The protesters just went to the other side, down the block, to the alternate site, etc.

Clinton's were the first I knew of.

[mopinko]

35. nope. richard nixon.

in chicago if memory serves. at the original mccormick place, which sits by itself on the east side of lake shore drive. protestors took the case all the way to the supreme court.

[G_j]

20. did you actually witness the beatings?

if not, why do you support the police version (they deserved it) over others?

[mopinko]

21. you missed my point.

[Rex]

31. Because this is pro-cop propaganda like the other umpteenth

posts throwing citizens under the bus.

[HiPointDem]

24. good to know you consider him "your mayor". keep taking ownership of his policies like that.

[wndycty]

28. I have to buy you a beer just so I can hug you for this post

You said everything I wanted to say. I don't even have the stomach to read the responses.

[mopinko]

36. any time my friend.

any time. come up and see my little farm.
http://facebook.com/moahsark

[riderinthestorm]

38. I also saw the shoulder-to-shoulder police first hand during the Iraq anti-war marches

So I know what you mean mopinko. I agree with you that the police and city did a masterful job keeping control. I hate that anyone got hurt. I hate that there were injuries. I'm not oblivious to the complaints that some cops overreacted but overall I'm pretty happy with the way things turned out. The protesters got a LOT of press coverage for their issues, the city didn't get trashed, nobody got seriously injured....

I question the truth of what really happened with the threesome that are accused of making molotov cocktails. I'll reserve judgement on that one since the reports are pretty contradictory.

I'm not a Rahm Emmanuel fan but you have to hand it to him and the Chief of Police, they did their jobs on this one. I hope the visitors enjoyed their Chicago visit.

[rhett o rick]

40. What Chicago could learn from Quebec.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/1002723856