Chicago's Anti-Capitalist/FTP march NATO--G-8 2012
I ran up a windy street past scattered groups of black bandana-masked protesters till I reached the first line of riot cops. Night was falling. This wasn't going to be like the other occupation marches I'd been on for two days. You could feel it in the air. Tension. This was a large urban FTP march with an anti-capitalist theme--never a boring combination. The Chicago Police Department was about to see civil disobedience in a qualitative way that they hadn't seen in that town since the 60s. The Occupy Wall Street movement had energized and united group-after-group on the left in a profound way. The crowd grew and grew in the shadow of mid-level urban buildings. Hundreds of police, dozens of vehicles and the entire horse line of the CPD were shadowing us, unseen just a few blocks away. What they were soon to see were teens with black masks, young eyes with far-away looks peering from above bandanas, red flags with letters made of duct tape, etc. Then the group started to move. The dance that is civil unrest in 21st century America began--actually a beautiful thing if you're observant, yet if a right-wing Tea Partier had been there I have no doubt they wouldn't have said much more than : "“Oh, my Lord! They’re the worse kind of Commie, Pinko, Socialist filth I’ve ever had to lay my red-white-&-blue eyeballs on! Are you blind? Don’t you understand the threat that these and their kind are to the American way of life? What a disgrace! This’ll only go over like a fart in church!” But there weren’t any right-wingers in this crowd. The protesters surged along under bridges of steel and concrete holding up pamphlets with words like Revolution and Socialism.
Margot on the scene: Wells Fargo meets with occupiers
Margot Paez of Insightoutnews.org was on the scene yesterday when occupiers met with Wells Fargo representatives. Cheryl Aichele, Carlos Marroquin, Mark Lipman and others attended the undefined meet-up which is chronicled here:
I know this might not be easy, but I'm worried about you, erstwhile Obama supporter. I believe your addiction has gotten out of control, and it’s time for you to stop. For yourself, for those you love, for America.
“Thank you for coming tonight, to your Political Action update” I yelled through the bull horn. The action was spreading the word about the National Defense Authorization Act of 2012. We got there at about 4pm. The action was scheduled from 3 to 7pm, so we were late. We saw the signs flying high on the corner of Wilshire and Sepulveda. We handed out fliers and talked to people that walked up and down the street. I, along with 3 others, used bull horns to communicate with the people in their cars.
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