On the evening of March 20 at 5:00pm some 15,000 people took to the streets
of Chicago to protest against the U.S. invasion of Iraq.
The diverse crowd outmaneuvered the police by taking two seperate routes
out of Federal Plaza and converge on Lake Shore Drive (a six lane highway
that runs North to South on along the shore of Lake Michigan) halting
traffic on both northbound and southbound lanes. Hundreds of stalled
motorists honked their horns and waved the peace sign to show support. Some
even got out of their vehicles and sat on the hoods of their cars to join
the festivities.
The marchers surged north on LSD for about a mile and were finally corraled
by the cops when they got off the Drive. After a stand-off of about 45
minutes the crowd turned around and marched back down LSD, which was now
completely closed off by police. When the crowd turned onto Chicago Avenue
and headed for Michigan Avenue (the main shopping district) with the
intention of marching back to Federal Plaza the cops again barrricaded the
streets and surrounded the demonstrators. Then the police begain to arrest
people, targeting tactical leadership (ie, people with cell phones and
megafones, etc) and people who looked like "anarchists". In all some 800
people were hauled off to the hoosegow, some being detained for more that
23 hours before being released. The police finally allowed people to leave
the streets three at a time. As it turned out, some 800 people managed to
regroup and continued to march.
Police learned their lessons on Thursday so Friday's demo was very
different. A smaller crowd of about 5,000 met again at Federal Plaze and
were completely surrounded by cops in riot gear. These riot cops
accomplanied the march through downtown like a moving human protest pit and
once you were in the march you couldn't get out unless you walked all the
way to the very back of the line of march. You also could not get in. On
Thursday's march many people joined the parade as it moved along. As a
result of the police show of force the march was less spirited than the
previous night.
Saturday's event was even smaller and more humiliating. Again protesters
rallied at Federal Plaze. This time they found themselve completely penned
in by police barricades into a small corner of the Plazw, while a pro-war
rally was granted the bigger share of the space. The pro-war and anti-war
rallies had approximately the same number of people (about 1500 a-piece)
but the police initmidation was obviously aimed at the anti-war crowd.
Once the pro-war rally was over the police let the anti-war crowd out of
their pen and allowed us to march around the Federal building only, with
police in riot-gear once again completely surrounding us and remnants of
the pro-war cowd heckling us.
It is clear that police intimidation is having its effect, reducing the
size of the anti-war demos from 15,000 to 1,500. The Chicago anti-war
movement needs to re-group and develop new tactics to counter this police
repression.
