.
BooMan Trinube’s regular blogger TarheelDem subject to pre-emptive early Chicago crack-down on protesters.
Activists Disappeared Ahead of NATO Summit Continue To Be Held Without Charge
One of the activists released is a regular myFDL blogger, who blogs under the name “TarheelDem.” He left a comment this morning:
“Note to friends here from TarheelDem. I was one of the persons arrested in an early morning police raid in the Bridgeport neighborhood early Thursday morning. I was release with no charges this morning (Friday). I am fine. There are still five or six in custody. (Tracking down where folks are held has been difficult for the NLG.) Calls to Rahm Emanuel’s official voicemail would be helpful. The folks at Occupy Chicago and NLG worked rapidly and effectively to ensure our release. The whole charge is transparently bogus and meant for the media to reduce turnout to the march on Sunday. The permitted march will be relatively safe, providing you leave fairly soon at the end of the march (unless you want to risk arrest yourself by intentionally staying). A large turnout is crucial. Everyone who can make it to Chicago should; a larger crowd makes the entire effort safer.”
Another one of the people arrested in the raid and released is Darrin Annussek, an out-of-work social worker from Philadelphia who has been marching from city to city since November as part of “Occupy the Highway.” He was part of “Walkupy May Day” and walked all the way to Chicago to protest the NATO summit.
The person leasing the apartment, William Vassilakis, wholly condemned the raid, saying “I could not be more disgusted, enraged, terrified, by and generally totally disappointed with the city of Chicago.”
.
"But I will not let myself be reduced to silence.".
"But I will not let myself be reduced to silence."Chicago has paid out zt least $20 Million to settle lawsuits by individuals who were tortured by former police commander Jon Burge- numerous innocent people ended up in prison.
For a city continually claiming to be broke, claiming to need to cut teacher’s pay, etc., it’s unreal they continue to have these sort of cops running amok, resulting in the loss of millions of dollars.
The abuse of the protestors during the 2003 protest was totally uncalled for- but not a surprise based on precedent.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/08/16/jon-burge-settlement-rahm_n_928524.html
Jesus fucking Christ. How did he get mixed up in this? He’s the farthest thing from a danger to society. What’s the back story?
TarheelDem arrest mentioned in a Raw Story piece.
I can’t believe that the man who who always counseled me to have patience and work steadily for voter education and enrollment would build pipe bombs and Molotov cocktails. I suspect he was on a Rahm Emanuel hit list as a known agitator (i.e. a Progressive activist).
Local News here (Chicago broadcast area) varies considerably. The Fox affiliate “features” interviews with the most extreme and bizarre protesters feeding the meme that the protesters are selfish nutcases. I wonder if the goofballs they interview are just plants. Local station WGN (Tribune owned) focuses almost exclusively on practical news of mass transit and business closures. The arrests were reported but the lack of evidence and a short statement from the defense attorney are always presented at the same time. Network news seems to focus on the actual NATO summit along with police interviews and footage of the fighting.
The consensus in our cafeteria is mostly on the order of “Why did they have this NATO summit here instead of Camp David or some military base” along with annoyance at the security measures and some concern about how much all this is costing the city budget.
Yeah.
And this is different from ’68 HOW????
Not at all different!
As Mark Twain once said, history may not repeat itself, but it sure does rhyme a lot. 🙂
By now you probably know (if you read the Chicago coverage) that two undercover police informants (or cops, it is not clear) identified the house to be raided and the claims about what was going on there.
It was a crash pad for the protest and had a diversity of types of people there. Some protesters brought a car, which required they fill it with gasoline. Some protesters brought bandanas for style or for tear gas. And the person whose apartment it was was saving bottles for the beer that he was brewing in two carboys that I slept by in the kitchen.
There were multiple reason, if one speculates, why it was raided. The host was in Occupy Chicago and some of the public faces of Occupy Chicago frequented it. The three still in custody put up a YouTube of a traffic stop in which the the cops joked that just like in 1968 the CPD was going to crack skulls with billyclubs (which btw is what they did on May 20). The night before there was a wildcat (none of the sponsoring organizations organized it) “Fuck the Police” march between two police district offices that included the one in the neighborhood. And Rahm Emmanuel was trying to suppress the size of the Sunday demonstration by hyping its danger; pre-emptive raids with charges of terrorism kept the families with children away on May 20, making is easier to crack skulls.
Most of what I did in Chicago was of a citizen journalism nature. Check tarheeldem.posterous.com for a daily diary. And MyFDL diaries for the think pieces. I marched on MayDay and I marched part of the way on the NATO march. I was part of the occupation opposite the Woodlawn Mental Health Clinic for two days.
What the debt crisis was for domestic politics, the NATO Summit is for foreign policy. The fact that NATO, self-consciously having and “identity crisis”, committed itself to continuing its existence and expanding the scope of its activities is as troubling and the supercommittee gambit on the debt crisis. It is a prescription for the continued dominance of the military industrial complex, the continued privatization of the military, and the possibility of additional wars. That is why I thought it was important to go.
I am still pessimistic about grassroots electoral politics bringing change without a grassroots change in our political culture. The Occupy movement is our current best shot at that happening so long as folks broaden the participation in the peaceful, nonviolent, non-discriminatory, non-ideological, non-partisan political movement and ensure the honest functioning of the general assembly process. My current fear is that the 1% are succeeding in marginalizing that movement, scaring away lots of folks who were initially sympathetic and making its co-option by one partisan movement or another easier. The door has not closed yet by any means, but that is the worrisome trend that I see.
Thanks for your concern. I really was “disappeared” at a CPD “black site” for 18 hours. And for 12 of them the CPD did not admit that it had anyone in custody. Thanks to the persistence of the the National Lawyers Guild (donations to their operations would be appreciated), I was finally released without charges.
Good to have you back, and glad you got out okay.
Just wanted to say I had no idea Tarheel was arrested, and wanted to express that I hope he gets back to us soon. It is about to be prime time for his knowledge of ground level politics as the summer approaches.
.
"But I will not let myself be reduced to silence."TarheelDem is back home. Welcome back, THD!
Yay. I look forward to reading about his exploits.