Last week, Chicago, IL took the
stage when direct action began taking place due to the 40th Annual
ALEC meeting. After hearing of protests against the meeting coming to the hotel
that Monday and of the arrests that occurred, myself, along with 3 of my
comrades, decided we needed to take the 22-hour long trip up to Chicago to
stand in solidarity with them in this fight against corruption.
I was able
to talk to Natalie Wahlberg, one of the six arrested during the sit in that was
part of Moral Monday action that took place to start the week off:
“The main goal of Moral Monday in Chicago was to raise
awareness about ALEC's 40th anniversary conference taking place at the Palmer
House Hotel august 5-7. We chose to develop a Moral Monday theme
protest, complete with civil disobedience and arrests as an homage to the
activists in North Carolina who are protesting the lawmakers' same cuts to
social services, public goods, and personal freedoms. In Chicago, we chose to
protest the same legislation but only this time, we were seeking to illumine
the model-legislation creators: ALEC. One of ALEC's strengths is that it
operates in secrecy and our goal was to expose ALEC's war on the public,
raising public awareness, and letting Palmer House know that ALEC was not
welcome. Chicago doesn’t want ALEC in town to plot and scheme how to best take
away our rights. We want to be free to make our own future, not one that's been
bought and paid for by corporations.”
Chicago Moral Monday Coalition entered the lobby of the
Palmer House Hotel in the late afternoon, spreading out, some even taking to
the stairs to the upper floors over-looking the lobby. Then the chanting began;
“What is America going to be? Corporate greed or democracy?” as banners fell
from the railings reading, “ALEC makes For-Profit Prisons” and “Moral Mondays,
No to ALEC”. Shortly after, Reverend Marilyn
Pagan-Banks began educating the crowd about ALEC. Natalie Wahlberg said the
patron’s reaction and hotel response was, “ Completely
stunned silence. Security began to move in and [tried] to pull us away but we
were not moved.” Ultimately the Chicago
Police Department was called. A group of six then started a sit-in on the lobby
steps, holding their signs reading, “No to ALEC” and chanting, “Money for jobs
and education, not for banks or corporations!” and “Who killed Trayvon? ALEC
killed Trayvon”. When asked why Wahlberg felt civil disobedience was the best
way to go, her response was:
“Being
that Monday's protest was themed around Moral Monday in NC, it was
necessary to be arrested for civil disobedience. In keeping with
Moral Monday, my thought was that if I’m willing to sacrifice my freedom
and put my life in the hands of bastard cops, then it's very clear that I’m
willing to do everything in my power to illumine ALEC's machinations and inform
the public about who is really writing the legislation for Stand Your Ground, privatization
of public education, limiting healthcare, preventing an easier path for
immigrants to become citizens, creating for-profit prisons, the
"ag-gag" criminalization (anti whistleblower laws) and destroying
democracy in the US.”
Wednesday,
a large group of demonstrators wearing black hoodies entered the lobby and
staged a “die-in” referencing ALEC being responsible for the Stand your Ground
legislation.
On
Thursday, a rally was planned outside the hotel. Bill, a concerned citizen, who
asked his last name not be used, describes the scene during the rally:
“There had to be at least 800 or
more, it’s hard to tell when you’re in the middle of the crowd how big it is,
all I know is the entire block was full of people [and] the road was blocked
off. It was solid, shoulder to shoulder with people.”
Patrick Gocek, a fellow journalist and activist described
the police presence the day of the rally and during the lead up:
“Police presence had been around pretty heavy [all day] before
and the day of. Undercover cars parked on the street just sitting around for hours,
marked cars as well. The police were often talking with the security at
the Palmer House. At [one]
point on Wednesday I remember maybe 5-6 of us there [and less than a]
foot [away there were about] 8 officers, CPD made it very obvious the whole
time we would not do anything funny under their watch.”
Rev. Jessie Jackson was among the speakers, along with a
representative from the Chicago Federation of Labor, who at the end asked
people to leave. After discovering there
had been a request to disperse, I was better able to understand the lack of
presence at the hotel once I had arrived.
I was told that after the speakers and media had left, the
police started becoming aggressive and pushing people onto the sidewalk,
pushing the barricades and using their bicycles to edge people back.
Patrick Gocek was on the scene when the police began
arresting protestors, and filmed and recounted the following:
“The
first time I saw anything, the police were getting ready to leave [and] the
protesters were still sticking it out….they had started moving and some of them
pushed the barricade a bit farther into the street and started dancing and
chanting. I believe it was the commander who first moved in to shove a
protester, and quickly things got hot. I'm not sure why they arrested who they
did. The second time they came in was even more confusing; they rushed in out
of nowhere and snatched a few more! [Seemed] like a scare tactic, and
quickly the crowd slimmed, while lots of police were still waiting.”
Six were arrested in total after the rally. The trend of
police violence post-public demonstration has accelerated since Occupy in 2011.
You’ll have demonstrators exercising their rights as free people and once the
police become violent, the issue they’re protesting becomes background. In some
ways I have started to think it’s just another tactic – not only are we
becoming more and more of a police state but if we keep the attention on the
police then the issues that we are fighting against can continue to take
place. I personally have seen this
happening. Police brutality is a huge issue and if it doesn’t get better we are
headed for an uprising, but that’s a topic for another time.
The night of the rally, Chicago’s Light Brigade took to the
streets with illuminated signs spelling out “Fight to End ALEC.”
Although Chicago’s actions were
brief, I stand in solidarity with the Chicago protestors who felt it necessary
to go out and demonstrate their disapproval in a public forum, while informing
the masses about ALEC. ALEC’s actions do in some way affect each of us, whether
its their lack of disregard for the environment, desire to end minimum wage or
taking away funding from public schools.
I’ll leave you with Natalie Wahlberg’s words that I feel
close this perfectly:
“ALEC
is the intersection between money and politics. Behind closed doors,
corporations write model legislation to give to their politician members. The
legislation is designed to make the life of a regular person, like you and me,
harder to survive, with fewer social services and freedoms. ALEC politicians
are free to erode basic premises and betray the very constituency who elected
them, without anyone knowing. By protesting ALEC and raising awareness about
who they are, what corporations are involved and which politicians are ALEC
members, we can shine the light on them and watch them scatter like
cockroaches. Then we can step on them.”
Sources:
No comments:
Post a Comment