There was only one feeder march, though it was particularly successful. Over one hundred people rallied at the University of Illinois-Chicago, and some of them marched east to join other radical students and youth for a march from State and Congress. Eighty-five marchers increased in number as passersby joined, and a crew from Wright College put us over one hundred. From there we marched the entire way up Michigan Ave (sidewalks) to Chicago Ave, ballooning to over one hundred fifty before reaching the first rally point of the citywide demonstration.

The police estimated that we had four thousand marching through Chicago Tuesday evening, on the fourth anniversary of the war and of the year when ten to twenty thousand anti-war protesters took over Lake Shore Drive and up to nine hundred were illegally arrested.

Led in part by Iraq war veterans themselves, as well as rank-and-file members of the National Nurses Organizing Committee (who are among those baring the brunt of a huge local assault on public health), the demonstration was pretty much a re-hash of last year, though this time with a larger crowd. The increase in size and consistency in events is a break with what had become the pattern: different experiences each year with weekend marches that generally had decreasing to equaling numbers as the previous year.

Along the sidelines, I spoke with eight and nine year olds who were shopping with their mother and both understood the rationale behind the protest and supported us. A construction worker who exploded with excitement upon seeing all the staff of his former high school, the Puerto Rican left nationalist charter school Pedro Albizu Campos, marching by him. And hundreds, or perhaps many more, of camera phones snapping shots.

By ten o'clock, a large drum circle at one part of Daley Plaza and a jazz band on the stage had both dissipated and organizers closed shop.

I missed most of the local news until the 5am broadcasts, but we were generally given less than ninety seconds on all five major English-language stations, some overhead video, and generally one interview. For the local Fox affiliate that meant a forty-five second (long) rant by one of three counter-protesters.

No arrests were made, though on the feeder police attempted to apprehend one individual who was quickly unarrested. And of course, state riot cops and plain-uniformed city cops were in big force, though not as much as in many past cases.

A next step:
Protest Boeing, the second biggest Defense contractor
5pm
April 4th
Daley Plaza