Chicago Marches and Civil Disobedience Form Part of Week of National Resistance to U.S. War Policies in Iraq

Chicago: During the week that marked the 5th anniversary of the invasion and war against Iraq, Chicago bore witness to a plethora of resistance activities in opposition to the U.S. occupation that included permitted marches, other demonstrations, rallies and acts of civil disobedience. On Wednesday, thousands gathered in Federal Plaza and marched across downtown Chicago amidst both curious and supportive bystanders. Yesterday, civil disobedience was undertaken in a variety of locations across Chicago, resulting in as much as seven arrests. The war and occupation of Iraq has claimed over 4,000 U.S. soldier fatalities and upwards of 80,000 non-combatant Iraqi civilian deaths.

Chicago was one of many major cities across the country that played host to protests and civil disobedience in a long list that included New York, Los Angeles, Washington D.C., Philadelphia, San Francisco, Boston, Seattle, Minneapolis, Houston, Denver and Portland.

All actions and resistance marches took place during a tide of increasing public sentiment in opposition to a beleaguered Bush administration policy of continuing the U.S.-led occupation of Iraq. Over 71% of those polled in a CNN survey released this week perceived a direct link between the occupation of the war-ravaged petroleum rich country and recession-like economic troubles at home in the U.S. Indeed, even mainstream news media are now citing estimates of war spending as having reached between $700 billion and $2 trillion during a time that U.S. citizens are hunkering down against a housing foreclosure crisis, decreasing wages, significant job losses and a health care crisis that continues to leave millions under-insured or without insurance altogether.

Thousands March in Opposition to War Policies in Downtown Chicago

Wednesday’s permitted march was organized by a coalition group called Chicago Mass Action that was comprised by over five dozen community and activist groups. The Associated Press reported over 2,200 protesters as being present at the march, while organizers skirted crowd estimates in favor of emphasizing the overwhelming public opposition to both war and torture policies that continue to be undertaken by the Bush administration.

Pat Hunt, age 49, was one of the coalition organizers and hailed from the group Code Pink, which is a women’s led group in favor of social justice and against war. Hunt spoke at the 6pm rally that was held at Federal Plaza before the march occurred, where she railed against war policies and threatening continued civil disobedience and organized protests undertaken by her group and many others until the war stops.

The Plaza was filled with young protesters, many of whom brandished signs linking education to war spending, such as, “Education, Not Empire,” and “Stop Stealing $720 Million a Day from Our Children to Kill Theirs.” Other protesters in the Plaza were colorfully dressed, such as over a dozen who sported orange jumper suits together with black hooded mask in a creative display of opposition to torture policies being committed in Guantanamo Bay and beyond.

Jorge Mujica from the Midwest Coalition in Defense of Immigrants sharply condemned be racially discriminating policies that have resulted in disproportionate casualty counts for Mexican soldiers. “Most Mexican soldiers have been dispatched to the front lines,” explained Mujica, who also added that people of color are shouldering the vast burden of the Iraq and Afghanistan war policies in comparison to their Caucasian counterparts. Mujica also pointed out that, “The second soldier who died in Iraq, whose name was Jose Gonzalez, was an undocumented immigrant and is one of several other cases.”

The march, which began at about 7pm, curled through downtown Chicago by going north on Clark street, east on Wacker drive and finally ending its permitted portion in the wealthy Gold Coast neighborhood by around 9:00pm.

During the march, the diverse group of protesters engaged each other in sophisticated political discussions, such as one exchange on the intricacies of trade policy and its linkages to war, which occurred between Allan Stevo, a Ron Paul supporter, and “Brother Joe,” a proud and active union member of a Teamsters local.

Many protesters had long been involved with anti-war and peace related activism, such as local Chicago activist Kathy Kelly, who is part of the group Voices in the Wilderness and was also a participant in civil disobedience on Thursday (see below for more on this event). Other demonstrators, however, were more like Brittney Decker, who was aged 18 and was in the midst of her first anti-war march of her life. Excitedly, Decker said she had called her supportive mother to tell her how “awesome” it was to be marching against the war in the midst of her alternative spring break trip, where her and four others were volunteering in downtown Chicago during their school vacation.

Along the march route, protesters were greeted by both curious and supportive bystanders alike, such as the workers of a hair saloon that flashed peace symbols from the windows of their 2nd floor shop that overlooked the march. Wide-eyed tourists flashed away with their digital cameras capturing contrasting images of police battalions and a woman marching with her infant child. The latter was interviewed by a local Fox News affiliate.

There were no confrontations between protesters and the Chicago police, who at times, even appeared to be supportive of the march and its message. At least one police officer, named Gregory Jones, was particularly supportive of the demonstrator’s opposition to the war. When asked if there were more people demonstrating this year as opposed to last, Jones answered that he didn’t know because he had just completed a two-year’s worth of military service in Iraq. “I don’t think we need to be there anymore, we served our purpose already,” elucidated Jones, who added that “while there are less people here than there were in 2003 when I last patrolled a march, there are many, many more people all across the country who support the demonstrators and their cause.”

Wednesday’s March Followed Up by Acts of Civil Disobedience Yesterday

Yesterday in Chicago, affinity groups engaged in symbolic resistance to the war by undertaking an array of non-violent acts of civil disobedience that resulted in between 7 and 12 arrests.

The first action of the day came early in a typically briskly cold Chicago morning during rush hour, as five people hurled a banner that read, “We Heard You Malachi,” at the Millennium Flame near the Kennedy Expressway. The banner was referencing the peace martyr Malachi Ritscher, who killed himself in a public suicide meant to express opposition to U.S. war policies in Iraq. Traffic police reportedly intervened to put a stop to the action in which no arrests were made.

About ninety minutes later, four people locked themselves arm-to-arm in front of local Congressman Rahm Emanuel’s (D-IL) office on Irving Park Road in opposition to his stance on Iraq. The Chicago-based groups the Christian Peacemaker Teams and Voices for Creative Nonviolence were reported as being behind the action whose participants were apparently all arrested. Around the same time, the northbound lines Lake Shore Drive were blockaded by a group with an unknown affiliation of about a dozen people, which according to corporate news accounts, reportedly resulted in a traffic accident.

By around 1:30pm in the afternoon, eight people at Federal Plaza stepped into the lobby of Federal Plaza requesting the presence of State Senators. Seven people kneeled down until they were arrested, including the likes of Voices in the Wilderness activist Kathy Kelly, one of the speakers and organizers of the permitted march on Wednesday. Kelly is a veteran activist who previously traveled to Iraq as one of the “human shields” and has been arrested within the U.S. on many prior occasions for past anti-war activism; as a result, Kelly may face jail time because of this latest arrest.

Other non-violent actions and small demonstrations, including a protest against Raytheon at the University of Illinois at Chicago and another one waged by Columbia College students against a recruiting station, were also held throughout the day.

Thursday’s actions in Chicago were part of a larger week of civil disobedience waged all across the country. One of the first acts of civil disobedience was undertaken against Chevron and Iraq war policies by the U.S. last Saturday, where up to fifty protesters locked themselves together in front of an Chevron-owned oil refinery in Redmond, California. In downtown Washington D.C. on Wednesday, up to thirty people were arrested that blockaded an Internal Revenue Service building. Over two-dozen people were arrested in San Francisco on Wednesday as well, in the midst of a die-in that completely blocked Market street in the downtown area. Five protesters who staged a sit-in at a Federal building in Wooster, Massachusetts were also taken into custody by local police authorities and arrested on Wednesday.

Resistance Challenges Continue, While Students Call for More Radical Measures

Pat Hunt of the Chicago section of the international group Code Pink revealed that the anti-war coalition group that organized Wednesday’s mass protest and other actions during the week would disband and not regroup unless the war was still underway during next year’s anniversary. Hunt explained that the members of the coalition were already pressed with their own individual groups’ priorities in fighting for social justice issues. The dilemma between continuing local and community oriented campaigns while trying to sustain national resistance to the war policies is a common one faced by activists across the country, during a time that much of the nation sharply differs from the bounds of the mainstream debate in Washington.

In the midst of such trying tactical questions about how best to tap into the widespread public sentiment against the war, students from Portland who organized a walkout in protest of the war were sharply critical of existing anti-war activism, characterizing it as “too moderate and passive to make a difference” and faulting the “fading away” of resistance to “people [being] tired of walking in circles.” Arguably the only certainty that remains is that tactical questions dealing with how to most effectively influence existing U.S. war policy will be debated by activists and anti-war protesters alike, well into the future.