Re: point #2 of your post, check your own factz before being so quick to criticize others.

Being unavoidably detained, I can't speak to the other points in your post, but on point #2 you're wrong. In addition to disorderly conduct, I was also charged with resisting arrest and with allegedly violating Section 10-8-330 of the Chicago Municipal Code--the now infamous permits ordinance. Specifically, "in that 100 persons assembled at the direction of respondent which (sic) blocked ped traffic, at Oak & Michigan without unlawful permit (sic)." Court date for that is 2:30 pm, April 6th at 400 W. Superior (the other charges are being tried separately on the preceeding day at Belmont & Western).

More ominously, earlier in the day, the Gay Liberation Network feeder march was shut down by the police after they threatened us with wholesale arrest, ostensibly because we didn't have a permit. We were forcibly dispersed under immediate threat of arrest just after we started.

Carried to its logical conclusion, if the cops enforced this interpretation of the ordinance consistently, EVERY protest in Chicago would have to get the cops' permission before proceeding, no matter how large or small, no matter whether they took place on the streets or on sidewalks (ours was to have been a sidewalk march). The cops would be empowered to unilaterally ban those protests which they don't approve of.