If you had problems with how things went down Friday, I'd wish you'd take a little time to talk with others in the movement to get a bit more info about what really went down that day before offering a critique.

When 3-4 of us got there with the sound at about 4:30 pm to set it up, a lieutenant came up to me to say that he was ordering us across the street, across 4 lanes of traffic on the north side of Wacker by the river. I replied that he had no authority to do this and that it was just such "lawful" arbitrary authority that got the City's gang loitering ordinance thrown out by the Supreme Court. He said that if we stayed on the sidewalk, he'd have us arrested. I asked him under what ordinance he proposed to do this, and he refused to name one, and instead claimed that court precedents allowed him to order us to be "within sight and sound" of the consulate, i.e., across the street, but he couldn't cite precisely WHAT precidents.

We called a National Lawyers Guild attorney who's been very involved with these free speech struggles to get his advice, and ultimately put him on the phone with the lieutenant to have an argument with him. After the attorney was through talking with the lieutenant, he continued to threaten us with arrest, and we continued arguing with him, taking down his name, etc. and saying that his actions were inviting a lawsuit. He then proposed putting us in the street next to the consulate's sidewalk which, while not everything that we wanted, seemed a damn site better than getting a few people arrested and then having everyone else herded across four lanes of traffic to the other side of the street. At the end of our "negotiations," it was almost 5 pm, the start of our protest, and yet there were only about 25 people on our side there. The balance of forces certainly did not help our side of the dispute -- one more argument for being serious enough to show up on time for demos, assuming you can get off work, etc., rather than strolling in late.

I for one was not in a position to be arrested on Friday (I'm still facing three other charges and needed to be at a live cable TV show that started @ 6:30 that night). Much more importantly, given that there were many in the Palestinian community who were expected at the event, and they've been facing a great deal of legal hassles already (one of our speakers had a traffic stop on her way to the demo), it didn't seem like a particularly good time to have busts of anyone.

Probably the single best thing about Friday's demo was the substantial turnout from the Arab and Muslim communities -- the largest I've seen at a protest about the Middle East in quite some time. I believe that the intense legal repression of several local community leaders, and day-to-day "legal" harassment of Arabs and Muslims in general, has severely stunted their level of participation in most recent Chicago protests. Friday was a welcome change from that. Their courage in coming out, in spite of the repression, made the demo a welcome change from what I've seen recently.

Regarding the question of who was our audience, I for one think that it definitely was NOT the consulate or the yahoos who gave out catcalls from the sidewalk or passing cars. No, I don't think we're going to change their minds anytime in my lifetime. The only thing worth communicating to them is our determination to resist them.

To my mind, our audience is the millions of Americans who are already convinced that the Iraq/Afghanistan wars and occupations are bullshit, and as such, are open to arguments about the barbarity of the occupation of Palestine. We reached some of these people as they went by the protest, and many more through the corporate press coverage of the event. As incredibly biased as the corporate media coverage of the national and international news regarding the Israeli offensive has been, I understand that the local broadcast media coverage of the demo was surprisingly good (okay, I DO have low standards when it comes to these things).

With the barrage of propaganda being spewed out by Bush, et al, and the national affiliates, most people who oppose the Iraq/Afghanistan wars, and who thus probably have doubts about the greatly heightened Israeli offensive, probably feel very isolated right now. Even if they caught only a sound-bite of our demo, they now know that they're not alone in their doubts, and that there are like-minded people that they can join with in direct political activity if they are so inclined.

This demo was decided on at only about 8:45 PM Wednesday, so outreach was very limited, yet the turn out was at least 200 (perhaps more) by my count. Pretty good for such short notice.

I have no problem with people thinking up creative actions, so long as they don't use people who thought they were going to a legal demo as cover for CD, etc. It's incredibly disrespectful to people already on our side, and potentially causes them serious legal consequences and possibly drives them out of the movement in the bargain.

On the other hand, when people pursue creative actions that draw attention to our issues without putting others at risk, I have nothing but admiration. Such was the case with the Hillary Clinton protest at the Auditorium Theatre by CodePINK a few months back.