Demonstrators clash with cops outside Bush luncheon
- AP Wire

CHICAGO (Associated Press) -- Four antiwar demonstrators were arrested Monday in a brief clash with police outside the Union League Club in downtown Chicago where President Bush had just finished lunch with civic leaders.

The demonstrators tried to dart from the curb and into the street outside the club to stretch a large green banner saying "End the War and the Occupation" in front of Bush's motorcade.

They continued to struggle as horse-mounted police forced them back to the curb. Four of those who defied the officers and struggled to get into the street with their banner were arrested and taken away in a police van.

The names of those arrested and the charges against them would be released later, authorities said.

Fewer than 100 demonstrators waited for hours for Bush's motorcade to leave the club, which is located on Jackson Boulevard in the south Loop around the corner from Chicago's Everett M. Dirksen Federal Courthouse.

The demonstrators were closely watched by 15 horse-mounted police in powder-blue helmets. A huge powder-blue Streets and Sanitation Department truck sealed off the west end of the block in front of the club.

When the motorcade finally left, it was moving so fast that if Bush saw anything of the demonstrators it was no more than a fleeting glimpse.

Some people clustered on the sidewalk booed as the motorcade whisked by and as the demonstrators were taken into custody one young girl shouted: "This is what democracy looks like." Other bystanders cheered the president as his car went by, although it is unlikely he heard either.

[ abclocal.go.com/wls/story ]

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4 war protesters arrested after attempt to stop Bush motorcade
- Kara Spak, Chicago Sun-Times
January 7, 2008

In a battle between a handful of protesters and a presidential motorcade, bet on the motorcade -- especially if it’s backed by hundreds of pounds of police horse, a mounted cop and an officer on a Segway.

Four of eight anti-war protesters were arrested on the northwest corner of Dearborn and Jackson today after their group unsuccessfully tried to stop President Bush by swinging a neon green anti-war banner into the intersection.

As Andy Thayer, a Chicago paralegal leading the group, entered the street, he appeared to lean his weight into a police officer’s horse, which barely moved. A cop on a Segway appeared to push into the animal from the other side, moving Thayer back to the curb. Officers quickly handcuffed Thayer and three other protesters who refused to drop the sign and exit the thick of the skirmish.

Some of those holding the sign were not arrested. A police officer on the scene said the sign would be inventoried as evidence.

The group’s sign read “No to War and Occupation” and “Troops Home Now!” Thayer said he and the other protesters holding the banner were with the Gay Liberation Network and the Chicago Coalition Against War and Racism.

Around 100 people gathered at the intersection’s four corners around 1:30 p.m. today, many just to glimpse the president but others carrying anti-war, anti-Bush or Ron Paul for President signs. “Imagine” by John Lennon and Edwin Starr’s “War” blasted from a boom box mounted on a protester’s bike trailer.

Thayer admitted even before the mounted officers aligned in a barricade that there was a slim chance the president would get an unobstructed look at his sign.

“I don’t think they’re going to allow us,” he said.

[ www.suntimes.com/news/metro/729776,horse010708.article ]