CHICAGO — The historic NATO weekend arrived in Chicago on Friday with a peaceful rally in Daley Plaza that went off as envisioned by both police and protesters who spent a gorgeous spring day in a less-than-crowded Loop. CHICAGO —
CHICAGO — The historic NATO weekend arrived in Chicago on Friday with a peaceful rally in Daley Plaza that went off as envisioned by both police and protesters who spent a gorgeous spring day in a less-than-crowded Loop.
The relative lack of traffic proved fortuitous when hundreds of demonstrators embarked on impromptu marches that spilled onto streets and ended when police turned marchers away at the Michigan Avenue bridge.
With so many people staying home, downtown had a holiday feel on day one of the city’s turn in the international spotlight.
“I’ve lived in Chicago all my life and haven’t seen anything like this,” said Gloria Prowell, 47, of Hyde Park, while making her way home from her restaurant job. “It looks peaceful, so I’m happy about that. (The protesters) have a right to be here, but they have to be calm. The police are being calm.”
One protester was arrested and charged with aggravated battery to a police officer during a scrum at the bridge, a police spokeswoman said. Police also led away a protester dressed in black clothing from the rally. But the luckiest might have been a Mohawked man whose fellow protesters helped him escape police clutches after he tore down a NATO banner hanging from the bridgehouse on the southeast side of the bridge.
The protesters are here to decry the NATO summit, which runs Sunday and Monday. The only other city-permitted protest is a Sunday anti-war march and rally from Grant Park to near McCormick Place where world leaders will gather.
Friday’s centerpiece was a noontime Daley Plaza rally against NATO organized by the National Nurses United. One of two protest events with a city permit, the rally drew about 3,200 people — short of the capacity 5,000 city officials had expected.
The kick-off rally was far from the angry, violent protests seen at other gatherings of world leaders. It featured people dressed like Buddy the Elf and dancing to Motown music and the Beatles “Can’t Buy Me Love.” Many wore Robin Hood-style hats made of green felt in support of a so-called Robin Hood tax on financial institutions’ transactions in order to offset cuts in health care and social services.
At one point, Rage Against the Machine guitarist Tom Morello, a Libertyville, Ill., native and Occupy activist who has been at the movement’s forefront, had to stop the band and teach the crowd how to sing protest songs. Woody Guthrie’s “This Land Is Your Land” is apparently no longer the staple it once was.
The rally unfolded after much hand-wringing by city officials. Last week, the administration of Mayor Rahm Emanuel revoked permission for a march to Daley Plaza, claiming that the demonstration was expected to grow far beyond organizers’ original crowd estimate of 1,000 people. City officials relented after they were criticized for suppressing free speech, but only after the nurses agreed to drop their plans to march through downtown.
Most of the nurse demonstrators boarded buses and left after the rally. That didn’t stop a couple groups of protesters from marching through the Loop and up Michigan Avenue. Police officers accommodated the impromptu marches as they conducted rolling road closures for the hundreds of demonstrators who made their way east.
Chanting “These are our streets” and “(Expletive) NATO,” roughly 100 demonstrators headed toward Michigan Avenue. Another group of roughly the same size marched toward Grant Park.
One group stopped briefly at Daley Bicentennial Park as members disagreed about where to go next. Police tried to direct them onto Columbus Drive, but some protesters defied them yelling “Whose parks? Our parks!”
After 10 minutes of trying to figure out where to go, the group made its way through the park to Randolph Street. Police tried to get them to use the sidewalks, but they pushed through the police bike barricade and marched back west to Michigan Avenue. When they did, the let up a cheer proclaiming victory over the police.
The two groups of protesters converged at Michigan Avenue and Wacker Drive shortly before 3 p.m. Police, who had allowed the groups to wander through Loop streets largely unrestricted, stopped them halfway across the Michigan Avenue bridge and not did allow them to go farther north.
Emanuel said protesters behaved responsibly Friday.
“I think the Chicago Police Department did a very good job. I think the protesters had a chance to have their voices heard and they also did it in a responsible way,” Emanuel said after delivering brief remarks at a photo exhibit exploring NATO’s history at the Pritzker Military Library.
Downtown streets were sprinkled with gawking tourists and the few curious office workers who didn’t work from home as the summit of world leaders loomed. Suburban Metra riders who trained into the city for work reported lighter-than-normal passenger loads. And far from the business as usual that city leaders touted, concerns about NATO took its toll on some retailers.
“The mayor promised an economic impact on the city (from hosting NATO), but I fear it’s going to be a negative one,” bemoaned owner Albert Karoll over the lack of customers at custom tailor and shirtmaker Richard Bennett.
While many of the protests centered on governments spending money on military resources rather than on social ills, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff said NATO-member countries also are being forced to deal with austerity measures.
Army Gen. Martin Dempsey told the Chicago Tribune editorial board that as an outcome of the two-day summit he wanted to see NATO “maintain the credibility and relevance and the capability of the alliance” despite “these incredible … fiscal challenges.”
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In Washington on Friday, Obama met with the new president of France, Francois Hollande. The president noted Hollande had spent some of his youth in the United States “studying American fast food” and that “we’ll be interested in his opinions of cheeseburgers in Chicago.”
While no major rallies are planned for Saturday, the day could pose some traffic challenges as many world leaders are expected to arrive.
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Staff writers Rick Pearson, John Chase, Matt Walberg, Stacy St. Clair, Kristen Mack, Dan Hinkel and Becky Schlikerman contributed to this story.
