On the east side of the street there is a strip of grass. People are often sitting, waiting–usually for hours–for loved ones to walk out of the gates, always looking over their shoulders to make sure they don’t miss them. Sometimes when you’re in the area you get the pleasure of witnessing one of these reunions. People run into the street to embrace their families with smiles and sometimes even tears.
Even further south is the entrance to another division–Division 10–where two of my friends, two of the NATO 5, are currently being held. I go to visit one of them, Sabi, usually once a week and I can tell the guards are beginning to recognize me.
Another recent visit with the NATO 5. You can read more stories of jail solidarity here.
“Parts of the conversation were more difficult. He told me that he’d been “in the hole” (solitary confinement) all of last week, and hadn’t been allowed visitors. The reason they gave him was that there “weren’t enough cells.” I could tell that he didn’t buy that excuse, and neither did I. He looked sad and a bit lost when he said, “I didn’t even do anything, and they put me in the hole all week.” I wanted to give him a hug, because he looked like he needed it.”
An activist from Occupy Chicago finds solidarity even behind locked doors and iron bars.
In the Middle and In Between: A NATO Retrospective
“We played cat-and-mouse games with columns of riot cops all afternoon. They tried to contain us and direct our movements; we tried to outmaneuver them and get to the convention center. We succeeded, making it to the eight-foot metal barricades three times only to be threatened by the Special Forces guarding the dignitaries meeting beyond. I did a stand-up TV interview at one barricade, telling the reporter that our goal was to be seen and heard by those inside the summit. I was only seen and heard by the soldier who cut the interview short, barking a command to leave the secured area immediately.”
We return to the #noNATO actions as a member of Occupy Chicago recounts her experience months later.
UNTIL THE PRISON WALLS ARE RUBBLE
Here’s part two of a three-part series on Jail Solidarity for the NATO 5 “terrorists”:
Even though I gasped in horror and empathic pain, verbally echoing the looks of sadness, pain, rage, and anger emanating from the faces of our friends filling courtroom bench, there was nowhere else I’d rather sit. I had to see, not just for myself, but for the defendant as well. I needed to sit on the front lines of injustice, listen to the lies of state, absorb the fuel to figuratively burn this society down and nonviolently establish more beneficial structures for all people, especially ones like the defendant and the NATO5, whose only crime is raising their voices against a cancerous state.
Camraderie in the Streets, Tenderness in Between Struggles
My Near-Arrest Outside the NATO 3 Indictment
An activist with Occupy Chicago attends the indictment for the NATO 3 and faces police intimidation.
An Anarchist’s Odyssey to Chicago, part three: Harrison (pictured above) celebrates in the street at the Boeing shut down and reflects on the movement before heading back to New York with five staples in the head from a police baton, but many new friends.
I’m beginning to doubt weather Occupy can pull their shit together fast enough. I love the fighting spirit but without a center to coalesce around we can’t do it alone. If you haven’t noticed, the militarization of our police forces across the country keeps accelerating. And yet crime is down almost everywhere. So what gives? They’re preparing for you or them or us depending on where you’re sitting. Dissent is no longer tolerable. It’s dangerous. Which I think is how it’s supposed to be.
Today we release the second installment of a three-part story, An Anarchist’s Odyssey to Chicago. In this installment, the author (pictured above) is beaten by CPD and taken to the hospital, but not without a few puffs of his cigar.
Today we release the first installment of a three-part story, An Anarchist’s Odyssey to Chicago. The story is straight out of the #noNATO protests; in this chapter, Harrison embarks on a pilgrimage to the Haymarket Anarchists monument in a cemetery at Chicago’s outskirts between protests.
Parts two and three will be published tomorrow and Wednesday, respectively.
