occupying the space between the spearless spearman and the bowless bowman:
The only thing sillier today than the parade of groups listing their own off-topic demands at the end of tonight's Occupy Chicago march has been the parade of national security experts telling us how scared they are by some drunk used car salesman who was entrapped by the FBI.
So we march down to where activists will pitch camp at Grant Park and they broadcast this Chaplin speech from the Great Dictator. Fantastic, very clever, good call whomever. Then they followed up that smart little bit of agitprop with every separate supporting revolutionary cadre getting up to the mic (we get PA systems, here in Chicago) and making their atomized lists of demands, revolution something anti-war something universal justice in all things, oh, and fair media coverage for Ron Paul.
I'm happy the unions, some churches, immigrant organizations, ANSWER, the ISO, the Two Last Names 2012 Party, and the Communist Party are all together hip to the fact that Wall Street sucks and federal financial regulators blow, but after marching through downtown Chicago yellin, "We are the 99 percent" that was incongruous. It's hard to get 99% of anybody to agree on anything (and this list of demands is really good, but nobody breathed a word of it tonight), getting them to agree against something is impressive enough. If you haven't agreed on demands you can all demand together, fine. Listing off the same old demands of every supporting cast member, many of them inherently contradictory, is a very bad substitute.
Other than that it was great to be there, and I hope folks are safe camping past curfew, which is up in about five minutes. But why worry, with all the police protection I saw down there, how could they not be.
update: Get your own tents! Arrests started a little after 1AM. Folks are being detained at 18th and State.
:: posted by buermann @ 2011-10-15 22:56:00 CST |
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