Groups protest ahead of NATO summit
Associated Press
CHICAGO
Hundreds of protesters broke away from a large rally and began marching through Chicago streets Friday, taunting police and shouting about everything from bank bailouts to nuclear power — a prelude to even bigger demonstrations expected after the start of a NATO summit.
Police said there was one arrest for aggravated battery of a police officer. Officers also were seen trying to arrest a man who scaled a bridge tower and pulled down part of a NATO banner. Earlier, police handcuffed a man at the end of a noisy but largely peaceful rally organized by the nation’s largest nurses union.
Members of National Nurses United were joined by members of the Occupy movement, unions and veterans at the rally, where they demanded a “Robin Hood” tax on banks’ financial transactions. The event drew several thousand people and featured a performance by former Rage Against the Machine guitarist Tom Morello, an activist who has played at many Occupy events.
Deb Holmes, a nurse at a hospital in Worcester, Mass., said she was advocating for the tax but also protesting proposals to cut back nurses’ pensions.
“We’ve worked 30 years for them and don’t want to get rid of them,” she said.
The rally — originally scheduled to coincide with the start of the G-8 economic summit before that meeting was moved from Chicago to Camp David — drew a broad spectrum of causes, from anti-war activists to Occupy protesters and Cathy Christeller’s nonprofit Chicago Women’s AIDS project.
Christeller, the agency’s executive director, said there is common ground among all protesters, even against the backdrop of the NATO summit.
“The whole ... idea we should slash the [social] safety net instituted here and in Europe — it’s a disaster,” she said. “It ignores the source of the economic downturn, and it’s making people suffer unnecessarily. This brings us together.”
Security has been high throughout the city in preparation for the summit, where delegations from about 60 countries, including 50 heads of state, will discuss the war in Afghanistan and European missile defense.
Protesters and police were gearing up for Sunday, when even more demonstrations are expected. Estimates of how many might show up have varied widely, from a couple thousand to more than 10,000.