Following the attacks of 9-11, the most devastating domestic tragedy in the United States, our leaders created a culture of fear. We have spent hundreds of billions of dollars on “homeland” security. We were told to get behind the War on Terror. More than a decade later, our leaders are still trying to justify that spending. The 2012 NATO summit in Chicago provided an example on how easily this culture of fear can get out of hand and be damaging to an otherwise very peaceful society, and after the summit wrapped up, how overblown it all was. Our governments and even our “free” media pumped up possible threats. We have allowed ourselves to be fearful of the new and unknown, scared of perceived risks and distrustful of our neighbours.

The violence of the 1968 riots that coincided with the Democratic Party National Convention in Chicago seared the minds of people here with the notion of unrestrained demonstrations. Protesters and police faced off on downtown streets during one of the most tumultuous political times for the U.S. At that time, we were adrift in racial disagreement, and our young people were angry about our involvement in the Vietnam War. At that gathering, nearly 600 people were arrested and more than 100 police officers were hurt as a result of the clash.

This year, more than four decades later, the city ramped up the fear factor and herded a lot of people of out town, Andy Thayer, a lead organizer of anti-NATO protests told a Chicago public radio station before the summit. It felt like we were preparing for another ‘68 riot.

The anxiety, fear and curiosity seemed to split Chicago residents into three factions: faceless security, angry protestors and ambivalent – or clueless – residents. For many, it felt like a strange holiday or festival in the city. Local press published NATO summit survival guides, maps of road closures, a “who’s who” lists of foreign officials, online music playlists commemorating the occasion, user-submitted photo galleries and even guides on what to wear (and what not to wear). Some restaurants added NATO-themed dishes to their menus, such as a “Citizens Arrest” burger at a gourmet hamburger restaurant. Another changed its price of a side of French fries to 99 cents, as a nod of solidarity to the “99 percenters” that have been protesting in the Occupy movements. There was such dichotomy in the city: Were we to take this event, and the upwards of 10,000 people travelling to Chicago for it, seriously or not?

In the months before, neither the city of Chicago nor the NATO planning committee had released any information about street or business closings, leaving many to speculate. Would commerce come to a standstill in downtown Chicago? Would residents be forced to leave? Should we tell people to stay away from the city?

We were told that our city police officers were being given special crowd-control training – replete with riot shields and tear gas – if the awaited protesters become violent. How would a redistribution of our police force affect our neighbourhoods? There were no answers.

Indeed, in the days leading up to the summit, it seemed that there were more cops than people downtown. Our CBS television affiliate reported our commuter rail had restricted service and the size of carry-on items during the event. Bosses gave downtown workers a four-day weekend so they wouldn’t need to travel to the city. Officers in SWAT gear patrolled building entrances. The Chicago Tribune reported that F-16 fighter jets and other military aircraft were on alert to secure a temporary flight restriction zone.

In the end, the NATO summit in Chicago proved peaceful. The hype and security seemed completely overblown. About 45 people were arrested and four police officers were slightly injured, according to the Associated Press. The city awarded our police officers for “job well done” with free tickets to a major league baseball game.

The NATO summit, as occasion for discourse and public diplomatic statements, remained just that, whether it happened among international delegates in an air-conditioned meeting room at McCormick Place (named after a long-ago media baron infamous for his isolationism) or whether it was among the demonstrators in the city’s streets and parks. Perhaps the next time Chicago hosts an international event, we can trust each other a bit more.

NATO Cops Edited from Kaitlyn Laabs on Vimeo.

In the long-standing marriage of politics and protests, much of the passion has waned. There’s evidence of that detachment even as some 15,000 protestors braved the high wind and heat of Chicago to demonstrate at the North Atlantic Treaty Organization summit.

While impressive at first glance, the number of activists paled in comparison to the tens of thousands who came out against the First Gulf War during the 1990s and especially to the hundreds of thousands demanding an end to American involvement in Vietnam in the late ’60s and early ’70s.

“Clearly the war protest movement has dwindled,” said Patrick Boylan, a Los Angeles native who is an anti-war activist and humanities professor at the University of Rome.  “It is not, I believe, due to an increasing pro-war attitude.”

If numbers alone told the story, the consistent plotline would be that increasing percentages of the population oppose the recent military campaigns in Afghanistan and Iraq. According to May figures reported by the Associated Press, only 27 percent of the U.S. public now supports the Afghanistan war.

Yet opposition does not imply engagement and it is here that we find a swelling disconnect between the unhappy citizens of the world who can click “I am against this” on a computer screen and an unwillingness to physically partake in protesting as a means to bring about change.

“People aren’t feeling it,” said Sean Kay, a professor of political science and international relations at Ohio Wesleyan University. Kay has travelled the world studying the Eurozone crisis, especially as it relates to problems in Ireland. “There’s more of an indifference to things these days.”

Clearly—the AP results demonstrate this—this detachment does not manifest itself as a total lack of awareness about the unpopular political and military decisions of the day. Just as true is the fact that no single reason or cause can explain exactly what triggered this apparent trend of worldwide nonchalance. Instead, several contributing factors form this dispassionate disagreement and disinclination to take to the streets and speak out.

And as this aversion grows, global disillusionment caused by a perception of government stonewalling certainly plays a key role.

Recalling many Italian demonstration efforts, Boylan reported that, “Several [demonstrators] here in Rome have told us: ‘our protests over the years seem to have served no purpose, the government just doesn’t listen, we feel useless waving signs.”

If would-be protesters perceive their actions as useless against the powerful and ineffectual as tools to generate real results, human rational thinking alone would be enough to dissuade them from participating in demonstration events.

Another cause for ennui is lack of knowledge about protest’s rich past, especially in the United States where it has long been a significant impetus for social change.

“To me one of the problems is that people are disconnected to the history of protests,” said Bucky Halker, folk musician and history PhD who wrote the book, “For Democracy, Works and God: Labor Song-Poems and Labor Protests 1865-95 (Working Class in American History.) “There’s so much amnesia,” he continued, “and people in the last 30 years have been lulled by false economic prosperity into thinking things were going along smoothly.”

For Halker, the recognition that demonstrators are not fighting alone but are protesting just as dissenting citizens have for years, gives them a greater sense of purpose.

Boylan agrees that identifying with the historical continuity of protesting would strengthen activists’ resolve. “You marvel at the contrast between huge Vietnam protests and the dwindled Afghanistan protests,” he observed. “Well, let me say that the servicemen who hurled their medals back at the NATO command in Chicago last Sunday did so with no less fury than their elders did during the Vietnam protest.”

One historical example of the latent power of protest is through a once-thriving entity now pushed to the very back of collective American minds: protest music.

In the 1960s and ’70s, college students listened to Bob Dylan and Woody Guthrie protest music on their record players just as university students today listen to top-40 love songs on their iPods.  For Halker, this change in musical predilections from protest to pop isn’t for lack of folk singers trying to spread their word.

The musician and author blames popular music’s inability to promote more autonomous musicians, backed not by corporate record labels but by a home computer and a self-made recording studio, to explain why protest music—almost always an independent endeavor—has not reached critical mass.

“There’s no mid-level people pushing out from the bottom, so it’s hard for young artists to get their music heard,” he lamented.

“People are writing protest songs that are as good as ever, and as many as ever but they won’t get major airplay or attention due to changes in the [entire music] industry,” he argued. “The industry has been in shambles since the 1970s and is dead for all practical purposes except at the highest level.”

Another major motivation killer for young would-be protesters is the lack of a military conscription in the U.S.

“I grew up in a small town and people came home in body bags,” said Halker. “When you have to face the reality that people you know are dying, you face an immediate threat.”

But even though this immediacy sparked an intense brand of activism hard to find in America today, fervent social expression may be starting to re-emerge elsewhere as political and military pressures push other populations to the brink of tolerance.

In fact, protesting may again be on the rise globally, as evidenced by the recent “Arab Spring” protests in the Middle East, the demonstrations against voter fraud in Iran or to those who rallied for the liberation of Tibet from Chinese rule, to name just a few examples.

With “Occupy” protest movements of late sweeping from Rome to Rio and any city that the word can be affixed to, the image of an inactive youth is slowly beginning to crumble.

“They’re being hit on a very personal level,” said Boylan, “just like their elders were in the 1970s.”

As unemployment and college-loan debt weighs down young adults, entangling them in a daunting new world of public policy and politics, this movement may continue to strengthen—much like the passion of the Vietnam War era.

“Many people have wondered where the sudden activism of all the young, educated people in the streets has come from,” Boylan said. “After all, they are not being shipped off to Vietnam but they are being deprived of their future.”

Whether this newly afire passion can be sustained is still unknown, but with apathy eroding and concern taking hold, the marriage of protest and politics may not be doomed for divorce after all.

Click above to see photos from the 2012 NATO Summit at McCormick Place. Descriptions can be found on Flickr.

At the crossroads of power and protest, more than 800 music-loving demonstrators celebrated the coming 100th anniversary of folk song hero Woody Guthrie’s birthday, an event that coincided, or close enough,  with the NATO Summit in Chicago. So, in keeping with the spirit of Guthrie, concertgoers opposed the policies and practices of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization not with demonstrations but with dancing.

“We saw this as a great moment to look at things through the lens of creativity and song,” explained Marguerite Horberg, executive director of Porto Luz, the non-profit organization that coordinated the concert. The show featured eight bands including headliner Tom Morello, former guitarist of the Grammy Award-winning group, Rage Against the Machine.

Horberg noted that Porto Luz began in 2007 to view the ailing economy and what she calls “the Second Great Depression,” through the perspective of multi-arts programming. The concert, entitled “This Land is Our Land! A Centennial Celebration of Woody Guthrie,” was the latest demonstration of those efforts.

“Music is a universal language,” said Airan Wright of B.S. Bass, one the groups that performed in the show. “It conveys emotion that anybody in the world can understand.” Wright applauds music’s inherent ability to communicate “exuberance, suspense or sadness without ever uttering a word.”

For Wright, Saturday’s performance was all about honoring Guthrie’s legacy and not really about displaying global dissent. “It felt much more like a simple celebration of a musician and his legacy than geared toward being a protest of what was happening outside.”

Other acts disagreed. “NATO coming to Chicago is obviously a slap in the face for someone like me and a chance to stir up some trouble Woody Guthrie style,” said Jon Langford, a Welsh-born musician now in Chicago who was also showcased on Saturday night.

“There are a lot of people out there questioning authority, which is their right and duty,” he affirmed. “I hope my music makes people realize that Woody isn’t some museum piece, that the stories in his songs go on to become more relevant as power and wealth consolidate in this country.”

Folk singer and centennial performer Bucky Halker concurred. “This concert is another way to celebrate the accomplishments of people before us but keep our eye on the need to change the world in a positive way.”

In fact, the concert’s upbeat vibe was precisely why it became such a necessary event for many peaceful dissenters to attend. The musical celebration arrived amid persistent reports prior to the Summit of possible hostility and aggression from various protest groups.

“We’re lumped in with the people who are violent,” Horberg stated. The Porto Luz organizer calls this assumption “insulting.” It was also a major reason why coordinators worked so hard to maintain the cheerful ambience of the night. “We want people to revel and celebrate being part of each other and part of the 99 percent,” she said. “The tradition of art, imagination and creativity is central to all these struggles and not just an afterthought.”

For Porto Luz and all involved in the show, it was a moment of good fortune that the weekend of the NATO Summit came close to Woody Guthrie’s centennial birthday. “He’s the originator of a model used by those of us who are songwriters actively engaged in American politics and trying to change the world,” argued Halker, who is Vice-President of the Woody Guthrie Foundation, based in New York City. “He is the godfather of modern American protest music.”

Langford recognized the concert as homage to Guthrie’s music but with a twist. “I hope it isn’t a back slapping nostalgia trip but an angry expression of honest dissent,” Langford confided just days before the show.

In that same time leading up to curtain call, Halker also viewed the evening with his own brand of optimistic expectation. Author of a book on labor song-poems and protests of the 19th century, the history PhD and songwriter set Saturday night within the framework of protest music’s past. “It’s good to know you had people who preceded you who were doing the same things and struggling with the same issues,” he said. “Once you realize you’re part of a long historical stream you can say to yourself, ‘I’m not fighting alone, I’m out fighting with people who have been fighting for years.’”

Several hundred demonstrators, many of them mental health clinic workers and patients, gathered in front of Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s house  Saturday in a rally against the North Atlantic Treaty Organization and plans to shut down many of the city’s of mental health clinics.

The protestors met in Horner Park at noon and marched nearly two miles to the mayor’s North Side house, chanting slogans including “You say cut back, we say fight back.” They then sat in the middle of Hermitage Avenue, demanding the mayor and President Obama be responsible for healthcare problems.

“Hey Rahm.  Come on out. See what American is all about,” they shouted.

The mayor didn’t appear at the time of the protest.
The demonstrators said hosting the NATO summit has diverted Chicago’s resources away from where they are most needed. In a controversial move last December, Chicago officials proposed to shut down half of its mental health clinics to slash city spending in a fragile economy.

“I am tired of Rahm Emanuel cutting everything for poor people. Cut, cut, cut,” said Zakiyyah Muhammad, a homecare provider and community activist in Chicago.
“I wish NATO had never come here because the money that the mayor and others have put into welcoming NATO, that money could have been put into a budget to keep the mental health clinics open.”

“I wish NATO would go home ASAP,” she said.

Police used bikes as barricades between the Mayor’s place and the protestors. One protestor went up to a police officer, asking him to shake hands and make a sign of peace. The police didn’t respond.

The three-hour protest today is the third major rally against NATO. The first one started on Friday, with people demonstrating outside the Canadian consulate to protest construction of the Keystone XL pipeline in the ecologically sensitive Sand Hills area in Nebraska. Thousands of people also gathered in Daley Plaza in downtown Chicago calling for a “Robin Hood Tax” on Wall Street.

The biggest rally may be yet to come – protestors from all over the country are expected to meet downtown on Sunday . The Occupy Chicago movement, environmentalists, anarchists, anti-war supporters and numerous other groups seek to get their voices heard when world’s most powerful leaders gather in Chicago.

So far, three self-identified anarchists from other parts of the country have been accused of planning bomb attacks on places including the mayor’s house and Obama’s re-election campaign headquarters  in Chicago’s Loop district.

BY MELISSA KANDEL

As activists descend upon Chicago in preparation of the upcoming North Atlantic Treaty Organization Summit, dusting off anti-War tee shirts and putting the finishing touches to demonstration signs, their collective actions may join a long but modest history of NATO and G-8 protests.

“For all the various arguments and controversies that have gone on in or around NATO in the recent years, there really haven’t been a lot of public protests,” said Sean Kay, professor of politics and government at Ohio Wesleyan University.

Kay cited general indifference as a major contributing factor to this lack of protest activity.  “People might intellectually oppose it but will they make the time and effort to go out in a sustained way and protest it?”

Pat Hunt, an organizer at the Coalition Against NATO/G-8 War & Poverty Agenda, disagrees. “With NATO coming to Chicago, it is a real opportunity for people who are opposed to it.”

Others see the upcoming protests here as a relic of grievances from conflicts past.

“The Cold War ended 20 years ago and NATO could have ended its existence at that point,” suggested Lawrence Kaplan, a history professor at Georgetown University.  “But at the moment the Soviet Union collapsed and the Warsaw Pact with it, the Yugoslavian crisis came up and there was a role for NATO.”

And in the early 1990s, with disaster looming in Yugoslavia, Bosnia-Herzegoniva and Croatia, a new opportunity arose for NATO to re-define its objectives and goals.

“They created a purpose of NATO—managing crisis—but didn’t identify the scope of crisis and I think that was one of their problems,” Kaplan said.

More recently, even NATO’s intent to resolve issues of global security has evolved.

“NATO has become more than just a socializing institution for former communist states,” said Doug Bandow, a senior fellow at the CATO Institute. “It suddenly looks like it is very active in terms of getting involved in other conflicts,” he said, citing NATO interventions in Libya and Afghanistan.

Though many oppose this expanded role of NATO, Bandow reasons that the ineffectiveness of protests may stem from lack of support among many Europeans.

“People on the left in Europe have been very active in promoting these sorts of interventions,” Bandow noted. “So it’s a bit harder to get active and effective protest movements when would-be allies on the other side are promoting the things you don’t like.”

Bandow expects more success for G-8 protests, in part because of the non-specific way countries are included in the economically-focused alliance. “That just looks a lot more like a selfish organization begging to be protested against.”

Kay agrees, anticipating less opposition against NATO policies than against G-8 agendas affecting the hot button issue of income equality.  “At the end of the day, the biggest national security challenge is the global economy and our economy,” he said.

Chicago protesters are aware of this disparate support. “We have no illusions that we’re going to march to McCormick Place and the powers of NATO are going to say, ‘Well, we better stop doing this now,’” Hunt said. “It’s not going to happen.”

Still, demonstrators welcome the opportunity for public exposure of their concerns. “We talk about democracy?” Hunt asked with a slight laugh. “Well, this is what democracy looks like.”