Chicago 2012 G8 & NATO Summits

Earlier today a group of 100 immigration protesters in the loop had four arrested but was otherwise peaceful.  The city had a near normal heartbeat today, with a palpable increase in beat cops seen around the loop and along Michigan Avenue. 

Social media is active with ever-evolving plans for pop-up demonstrations, but a lack of focus and light turnouts have kept events low key.  

Here is Saturday’s timeline:

Saturday, May 19           

Airspace restrictions begin around downtown Chicago, ending on Monday.

Road closings and pedestrian restrictions around McCormick Place go into effect, ending Monday at rush hour.

Parking restrictions go in effect around Chicago Cultural Center, 78 E Washington Street. 

Metra Electric line begins skipping 5 stops.  Passengers at all stops are subject to delays due to enhanced passenger screening.

Motorcades will bring dignitaries downtown from O’Hare International Airport, with rolling closures of Kennedy Expressway (I-90) and other major roadways. 

Field Museum open, Adler Planetarium, Shedd Aquarium and Art Institute closed to the public.

President Obama at G8 summit at Camp David, Md. for 2^nd day, then travels to Chicago and stays at Sheraton Chicago.

Michelle Obama tours White House & hosts lunch with G8 spouses.

Baseball’s “cross-town classic” at Wrigley Field, game time 6:15pm.

Chicago Kids & Kites NATO day at Montrose Harbor, 10am to 4pm.

Dutch Prime Minister Address, 4:15-6pm, Chicago Club, 81 E. Van Buren Street.

Presidential NATO event, Willis Tower, 6pm, with surrounding street closings and parking restrictions from 2pm until midnight. 

Occupy Chicago General Assembly, Jackson Boulevard and Lasalle Street (Chicago Federal Reserve), with unpermitted march down Jackson to Congress & Michigan, 7-9pm.

Occupy Chicago offshoots:  two activist groups have unclear/unpermitted protest plans, “99% solidarity people’s convention,”  & “ healthcare not warfare.”

Readers will find the best timelines on the Chicago NATO summit here.  Tomorrow we release Saturday’s busier schedule, leading up to the start of the summit on Sunday, May 20.

Thursday, May 17          

Street parking restrictions already in effect around the McCormick Place neighborhood.

 CTA bus re-routes begin and run through Monday evening.

 Museums open as usual.

 NATO debate with Andy Thayer at Pritzker Military Library, 104 S. Michigan.

 “Planet over profits and war,” environmental protest at Canadian Consulate, 180 N Stetson Avenue (near AON Center).  Activists request bike riders to gather at LaSalle & Jackson at 2pm and bike to consulate by 3pm.   

 Friday, May 18                

Maritime security zone to take effect on Chicago waterways, running through Tuesday morning.

Museums open as usual.

First day of G8 summit at Camp David, Md.

Baseball’s “cross-town classic” at Wrigley Field, game time 1:20pm.

National Nurses United demonstration march (permit 1,000, estimated 2,000) scheduled to go from Sheraton Chicago, 301 E North Water in Streeterville (assembly 10am-march 11am to 1pm) to Daley Plaza.  Route is now in dispute among the nurses and city.  City is asking the march to start at Petrillo Music Shell (Grant Park at Jackson Blvd) and proceed down Michigan Avenue.  Musical performer Tom Morello, activist and former guitarist with band Rage Against the Machine, set to perform but venue is not clear yet.  

Federal Plaza protest, time unknown.

The last business briefing given by the host committee was held today. The well attended meeting at Chase tower in the loop revealed little new information, especially after the jointly released press release that came out last Friday that outlined road closings and parking restrictions.

The FBI did let the group know there are no known viable terrorist threats against Chicago during the NATO summit. The Secret Service said that no businesses or homes are behind the hard-perimeter and that no businesses around McCormick Place will be closed because of the summit.

Chicago Police Superintendent Garry McCarthy said there will be traffic delays, but that he expects the normal flow of traffic to prevail throughout the weekend.

Rumors of cyber-attacks on banks leading up to the summit were not found to be credible by the panelists.

A 10 page press release hit the media this past week that covers a great deal of information about transportation and parking restrictions for the upcoming NATO summit. The information was jointly released by the CPD, the US Secret Service, the FAA, and the US Coast Guard. As anticipated, road closings and parking restrictions mostly surround the immediate area of McCormick Place.
But combine rolling closures along Interstate 90/94 for airport runs, rolling closures along Michigan Avenue and close-by roadways for transport to and from the venue, and some permanent and semi-permanent event-long closures of important roads such as Lake Shore Drive and Interstate 55, and it is not difficult to predict traffic gridlock in the city from Saturday, May 18 to through Monday, May 21.
Traffic aside; citizens have been bombarded with news coverage depicting protest violence at past large multi-national summits. Chicagoans want to know what to expect for this summit, but no organization has been willing or able to publically estimate how many protesters will show up or if there will be large-scale violence or property damage.
Tammy Weber in the Huffington Post reports recently that activists wishing for massive protests in Chicago may have been dealt a blow when the G8 was moved to Camp David.
The G8 summit “would have brought more protesters and more anger because you could raise up the flag of the social class,” said Dominic Pacyga, a Columbia College history professor. That’s not so easy with the NATO summit. NATO is seen by many Americans as “something useful,” even though it faces significant opposition in Europe, said Luis Fernandez, a sociology professor at Northern Arizona University who studies protests.
Protests are almost sure to be smaller and less dramatic than originally expected. Rachael Perrotta, a spokeswoman for Occupy Chicago, said that before the G8 meeting was moved, Occupy groups from 25 cities said they would be in Chicago. Now she expects people on the East Coast will head toward Camp David instead.
Camp David, a posh retreat and a military installation all in one, is located in rural Maryland and is heavily secured year-round. There is no doubt the media and protesters will be on hand for the G8 on May 19-20. How many media and protesters will then move to Chicago for the NATO summit May 20-21 is hard to predict.
About 2,200 members of the international media are credentialed for the NATO summit in Chicago, and seven of eight G8 countries are NATO members. Only Russia is not, and there has been controversy among that country and NATO member nations about missile defense measures that NATO is about to undertake in former Russian territories in Europe.
Recently local protest activists have sought to merge planned protests and ideologies as momentum has sagged and the summit nears. “NATO will be huge if Chicagoans come out,” Perrotta said. “It’s not going to be the out-of-towners.”
“I think the core issue is still here,” said Carl Rosen, regional president of the United Electrical Workers Union, who predicts “many dozens” of his members, mostly from the Chicago area, will join the anti-NATO rally.
“The American people are very frustrated that so many of our services are being cut back,” Rosen said. “There is so much unemployment, so many people without jobs to take care of their needs day to day, and yet we’re still sending a huge amount of money on these wars.”

NATO expert and professor Sean Kay recently told Voice of America that deep seated changes need to be made during the upcoming NATO summit in Chicago.  “NATO has serious, fundamental problems – operating problems, political commitment problems – that come out of the Afghanistan war and were exacerbated in Libya,” he said.

As Chicago airwaves crackle with all the news about preparations for the event this May, some 65 plus countries and organizations are busy planning their visit and agendas.  The summit is indeed a momentous political event for Chicago, and even the world.

In his “Early Warning” blog, Daniel Goure, Ph.D. reports that the NATO alliance will likely acknowledge its recent progress at the summit, but he says the alliance must also be vigilant to potential conflicts in places such as Syria.  “There is no time left for studies and committee meetings,” he said.  

A key theme of the summit will be improvements to the alliance’s capability to defend its members and meet evolving threats.

Meanwhile, the May 1^st planned protests opened with a whimper across Chicago.  CPD superintendent Garry McCarthy was at Federal Plaza and after a rally ended there he pronounced the day a success.  It wasn’t that big of a crowd,” he said.  There were no arrests.    

For over a week, military aircraft have operated over Chicago’s downtown lakefront, startling high-rise residents and sending their pets scurrying for cover. The official explanation is routine military exercises in the urban environment. With the NATO summit to take place next month, a correlation is obvious but according to information given to the host committee, the training is unrelated to the summit.

“It was frightening,” Chicago resident Jessica Hill said in Crain’s Chicago Business. “I was definitely alarmed.” Some said at least three helicopters flying at time in close order formation – at other times separating fairly widely – zoomed around office and residential towers for several hours. “I was pretty amazed,” resident Felise Llano said, “because they were definitely military.” Witnesses described three to four very heavily armed men in each chopper. Several said some of the men appeared to be tethered and were at times literally hanging out of the choppers, and looked ready to jump or fire on ground targets.

Chicago’s ABC 7 reported last week that police plan to use a long-range acoustic device to keep crowds from getting out of hand. The device can be used to make announcements that can be heard over a wide area, as well as make sounds that are bothersome to humans, even up to a point of being painful in order to disperse crowds. Also recently media carried the first admission by city officials that Illinois National Guard troops will be deployed to help keep order.

In a recent surprise announcement, officials declared that train lines running under the venue, McCormick Place, will be open and passable during summit. This news is in sync with the city’s message that Chicago is open for business during the summit, and will not be a boarded-up military fortress. The announcement came with a caveat that delays should be expected for security reasons, making the term “open and passable” up for interpretation. Metra alone runs over 40 trains a day that stop at the McCormick Place station, which is directly under parts of the massive convention center.

Meanwhile, Chicago hosts the 12th World Summit for Nobel Peace Laureates this week. This impressive gathering has received little press, but recently it was reported in the Chicago Tribune that at least two of the laureates cancelled their appearance either directly or indirectly because of the NATO summit next month. A 1976 Irish laureate, Mairead Corrigan Maguire, said she has called for NATO disbandment in the past.   Maguire said she did not want to be aligned with the US state department, which has recently made favorable mention of the Nobel gathering in Chicago.

The Daily Herald reports this past week that local anti-war activist Andy Thayer visited a local college to discuss reasons for protesting the upcoming NATO summit in Chicago.

Other media reported that the representatives of the Chicago host committee have also been visiting local schools, including former secretary of state and host committee number-two Madeleine Albright. The message is the virtues of NATO and the many benefits the summit will hopefully bring to the city.

Laurie Healy is in charge of the Chicago host committee and was on point with the positive message in an article appearing in Chicago Magazine’s May edition (just out). Among her comments was a distancing to the author’s comparison of the summit to the 1968 Democratic convention, for which Chicago is well known. “That was over 40 years ago,” she said, “the world has changed a lot.”

Healy also said that Chicagoans are used to traffic problems and other forms of disruption from dignitary visits, pointing out that President Obama is here frequently. She also commented that “unscrupulous security firms and board-up companies have gone around and tried to solicit business.” “It scares people, and our job is to get that fear down. People should embrace it,” she said.

At his talk, Thayer called NATO “the world’s most expansive and dominating military empire in history.” “And the key,” he said, “to US military dominance abroad.” Thayer is the organizer for the protest march recently permitted by the city, which will lead from Grant Park and through the eastern parts of the loop area on May 20.

In other news, Crain’s reports that the US Secret Service has gone out to bid for the physical requirements needed for the summit. This includes miles of concrete barriers, 8-foot-high “anti-scale” steel fencing, light towers, portable toilets, sand bags, tents, support trailers, portable generators, portable air conditioners, golf carts, and fueling support for a fleet of vehicles.

There is little doubt that the area around McCormick Place will be heavily secured, as officials plan to head off waves of potential protesters. At the 2010 NATO summit in Lisbon, Portugal, some 30,000 protesters were on hand, one march alone held 10,000 people as it snaked through a main thoroughfare.

At the NATO 60^th anniversary summit in 2009, the host cities of Strasbourg, France and Kehl, Germany (border towns) became highly secured and heavily armed military fortresses.           

 Thousands of riot police and military troops were deployed along with anti-aircraft artillery, warplanes, helicopters, and surveillance aircraft.  Curfews were enacted, and the everyday movement of citizens was controlled and credentialed.   

 In his blog “Stop NATO,” Rick Rozoff says that Chicago’s Mayor has portrayed the summit as a benign affair, but that “it will be nothing of the sort.”

 In the Chicago Tribune, Mark Jacob and Stephan Benzkofer report that when the world leaders arrive, they will be protected by armored vehicles, magnetometers, terrorist watch lists, and heavily armed police and soldiers.  The security measures, they say, may be unprecedented in Chicago history.

 On April 4, the city approved a parade permit for a protest march to take place on the first day of the summit, May 20.  The rally will start in Grant Park at the Petrillo Music Shell, and proceed west down Jackson Boulevard to State Street.  Heading south on State, the march will then turn east on Harrison and then to Michigan Avenue.  On Michigan, the protesters will head south to McCormick Place, the venue for the event.  To date, the US Secret Service has not announced what security perimeter will surround McCormick Place, but it is anticipated that it will be substantial.

As the city continues to prepare, the Tribune reports that the Department of Streets and Sanitation has been ordered to remove the “big belly” trash cans that line the parade route and dot other loop streets.  These cans are bulky and enclosed, and can conceal contents and create problems during periods of unrest.

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton spoke about the summit goals recently at a speech following a visit to NATO’s Allied Command Transformation headquarters in Norfolk, Virginia.  The Command is focused on training, concept development, and research to improve the military effectiveness of the alliance. NATO officials said it was the first time a U.S. Secretary of State had visited the Command, which is the only NATO command in North America.

Secretary Clinton said that there will be a focus at the meetings on the next steps the alliance will take in Afghanistan.  She said that NATO will make it clear to the Afghanistan government, its citizens, and insurgents that NATO will not be abandoning the country, but that by the end of 2014, Afghans will be fully responsible for their country’s security.  She added that the US does not seek permanent military bases in the country.

Nato 60th summit in Strasbourg marred by street battles and arson

Buildings were set on fire and running battles were fought between protesters and riot police in the streets of Strasbourg, where Barack Obama and world leaders have gathered for a Nato summit.

By Bruno Waterfield and Peter Allen in Strasbourg
5:04PM BST 04 Apr 2009

Anarchists and demonstrators set fires at a hotel, a disused border post and a tourism office around Strasbourg’s Pont de l’Europe, a bridge that joins France and Germany.
Police fired volleys of teargas to try to stop groups of violent French and German protesters joining forces to rampage across the city.
Masked youths threw petrol bombs, smashed windows and ransacked shops, forcing police to retreat until riot officers could regroup to seize back control.
Eyewitnesses saw black-clad protesters storm the nearby Ibis hotel, pilfering alcohol from its bar and setting the building ablaze.
“The hotel and the other buildings were completely engulfed in flames,” said a resident of the city who witnessed the mayhem.
“The police had completely lost control and the firemen could not put out the flames. It was only when the police sent a squad which fired tear gas rounds that the blaze could be tackled.”
As fires blazed, German police officers turned water cannon that they had been using to douse protesters onto the flames.
Many of the protesters – described as a “small army” by one police officer – were members of the sinister Black Bloc group, a notorious anarchist gang.
The violence followed a huge Franco-German police operation, costing 150 million euros (£132 million).
Hundreds of anti-Nato activists have been arrested in the past two days.
President Nicolas Sarkozy had instructed police that he did not want to see any signs of protest during events to mark Nato’s 60th anniversary.
But the wives of world leaders, including Michelle Obama and Carla Bruni, were forced to cancel a visit to a cancer hospice because of the widespread rioting.
And, as Nato leaders departed on Saturday night plumes of smoke could be seen rising from many points across the city.

This week the NATO Host Committee website was populated with information for the first time since a home page was established several months back. The site, www.chicagonato.org, lists some of the summit details, including a list of the 50 countries planning on attending with their 60 Prime Ministers and/or Presidents. The site offers a small number of public events loosely relating to the summit or at least sponsored by the host committee or one of the associated entities such as World Business Chicago. A press section displays articles with positive coverage about the event, and a blog is offered, authored by White House Deputy National Security Advisor Ben Rhodes.

Corporate sponsors listed on the site have donated $36 million to help pay for the city’s expenses in hosting the summit, and a federal grant was announced for another $19 million. As now understood, these funds should cover what the city expects to spend on the basics such as police and emergency services.

Media reported recently that train lines and highways could be shut down around McCormick Place during the summit, including parts of Lake Shore Drive, the Stevenson, and the Metra Electric line. The US Secret Service plans to announce its specific plans about 2 weeks before the event.

Meanwhile protest organizers continue to bicker with city officials for permit rights to march certain routes on certain days. A compromise appeared to be in the works toward the end of this week.

The Chicago Police continue to gear-up as the summit nears, purchasing another 8,500 face shields for existing riot helmets. This comes after an earlier purchase of 3,000 of the shields and means that every officer on the force will have one. Police horses have also been equipped with protective gear.