The Role of NATO
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march, except for the very end. However, there were well over 100 arrests over the full 10 days of action, which included a march against the Boeing aircraft company war makers on May 21 in downtown Chicago. The National Lawyers Guild noted over 70 instances of police brutality, most of which took place at the end of Sunday’s antiwar march, when police blocked people who were trying to leave the area at the conclusion of the rally. A number of completely innocent protesters were subjected to a deliberate episode of police violence.
More than two-dozen protesters were taken to the hospital and treated for broken bones, knocked-out teeth, concussions, and several open wounds requiring stitches (see videos of police violence at www.youtube.com/ watch?v=2cKHc0NTgIQ).
A National Lawyers Guild statement of May 25 said that most of the injuries to demonstrators were from baton blows to the body, and there were also serious head injuries.
Leading up to the march was the “People’s Summit” on the weekend of May 12-13, which attracted 750 participants. Featured were over 40 workshops on poverty war, racism, health care, worker’s rights, women’s liberation and gender liberation, democracy and debate. Keynote speakers at the “People’s Summit” included a substitute for the ill Malalai Joya, a former anti-NATO member of the Afghanistan parliament; Reiner Braun of the International Coordinating Committee of the European No to NATO Network; Kathy Kelly, Voices for on charges of terrorism on the eve of the May 20 mass march. They were accused under the first-time use of an Illinois state anti-terrorism law of making Molotov cocktails (with a device identified as beer-making equipment). The first three were arrested in an unlawful police raid on a home on May 16, in which 11 people were originally detained. The other two were arrested several days later. Hundreds protested in Chicago on May 19 in their defense. It was revealed that the five had been the victims of entrapment schemes by at least two police agents, who carried out plans modeled on the operations inflicted on a numbers of Muslim Americans recently framed on terrorism charges. The only “evidence” against the accused was statements by the undercover cops.
The NATO 5, held in isolation cells, are being represented by National Lawyers Guild attorneys. NLG attorney Sarah Gelsomino said, “Charging these people, who came here to peacefully protest against NATO, with terrorism when in reality the police have been terrorizing activists in Chicago is absolutely outrageous.” Also, as we go to press, four protesters who were arrested as a result of police violence against the anti-NATO mobilization remain in jail.
All activists need to defend these victims. The cop attacks and police informant stings are precedents for a crackdown at the upcoming Republican and Democratic Party conventions or even before. We say: Hands off anti-NATO protesters! Release them now! Defend first amendment rights! Stop the frame-up of Chicano antiwar NATO is currently conducting wars in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Somalia, Yemen, and parts of Africa. Last year, a record number were killed in Afghanistan, the longest war in U.S. history—yet the 1% war tried to paint Chicago protesters as violent!
NATO was established in 1949 as an anti-Soviet military pact. Since the fall of the Soviet Union, the number of NATO member states has increased 75%. Said author Noam Chomsky, “NATO is an intervention force under U.S. command.” NATO member countries represent 70% of all military spending in the world. As one CanG8 activist put it, “That’s not defense, that’s empire.” Apartheid Israel, although not a NATO member, shares strategic information with NATO, as part of its war on the Palestinian people. The United States, NATO’s leading member, has troops in 130 countries.
Moreover, the 2010 NATO conference produced the Lisbon Treaty, which allows for the further expansion of NATO’s role as an independent “security” arm of the European Union (EU) nations. This includes “missions outside the union,” that is, military missions everywhere.
— MARTY GOODMAN