After all the planning, platitudes and protest, the NATO summit officially gets under way Sunday at McCormick Place, with President Barack Obama and fellow Western military alliance leaders charting the wind-down of involvement in Afghanistan and demonstrators demanding that it be ended immediately.
Thousands of war protesters are expected to rally at Petrillo Music Shell, then march to the edge of McCormick Place, roughly paralleling the same route that just a week later police will free up for thousands of cycling enthusiasts during the annual Bike the Drive event.
The lead-up to the weekend of diplomacy and demonstration appeared smoother than some had feared, given the violence that has often marred protests at other gatherings of world leaders.
A big noontime rally at Daley Plaza on Friday went off largely without incident, and Chicagoans who on a warm spring weekday would normally flock to the city center largely stayed away. Loop streets generally were far easier to navigate than normal.
Small breakaway groups of demonstrators launched some unauthorized marches through the Loop, but they were quickly dispersed by police with few incidents.
The inconvenience factor of the summit was likely to ratchet up several notches beginning Saturday, when motorcades of dignitaries flocking into the city from O’Hare International Airport were expected to prompt rolling tie-ups on the Kennedy Expressway. Other road closings were also to take effect, including Lake Shore Drive from Balbo Drive to 39th Street. From 4 p.m. to 11 p.m. Sunday, the Lake Shore Drive closings will extend north to Grand Avenue.
Obama was to arrive Saturday night, fresh from two days of meetings on economic matters at the smaller Group of 8 summit, originally scheduled for Chicago as well but moved by the president to Camp David in the Maryland mountains.
That shift may have taken some of the steam out of protests planned for Chicago, with the ire of many demonstrators focused as much on what they consider inequitable and socially destructive policies of the world’s economic powers as on the military activities of NATO.
That said, the Sunday march and rally is being organized by a group calling itself the Coalition Against NATO/G-8 War & Poverty Agenda, suggesting it plans to emphasize a broad spectrum of grievances. Organizers say they might attract as many as 10,000 demonstrators.
On Friday, demonstrators vented their frustration over the continuing war in Afghanistan, but many also ticked off other concerns or demands: Iraq, climate change, health care reform, free speech, green jobs, taxing Wall Street, increasing subsidies for the poor and police brutality.
Friday’s Daley Center rally was organized by National Nurses United and featured guitarist Tom Morello, formerly of Rage Against the Machine. Hundreds of nurses showed up at the event all dressed in red and wearing green Robin Hood-type hats, a wardrobe metaphor for their goal of taxing the rich to give to the poor.
Morello, the guitarist who has led rallies for workers’ rights and has been featured at Occupy events, led a band that launched into a singalong of Woody Guthrie’s classic folk song “This Land Is Your Land.”
Reflecting the youth driving the anti-NATO movement, some rallygoers seemed unfamiliar with the protest anthem. Morello stopped to teach the crowd how to sing along, then he got the crowd to jump up and down to the rhythm.
The rally also featured Tom Hayden, one of the Chicago Seven defendants ultimately acquitted of federal charges after the riots of the 1968 Democratic National Convention. Hayden later went on to become a member of the California Legislature.
While many of the protests centered on governments spending money on military resources rather than on social ills, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff said NATO member countries also are being forced to deal with austerity measures.
Army Gen. Martin Dempsey told the Tribune’s editorial board that as an outcome of the two-day summit, he wanted to see NATO “maintain the credibility and relevance and the capability of the alliance” despite “these incredible … fiscal challenges.”
In Washington on Friday, Obama met with the new president of France, Francois Hollande. He noted that Hollande had spent some of his youth in the United States “studying American fast food,” and that “we’ll be interested in his opinions of cheeseburgers in Chicago.”
Tribune reporter Bob Secter contributed.
