Why I Chose to Get Arrested With 174 Occupy Chicago Protesters

[Omaha Steve]

http://www.inthesetimes.com/working/entry/12142/why_i_chose_to_get_arrested_with_174_occupy_chicago_protesters/

By Micah Uetricht

This photo at link (I couldn't get it to copy over)
Chicago police officers arrest Occupy Chicago protesters—including the author, at right—for breaking Grant Park's 11 p.m. curfew on Saturday October 15. (Photo by Brett Jelinek via Facebook)

The Occupy movement and struggling workers want the same thing

CHICAGO—As I was ushered from a police wagon into a station on Chicago’s near South Side early Sunday morning—along with about 174 other protesters in zip-tie handcuffs who had refused to clear our belongings and ourselves from an Occupy Chicago encampment downtown—a Chicago Police Department officer told me to wait by an entrance while other activists had their cuffs cut off.

She paused to stare at the written message affixed to the front of my chest: “Take Our Country Back from the Rich—Take Back Chicago!” Her eyes scanned from my chest to my eyes, and she slowly nodded. “I can’t say nothin’,” she said, turning her head to glance at the other officers collecting protesters' belongings and leading them to a holding cell, “but…” She nodded again, silently communicating her agreement as another office patted me down.

Through similar gestures and words, it was a message we heard throughout Occupy Chicago protesters' short time in jail from a police force whose name is not exactly synonymous with sympathy toward protesters.

But it was a message that made sense. Cops are workers. Our arrests made sense to them because the Occupy movement is, at its heart, a labor struggle.

Most labor struggles, of course, don't see mass arrests of people of various ages, races, occupations and political orientations trying to camp out in a public park. They don't usually spread to cities and towns around the world with earnest but at times unfocused messaging. They don't usually involve puzzling hand signals and consensus-based decision-making and human echo chambers called "People's Mics." It's rare for them to even see arrests for civil disobedience, much less beatings and the use of pepper spray by police.

FULL story at link.

[annabanana]

1. Good on ya! . . . . . . . n/t

[Laelth]

2. Poignant and beautifully written. Recommended. n/t

-Laelth

[mopinko]

3. they need to find a place.

i think they should take over the old post office. it was recently sold, but it is unlikely to be developed in my lifetime.
i think the old county hospital is sitting empty as well.

[bigmonkey]

4. They could take over a tenth of the old post office

and still have a huge space. What a colossal building!

[mopinko]

5. i think it is a great place for them.

waving at the commuters every day? fun.