The city of Chicago, at the behest of Mayor Rahm Emanuel, has taken rigorous steps to ensure enforcement of laws in anticipation of protests during the G8 and NATO summits that will take place in Chicago during May. But protesters are showing little fear in response.
The Mayor now has the ability to permanently install surveillance equipment, deputize federal law enforcement officers from the FBI, ATF, DOJ, as well as state and county police, and even hire private contractors for independent security thanks to a new ordinance that passed the City Council in mid-January.
“I think the city and the mayor have created a circumstance that is unnecessary,” said Ed Yohnka, the director of communications for the Illinois ACLU on Friday.
He said it would have been a better idea for the city to converse about the notion of free expression and encourage it.
“I think what is vexing and is troubling is that there was this sort of hysteria that was built around this, that caused people to overreact and the administration contributed to that with these 'get tough' ordinances,” said Yohnka.
Emanual said in a press release after the ordinance granting him greater security powers was passed, “Working collaboratively with our federal partners, we will provide public safety services for residents and visitors while fulfilling our obligation to protect the public and enforce the laws of the city.”
Meanwhile, AdBusters, the anti-consumerist magazine that put out the call to Occupy Wall Street, has recently released a tactical briefing asking their supporters to Occupy Chicago on May 1. They’re calling it the “Showdown in Chicago” and calling for over 50,000 people to attend.
“This time around we’re not going to put up with the kind of police repression that happened during the Democratic National Convention protests in Chicago, 1968 … nor will we abide by any phony restrictions the City of Chicago may want to impose on our first amendment rights,” States AdBusters’ “tactical briefing.”
Protesters and journalists that have been covering the movement were discussing the call to Occupy Chicago at a crowded sandwich shop in Washington DC on Wednesday.
Sam Jewler, an Occupy DC media group member, called Emanuel a fascist in the way that he’s handled Occupy Chicago. In October, police arrested over 300 protesters for attempting to establish a camp at Grant Park. Despite this, Jeweler said protesters wouldn’t be deterred.
“I think it will be bigger than Occupy Congress,” said Jewler, in reference to the DC gathering on January 17 that attracted over 1,000 Occupy protesters.
Michael Patterson, a particularly vociferous DC protester, said “This will be our Saratoga.” He emphasized the importance of protesting a gathering of the leaders of the most powerful governments and most powerful military alliance in the world.
Luke Rudkowski, a videographer that has gained a following as an activist, said he’d be heading to Chicago to film the protests. Rudkowski has covered and participated in other protests around the world. In 2009, he was in Pittsburgh for the G20 conference of finance ministers and central bank governors.
“I can’t even tell you the respect I lost for humanity there,” said Rudkowski. He said he was pepper-sprayed, beaten and held for half a day shackled in a bus with other protesters. His videos on YouTube from the event show officers using an LRAD sound cannon and him and others being quickly surrounded by police while protesting in a park.
Journalists coming to cover the protests also have to deal with an outdated Illinois law that states it’s a felony to audiotape police activity on public streets or in public parks.
Slate’s Dahlia Lithwick wrote a long article about the law. She noted that Chicago Police Superintendent Garry McCarthy told a panel at Loyola University that he endorses video and audio recording of police.
“There’s no arguments when you can look at a videotape and see what happened.” Said McCarthy at the panel.
Tim Pool, a livestream journalist that gained notoriety during Occupy Wall Street, said he will be streaming the protests in Chicago.
“There’s going to be cameras everywhere,” said Pool, who didn’t worry about being singled out by police.
However, Occupy Chicago livestreamer Keilah Becker said she had a run-in with police over the law on Jan. 29. She said she was streaming an arrest during a march when a female police officer came behind her and took her phone. Becker said the officer cancelled her video and didn’t save it to the UStream servers. When the officer asked her what she was doing, Becker told her she was recording what happened around her.
“[The officer] told me I was talking myself into a felony charge,” said Becker. Although eventually the officer relented and gave the phone back, said Becker.
When told of this incident, Yonkah said, “The unfortunate thing is that as of this moment the Illinois law that makes it a felony to audiotape police activity is still in place.”
Questions sent to the Chicago Police regarding the enforcement of this law and the plan for policing the protest were not returned.
However, with the city’s strong stance against Occupy Chicago in October and the new powers granted to the Mayor, it would seem that police appear ready for a showdown with protesters in May.
February 06, 2012 05:00 PM
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In Denver, they call Tim Tebow the "Mile High Messiah," but could Americans one day also be calling him president?
Speaking to the Golf Channel's David Feherty on Saturday, the Denver Broncos starting quarterback said that running for office was not out of the question.
"You know for me, it could be something in my future," Tebow explained. "It's something I'll have to think about and if I pray about, you know, I have no idea right now. But possibly."
"It's just a question of names," Feherty said. "We've got Mitt and Newt."
"Do what?" Tebow replied quizzically.
"I mean, why not go with Statler and Waldorf," Feherty joked, referring to two characters from The Muppet Show. "I mean, really. President Tim, that's working for me."
"Who knows what the future holds," Tebow shrugged.
(H/T: NFL.com)
February 06, 2012 04:00 PM
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(h/t Heather at VideoCafe)
Why-oh-why is Dana Loesch being invited on the Sunday news shows? The Editor-in-Chief of Breitbart's BigJournalism site deserves no such association with either honest brokers or journalism. Actually, considering the larger panel discussion on the Susan G. Komen controversy and the massive amount of misinformation muddying the issue by Matthew Dowd and George Will, honest brokers and Sunday morning news shows have very little to do with one another either, but I digress.
Loesch is particularly worthy of scorn because she uses a discredited "sting" by the discredited Live Action organization, led by the discredited Lila Rose to amplify her point:
Now, you would think at some point in the past — it's been a year to the date since Live Action called Planned Parenthood clinics in 27 different states to ask whether or not they had mammography machines. You would think that at that point — they'd had a year — Planned Parenthood would invest in obtaining licenses to operate and own mammography machines and give mammograms so they could have avoided this whole thing.
Yeah, about that lack of mammography machines ... turns out, the whole thing was a sham.
HOAX EXPOSED: Rose's Video Does Not Establish That Planned Parenthood Ever Discussed Mammograms Provided By The Organization
Richards Discussed "Access" To Mammograms Through Planned Parenthood - Not Mammograms Actually Provided By The Organization. In the video at the center of Rose's hoax, Planned Parenthood President Cecile Richards discusses access to health care - including mammograms - not actual health care services provided by Planned Parenthood. Discussing GOP efforts to defund Planned Parenthood during an appearance on The Joy Behar Show, Richards said:
If this bill ever becomes law, millions of women in this country are going to lose their health care access, not to abortion services, to basic family planning. You know, mammograms, cancer screenings, cervical cancer. [CNN, The Joy Behar Show, 2/21/11, via Nexis]
Pro-Life Activist Jill Stanek: Richards Was "Correct." From Stanek's blog:
Richards said:
If this bill ever becomes law, millions of women in this country are going to lose their health care access, not to abortion services, to basic family planning -- you know, mammograms, cancer screenings, cervical cancer.
The fact is not one Planned Parenthood in America performs mammograms. All PPs do are refer for mammograms.
Conservatives want to obfuscate the issue. Komen didn't retract funds because Planned Parenthood doesn't offer mammograms. It never has. I've had a wellness check-up from Planned Parenthood (I was between jobs and didn't have insurance for about a year) and it included a manual breast examination as well as instructions on the proper methods of self-examination (an important tool in early detection, which leads to higher survival rates). Had they detected anything or if I had belonged to any of the high risk groups, they would have referred me for a mammogram. That service could save potentially thousands of women's lives.
And waste-of-intelligence hack pundits like Dana Loesch want to keep that from them.
February 06, 2012 03:00 PM
As a Catholic, I'm getting a little tired of right-wingers like Newt Gingrich spewing nonsense like this.
Newt Gingrich sought to make inroads among religious voters Sunday, accusing President Obama of having “basically declared war on the Catholic Church.”
Gingrich, who converted to Catholicism himself in 2009 (his third wife, Callista, sings in a Catholic choir), was speaking about the Obama administration decision this week to require church-affiliated employers to cover birth control drugs in their health plans, regardless of religious beliefs.
Gingrich, in an appearance on NBC’s Meet the Press, said the decision represented “a radical Obama administration imposing secular rules on religion.”
Since Newt is a new convert, he might be surprised to learn that,
Some 98 percent of sexually active Catholic women have used contraceptive methods banned by the church, research published on Wednesday showed.
And,
A Le Moyne College/Zogby International national poll in 2007 found 67 percent of American Catholics disagree with the church teaching that artificial birth control is wrong.
And,
In particular, Catholic voters do not approve of schools teaching abstinence-only programs in schools. Six in ten (64 percent) oppose requiring high school sex education programs to only teach abstinence. They also believe insurance companies should be required to cover and pharmacists required to sell birth control pills. Three-quarters of Catholics support requiring health insurance plans to cover birth control pills (75 percent). Nearly eight in ten (78 percent) oppose allowing pharmacists to refuse to fill birth control prescriptions.
Let's get real, shall we? The U.S. government is actually on the same side of this "war" as most American Catholics. Those "secular rules" Gingrich whines about the Obama administration enforcing are already being embraced by church members, whether he knows it or not.
What really annoys me is that right-wing partisans like Gingrich side with the Vatican when it's convenient and ignore it when it's not. Want to discuss the Vatican's position on the death penalty, the Iraq War, global warming, torture or Social Security and Medicare, Newt?
Didn't think so.
February 06, 2012 02:00 PM
Hey, everyone. It's good to be back. Belatedly, I hope you all had a nice holiday season.
Anyway, I really thought that if anything could bring America together, it was Madonna's reprehensibly awful Super Bowl halftime show yesterday. It was so bad, we should get Romney to fire whomever was responsible for it. (Nothing says the American heartland, or Indiana, quite like Madonna, "Vogue," and Roman Empire kitsch. Was Mellencamp too busy?) But then I took to Twitter and Facebook and found that a lot of people just looooved it. And so we have a new divide, and this one, too, is unbridgeable. There's just no accounting for terrible taste. But... onwards!
No More Mister Nice Blog: Romney's speeches, like the man himself, are devoid of uplift, offering sourness, not hope.
The Grey Matter: Romney isn't just gaffe-prone, he's a bad politician who can't go off-script without failing.
The Impolitic: He may not have much of a hope, but there are still good reasons to root for Newt.
Beeryblog: Can progressives really like a violent, war-like sport like football? (Yes, we can!)
Round-up by Michael J.W. Stickings of The Reaction. I'll be here all week.
Send tips to mbru@crooksandliars.com.
February 06, 2012 01:00 PM
Newt Gingrich and Rick Santorum are fighting for the right to be the conservative alternative to Mitt Romney.
But they both lost that battle in Nevada — to Ron Paul.
Entrance polls from Saturday’s Nevada caucuses show Romney racking up huge wins among the vast majority of demographics, which isn’t surprising given that he took about 50 percent of the vote.
Read full article >>
February 06, 2012 11:30 AM
