[R-G] Chicago: Anti-globalization protesters promise 'stressing welcome'

[ProletarianNews]

UPI (with additional material by AP). 6 November 2002. Chicago prepares
for anarchists.

CHICAGO -- Anti-globalization protesters promised a "stressing welcome"
for European and U.S. CEOs and government officials as they begin two
days of talks Thursday on easing barriers to trans-Atlantic trade.

Hoping to avert [read: promote] the kind of violence that gripped
Seattle during the 1999 World Trade Organization meeting, the city took
a number of steps in advance of Thursday's opening of the Trans-Atlantic
Business Dialogue meeting.

Thousands of anarchists are expected to descend on the city as corporate
leaders from the European Union and the United States, along with senior
government officials, confer on trans-Atlantic trade policy. The meeting
is being hosted by Boeing. Registration began Wednesday.

The city has assembled a special squad of 130 police officers -- all at
least 6-foot-4 -- to handle demonstrators. Police have labeled the
officers Special Response Teams; anti-globalization groups have dubbed
them "goon squads."

"I think we should be more worried about the police instigating violence
than any protesters doing it," Rocky Pyskoty, a spokesman for the TBD
Planning Party, a coalition of labor and religious groups, told the
Chicago Sun-Times.

The police have been training for months and flew to Washington to help
with crowd control at an international trade event in September.

Protest organizers said they want to take the longest route possible for
their march from Boeing headquarters southwest side of the Loop to the
Sheraton Chicago Hotel & Towers, site of the summit, on the lakefront
northeast of the Loop.

"It's our event. We get to say where we want to go," Darlene Gramigna of
the American Friends Service Committee told the Chicago Tribune.

Illinois Green Party member Dan Johnson-Weinberger said the business
meeting's participants represent corporate welfare, higher taxes,
pollution and low wages for "regular" people.

The march could tie up lunch hour traffic.

CEO Phil Condit of the Chicago-based Boeing Co. is co-hosting the
two-day session with Charles Masefield, vice chairman of BAE Systems,
one of Europe's largest defense and aviation groups.

Protest leaders assailed the prominent involvement of two arms
manufacturers and criticized the group's stance toward workers' rights,
environmental protections and democratic accountability "in the interest
of maximizing corporate profits."

"There's a tremendous amount of concern with a summit like this
happening with respect to other voices being heard beyond corporate
interests," Sarita Gupta, a member of Chicago Jobs with Justice, said at
a news conference called by the protest coalition.

"They will be discussing strategies that will pave the way for global
capitalism to rampage through our communities, towns and home countries.
Even if bombs are needed for the paving," said a protesters' Web site,
which urged demonstrators to "organize a stressing welcome."

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

ProletarianNews
http://www.utopia2000.org




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