SDS Rallies Against NATO in Chicago

Mark, Maf, and Adam on enjoying the bus ride

By Lisa Grab

Summary

On Thursday, May 17th at 2 am, 12 students from Montclair State University's SDS chapter travelled into New York City to take a 17 hour free bus ride to Chicago. 99% Solidarity and the National Nurses  Union supplied the buses.

The SDS delegation consisted of Adam Cetiner,

Esha, Mike, Jon, and Emily on the bus

Jordan Fullam (adjunct professor), Emily Fox (community member), Lisa Grab, Jon Husarik, Esha Kallianpur, Shawmaf Khubba, Mark Ludas, Mike Pacyna, Thea Stelzle, Leah Stone, and Justin Wooten. The SDSers later met up with their comrade and student from MSU, Brennan McFarlane, who travelled from Washington DC.

The buses finally arrived around 8pm in Chicago. The SDS members gathered their belongings and trekked to the community space where they would be spending the night. Finally, around midnight, everyone was able to go to sleep for the night. 

SDS delegation at the NNU rally on Friday

The next day--Friday--the SDSers went to downtown Chicago for the National Nurses United rally. At the rally, some members went around and did interviews to gain publicity for SDS and to reveal NATO's true intentions as a terrorist organization. Press coverage included Associated Press, National Turkish TV, local Chicago press, and RT. 

After the rally, SDS met up with Bill Ayers and Bernadine Dohrn for lunch at a local cafe. While at the cafe, Bill and Bernadine got to know some of the newer members and caught up with everyone they already know.

Later in the day, SDS travelled to north Chicago to the Left Lounge and attended a lecture about Libya. 

On Saturday, the SDS delegation attended a rally to protest the entrapment of fellow activists and police brutality. Although organized in a short amount of time, the rally was successful and drew in hundreds of protesters taking the streets in Chicago. Specifically, the protest was against the arrests of activists for terrorist charges. These activists were infiltrated by an undercover cop, who suggested making molotov cocktails. When the activists jokingly agreed, they were arrested.

Screen shot from the front page of RT America

Next, SDS attended an anti-capitalist march that lasted late into the night. This march included numerous confrontations with the police, where the police backed down and allowed the protesters to go where they wanted. However, later in the night, a police van hit and injured a protester from New York. 

Mike, Lisa, and Brennan peacefully sitting in front of a line a cops who temporarily blocked protesters from continuing down the street during the anti-capitalist march. The cops later backed down and allowed the protesters to march. 

Lisa speaking at the No NATO rally on May 20th

SDS with banner on the news

Sunday, May 20th was the main rally against NATO. Several thousand gathered in Millennium Park to listen to the speakers. Among the speakers was Lisa Grab, who spoke on behalf of National SDS. At the rally, the SDSers ran into socialist candidate for US Senate, Greg Pason. Pason also travelled from Montclair to be at the rally. Shortly after the rally, there was a massive march, led by US veterans. At the formal end of the march, the veterans returned their metals of "honor." Many of the protesters continued marching, but were blocked off by police. The police pushed groups of protestors and threatened them with the L-rod. Many protesters were beaten in the head. 

Lisa and Mike Marching against NATO

Although the police successfully dispersed most of the crowd, smaller marches broke off and regrouped toward the evening. Everyone met up in front of the Art Institute in Millennium Park, where Michelle and Barack Obama were supposedly having dinner. Protestors gathered outside and chanted, but multiple rows of cops blocked protesters from going near the building. Unable to decide on the next move, the protesters had a general assembly to discuss whether they should march or occupy the space in front of the Art Institution. The final decision was to continue marching, although the final destination was not decided. The marching continued. At one point, a group of cars escorting members of NATO (we are not sure which members) drove through the crowd. Angry protesters yelled at the car, one man punched the window, and another person threw her sign onto their window. After some time, someone led the march north claiming that the protesters should go for jail support. As protesters marched northward, there were less and less bystanders around. Cops in riot gear began to run up from behind and grab and arrest protesters from the back. The crowd of marchers was getting smaller and smaller. Eventually SDS dropped out and returned to the hotel to escape the rain and get rest. 

Monday, SDS spent most of the time relaxing. A group went to University of Chicago to walk around. Another group stayed at the convergence space, where all the occupiers from other cities gathered to catch the bus. At around 10pm, the buses left and SDS returned to New York City at around 3pm the next day. 

Reflection

Overall, I thought the trip to Chicago was a worthwhile experience. While our chapter was not at the forefront of the actual organizing, we played an important role by bringing numbers, creating a visible SDS presence, and networking with other individuals and organizations. 

It is difficult to organize an action that is half way across the country. I think we made the right decision by being in the foreground instead of the background of the operations in Chicago. There will be other opportunities to do more actual organizing closer to home. We successfully were in the foreground and actively sought out the media. We provided a banner for the front of marches when there were no other banners. We wore our SDS pins and many students approached us seeming interested in our organization. One aspect of our outreach that I think could have been better would be to have contact lists for the national SDS prepared so we could actively gather contact info from interested students and youth instead of waiting for them to approach us and then take down their names and numbers in our phones. 

Jon, Mike, Jordan, Maf, and Adam chilling in Millennium Park

The trip to Chicago was also a great experience for the SDS members to bond with one another (especially with the new members) and form connections with others across the country. The trip demonstrated our organization's ability to tolerate one another, share, and look out for each other. Although we split into groups, I think it was for the better as long as no one was by themselves. It is difficult to do as much with a large group and breaking into smaller groups allowed people more freedom. One criticism is that we could have communicated better when we split up into groups. There were several times when it was difficult to get in touch and meet up.

I really enjoyed getting to know some of the newer SDS members. It was really cool watching them grow as people and thinkers and take on positions within the organization. We discovered that Mike was great at leading chants, carrying the US distress flag, and filming the action. We discovered that Maf knows a lot about philosophy and was great at looking out for his comrades. 

We also met some cool people from across the country. Cole was from Washington DC and had a local occupy group on his college campus. Dan had a newly formed SDS chapter in Boston that was not yet connected with National SDS. Moondog was from Vermont and dedicates his life to participating in movements across the country. Anya was an anarchist from Colorado who flew in for the Chicago protests. I was reunited with someone I briefly met at Occupy Vegas--Luis. Luis had an SDS chapter at UChicago and now works with a union in Portland. 

Overall, it was amazing that we got 12 people to Chicago and back safely. We have yet to debrief the trip--things have gotten kind of crazy since the trip because people have been looking for jobs and trying to find money so we can meet up again.  

Next time, I think it would be productive to discuss our goals for the trip beforehand and encourage more leadership in organizing the logistics for the group's travel plans. However, I am pretty sure that everyone learned something valuable.

Senator Menendez Roundtable 5-2-12

By Lisa Grab

Today, Senator Menendez came to speak at MSU. I am not sure who organized the event, but they decided not to tell students until the day before. Hence, only 5 students were in the audience most of which were SDS members. It seems like the School of Economics or Business put the event on because the panel consisted of: the Financial Aid Advisor, the Chair of Economics, two business students, and a grad student (I forget her major). The whole event also had an economic tone (ie: Why fix the education crisis? Because we want to continue dominating the world)

President Susan Cole showed up to introduce Menendez and then snuck out. 

Then, each person on the panel spoke. The Financial Aid Advisor talked about how loans are a worthwhile investment, but we shouldn’t double the rates. Then, the Chair of Economics talked about why he thinks we need to keep education accessible--so America can continue to lead the world. (Not because education is a human right or anything like that... I never thought I would disagree with someone over why education should be accessible, but OK.) After that, Menendez spoke about how he is against doubling rates. The students who spoke talked about how tuition is crippling them, how they have to work multiple jobs, and how they are unsure if they can go to grad school because it is so expensive.

Afterwards, Menendez accepted questions from the audience. I introduced myself and said I was speaking on behalf of NJUS and asked the first question: I appreciate that you are against doubling interest rates on federal loans. However, there’s another bill in the house--HR 4170--that would forgive student loans after 10 years of small income-based on-time payments. If this or a similar bill were to reach the senate, is this a policy you would support? 

Menendez responded saying he needs to know more about how much it would cost the government to forgive those loans. His response was either a politician answer, where he is afraid to commit to saying anything in public that he can’t promise, or his priorities are in the wrong place. Cutting the war budget will pay for any money the government lost with student debt. Keeping rates from doubling hardly does anything. It prevents the student debt crisis from getting drastically worse but does not do anything to fix it. That is why it is important to keep pressuring these politicians to always do more.

After that, Carlo Rossi and Justin Wooten--also in SDS--asked questions. Justin’s question addressed how students in Cuba and Libya don’t have to pay for education. Menendez responded with a typical patriotic answer about how they don’t have “freedom” like we do. (... but what about their free education...?) Justin walked out after his answer to protest Menendez’s justification for imperialism. 

At the end of the event Leah, Carlo, and I did interviews with NJTV. 

#M1GS - May Day 2012

By Lisa Grab

Over 100,000 were in attendance

As many of you know, yesterday was an important and historic day for workers and immigrants all over the world. 

I went into the city to represent SDS with Jordan Fullam, Tobias Fox, Jon Husarik, and Greg. Also representing SDS in various parts of the city were Esha Kallianpur, Thea Stelzle, Bob Whitney, and Justin Wooten; and SDS allies Christian McFarland and Cabo Granato.

We began our day by attending the Free University and listing to speakers about student debt and horizontal education. From there were travelled to Bryant Park and prepared for the march to Union Square. By the time of the march, the weather cleared up. We started on the sidewalks like always, but early on we took the streets. The cops tried to stop us at first, but we kept going around us. There clearly weren’t enough of them there--many were probably trying to “control” the other actions across the city--so we won the streets and stopped traffic all the way to Union Square. As usual, SDS-ers were at the front of the march. 

Jordan and I missed the Union Square demonstration and most of the march. But I was able to catch up with the front of the march to Battery Park down broadway. People on bikes and taxi’s were protesting were in front, followed by us and the rest of the march. There was tension when we reached the Wall St. intersection. One person was arrested for sitting down at the intersection. It seemed like most of the crowd was deterred from breaking through the police barrier because they had a line of horses guarding the “sacred “street. 

At the end of the march, some guy from Occupy announced that there will be an unplanned march to the “People’s Assembly” at an unknown location. So of course, we followed him. About a crowd of 100 came as the first wave of people. We began the GA talking about if anyone heard news from across the world--not something I felt like doing considering how we just conquered the streets and 1000’s more were coming, ready for direct action. And of course, no one really said anything productive and used the opportunity to make their own personal announcements. After a while I left and saw that there were at least 1000 people just waiting around. Clearly someone marched them here and they didn’t know what to do now. It would have been a perfect opportunity to take Wall St. or try to reoccupy, but the GA was too focused on something other than planning direct action. And then the crowds began to fizzle and I left disappointed. 

My reflection:

Overall the day went good. It seems like the occupiers are getting more radical with their tactics. There are more anti-police chants (ie: “NYPD, KKK - How many kids did you kill today”) and less “the police are the 99% too.” The police are not the 99%. They are Bloomburg and the 1%’s private bought off army! Also, the marches take the streets far more often then they did last fall. Action will only escalate from here.

All throughout the day, I was wishing that SDS as an organization could be more prepared for marches like this. Instead of just showing up for solidarity like we have been doing for these marches, we should show up ready to flaunt our name, network with other groups, hand out literature, start our own chants, and--most importantly--try to radicalize the action. 

With just 5 people, we can encourage others to take the streets, lead our own marches or organize direct action when there is a crowd hanging around like there was last night. People are willing to do all of the above, they just need several to take initiative and lead them. 

After we conquered the streets while marching from Bryant Park to Union Square

"Hipster Cop" came out for the festivities.