SWEET HOME CHICAGO: G8 SUMMIT MOVED BUT PROTESTS WILL
CONTINUE
By Danny Schechter
Who called whom first?
Did the Obama alumni Association in Chicago---David Axelrod, Rahm Emanuel, and Bill Daley---get nervous and call the White House, or was it Barack himself, having disposed/co-opted one threat by the name of Netanyahu, who recognized he had a more serious problem the horizon.
The President has been playing Ronald Reagan and Theodore Roosevelt these days, talking tough while feinting towards the center. What he most decidedly does not want to do is play Hubert Humphrey and relive the summer of 1968 in Chicago.
That's why the G8 meeting was shifted from contested ground there to safe space by in the ultra-secure, well-guarded environment of Maryland's Camp David.
The last thing The President
needs in the middle of his campaign is another police riot in the Second City
Someone must have pointed out that the Occupy Movement was already in the process of planning another battle ala Seattle in the very heartland of the Obama Empire. Even the editor of Adbusters, who issued the call to occupy Zuccotti Park last September, now had his megaphone fixed on the Second City.
The world movement that has
mobilized to confront so many G8 confabs in the past had this one in its crosshairs for month.
Sweet Home Chicago was in line to become a sweet home for a world of angry protesters, not just Americans.
That has to be stopped or diverted, and it was.
But first, there was the passage of a draconian new anti-protest law with bi-partisan support and little press attention.
The National Lawyers Guild
explained:
"Just when you
thought the government couldn't ruin the First Amendment any further: The House
of Representatives approved a bill on Monday that outlaws protests in instances
where some government officials are nearby, whether or not you even know it
The US House of
Representatives voted 388-to-3 in favor of H.R. 347 late Monday, a bill which
is being dubbed the Federal
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