"Anarchist Street-Chase Demo" Downtown Chicago, Tuesday, August 27 Jay jay@user1.channel1.com The "No Justice, No Peace!" march had long ended when the nearly 50 anarchists who had formed the march's straggling Black Bloc, an arms-linked, strength and solidarity line of protesters who stand between police and the demonstration, decided to take to the street. The police line that the Black Bloc faced prohibited the "No Justice, No Peace!" demonstrators from entering the United Center, home to the Democratic National Convention. The anarchists did not want to get into the Center, but with police in pursuit they ran, skipped, jumped and danced along the United Center parking lot fence to confront the Democratic Delegates as they left the convention in their busses. The delegates were either too shocked or afraid of the youth to reply as the they pounded on bus windows screaming "Fascist pigs!" and "Do you feel good about screwing over your fellow man?" The protesters slowed the busses until the police called for a backup brigade and started to advance. The protesters sprinted on. With even more police in pursuit, the cheering, hooting, anarchists streamed through the unending row of taxi cabs that had lined up to cart around the delegates. "Power to the people!" the protesters yelled, and "Revolution!" Believing that they could contain the party, the police formed a blockade on Ashland and stood stone-faced waiting for the youth. Instead of confronting the police the protesters flanked them, confusing the officials by jumping across the busy road into an adjacent park. "We'll get them in the park," one police sergeant barked as several police on horseback shot off in pursuit. The youth, perhaps sensing the danger of deep-park darkness, dashed back across the road and hopped the metal median. The horse police jumped the median strip Olympics-style. Back in the relative safe light of a busy sidewalk, the protesters slowed to consider their next move. Soon thereafter a paddy wagon pulled up and the back doors opened. A policeman motioned to its empty inside and sneered, "Why don't you keep running, run, run." Instinctually disobeying authority the group maintained its slow pace and headed to meet the delegates at the Continental Hotel. Before they could reach the Continental the demonstrators passed a Congressional dinner where they tried but failed to get admitted as official guests. Perhaps they destroyed their own opportunity for admittance by shouting, "End corporate welfare!" and "Stop the fascist regime!" The youth then stopped across the street from the Art Institute where well-groomed, well-tanked Democrats streamed about as part of a party thrown by JFK Jr. for his apolitical political magazine, George. The anarchists greeted partygoers with some politics of their own as they shouted, "Fascist pigs!" One woman even climbed a street pole and yelled to the George-ites, "Read Noam Chomsky!" The police blocked the demonstrators' from leaving the street corner with both their own presence and some "Do Not Cross" barricades. Amidst some police shoving the protesters began to dance and chant, "Eat the rich, feed the poor!" The police did not understand this particular medium of protest (anarchist matriarch Emma Goldman once said that if she couldn't dance as part of a revolution she didn't want to be a part of it at all), but they did understand that their demeanor was an essential part of aintaining control. "Keep smiling," said one sergeant to his brigade, tilting his head to the demonstrators, "it drives them crazy," Soon the protesters split into small groups and dispersed throughout the city, some to continue demonstrating and others to head home, mission accomplished. They all undoubtedly continued to wreak symbolic havoc somewhere, somehow, throughout Chicago.
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