Protesters clashed with riot police on Sunday as an anti-NATO protest turned ugly in Chicago when several hundred demonstrators demanding an end to war ignored orders to clear the streets.
As NATO leaders held talks focused on Afghanistan, officials said up to 2,200 people had marched in the city, but later, some protesters faced off with baton-wielding police.
A correspondent saw more than a dozen protesters roughly shoved to the street, handcuffed and hauled away as the angry crowd threw water bottles, wooden sticks and anything else at hand at police clad in riot gear.
Photo: Reuters
News crews captured images of protesters bleeding from head wounds, but officials would not provide information about the number of protesters injured.
Police said 45 people were arrested as of 9pm and four police officers suffered minor injuries.
A tight security blanket has been thrown over Chicago, the hometown of US President Barack Obama, which is hosting more than 50 world leaders for the two-day summit.
While police were able to eventually disperse the protesters gathered near the summit, the crowd simply shifted to the central business district, where noisy scuffles continued as darkness fell.
The hours-long standoff began after an otherwise peaceful march led by a group of veterans who spoke passionately about their opposition to the war before tossing their medals into the street.
One man marched with a guitar and sang Give Peace a Chance, while others around him chanted: “This is what democracy looks like” and “The people yes! NATO no!”
Peter Andamczak, 27, hand-rolled his wheelchair for miles because he thinks money being wasted on wars would be better spent on social services.
“NATO is the military arm of the international ruling class, and we are sending our US tax dollars of citizens here in America to them to fight wars and to create death and destruction,” he said.
High school student Isabel Olivia, 18, joined a Code Pink contingent and played with a pink cardboard gun that declared: “NO NATO.”
“They’re spending money on wars instead of school so we can’t get into college because it’s too expensive,” she said.
Police began to move in to clear the streets after the speakers wrapped up, but a core group of several hundred protesters refused to leave.
Tensions grew after several black-clad youth were dragged away by police.
Then officers in riot gear with masks lowered began to march slowly down the streets as a loudspeaker boomed in English and Spanish: “Attention! This is the Chicago Police Department. You must disperse to the west.”
Five protesters hooked arms and kicked up their feet in a can-can singing: “You’re sexy, you’re cute, take off your riot suit” to no avail.
One young woman cried after begging police not to force the protesters away from a security fence surrounding the sprawling convention center where the summit was being held, pushed out by a thick line of police holding batons and yelling: “Move! Move!”
Fears of violent demonstrations have put Chicago on edge, with some downtown businesses boarding up their windows and others telling office workers to ditch their suits and ties to avoid being hassled.
Four protesters were arrested prior to the march on terrorism charges and accused of plotting to toss Molotov cocktails and attack Obama’s campaign office, police stations, banks and the home of Chicago Mayor Rahm Emmanuel.
The city’s Web site was also hit by a cyberattack, police said.
Police and protest organizers had vowed that there will be no repeat of the trouble that erupted at G20 summits in London and Toronto or the riots that scarred Chicago during the 1968 Democratic National Convention.
In months, Lo Yuet-ping would bid farewell to a centuries-old village he has called home in Hong Kong for more than seven decades. The Cha Kwo Ling village in east Kowloon is filled with small houses built from metal sheets and stones, as well as old granite buildings, contrasting sharply with the high-rise structures that dominate much of the Asian financial hub. Lo, 72, has spent his entire life here and is among an estimated 860 households required to move under a government redevelopment plan. He said he would miss the rich history, unique culture and warm interpersonal kindness that defined life in
AERIAL INCURSIONS: The incidents are a reminder that Russia’s aggressive actions go beyond Ukraine’s borders, Ukrainian Minister of Foreign Affairs Andrii Sybiha said Two NATO members on Sunday said that Russian drones violated their airspace, as one reportedly flew into Romania during nighttime attacks on neighboring Ukraine, while another crashed in eastern Latvia the previous day. A drone entered Romanian territory early on Sunday as Moscow struck “civilian targets and port infrastructure” across the Danube in Ukraine, the Romanian Ministry of National Defense said. It added that Bucharest had deployed F-16 warplanes to monitor its airspace and issued text alerts to residents of two eastern regions. It also said investigations were underway of a potential “impact zone” in an uninhabited area along the Romanian-Ukrainian border. There
The governor of Ohio is to send law enforcement and millions of dollars in healthcare resources to the city of Springfield as it faces a surge in temporary Haitian migrants. Ohio Governor Mike DeWine on Tuesday said that he does not oppose the Temporary Protected Status program under which about 15,000 Haitians have arrived in the city of about 59,000 people since 2020, but said the federal government must do more to help affected communities. On Monday, Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost directed his office to research legal avenues — including filing a lawsuit — to stop the federal government from sending
Three sisters from Ohio who inherited a dime kept in a bank vault for more than 40 years knew it had some value, but they had no idea just how much until just a few years ago. The extraordinarily rare coin, struck by the US Mint in San Francisco in 1975, could bring more than US$500,000, said Ian Russell, president of GreatCollections, which specializes in currency and is handling an online auction that ends next month. What makes the dime depicting former US president Franklin D. Roosevelt so valuable is a missing “S” mint mark for San Francisco, one of just two
RSS