What is different about the People’s Summit as compared to now separate G8 and NATO summits?

Let’s start with people. The G8 Summit brings together the heads of state of the richest countries on the planet (and Canada). They are accompanied by a retinue of advisers and a security detail. The NATO Summit brings together 50 heads of state, 28 of whom are members of NATO. The rest are members of various other NATO agreements, such as the Partnership for Peace. They are accompanied by their advisers, representative members of their military general staffs, and their security details. They must be at the summits or risk sending a diplomatic signal they don’t intend. The Russian head of state, Vladimir Putin knows this. That is why he chose to signal his displeasure at the NATO agenda item about a missile defense shield by not attending either the G8 or NATO summits. (Russia is a Partnership for Peace affiliate of NATO.)

The people who attend the People’s Summit are there as a result of their own decision. They don’t pretend to speak for tens of millions of people; they speak for themselves.

Now look at the venues. The G8 Summit is at the President’s retreat in Maryland’s Catoctin Mountains — Camp David. The NATO Summit is at McCormick Place, a world-class convention center in Chicago on Lake Michigan.

The People’s Summit was held here.

That is, the People’s Summit was held on the fifth and seventh floors of a former Chicago warehouse that is being rehabilitated as work loft and storage space. This space is also where Occupy Chicago held its general assemblies during the winter and holds its work group meetings until–well, that is an upcoming decision of the Occupy Chicago general assembly.

This is the view from the building toward McCormick Place:

Compared to the events reported in other cities, the Chicago May Day march was reported as altogether a peaceful march. That said, this is the image that most newspaper readers and TV viewers in the Chicago area had of the march.

What you see in the picture are the leading ranks of Chicago Spring’s unpermitted march from its Bank of America action in the Loop to Union Square Park. Approximately 150-200 marchers, mostly attired in black and with black flags marched into Union Square in formation shortly before the permitted march was to begin. As far a most Chicago news viewers and readers were concerned, this was the nature of the entire march, primarily because a portion of these black-attired folks raced ahead during the march in order to be captured in pictures at the head of the march. And the media, as so often jumped to the conclusion that the entire action was intended to provoke. This was the infamous and scary “black bloc” anarchists seeking to provoke the equally infamous Chicago Police Department.

Events did not unfold according to script, no doubt because the CPD had good intelligence about what was planned but also because a goodly number of the marchers were not hard-core anarchists whose first response is some sort of limited aggression ranging to attacks on property. They were folks who adopted the appearance of the feared in order to make a statement about appearances that hopefully the CPD and other law enforcement agencies will learn before the NATO Summit. Risks do not exclusively come from people in black hoodies and leather, and sometimes there is no risk from folks in black hoodies and leather.

Yesterday at the Woodlawn Health Fair at the occupation site across from the Woodlawn Mental Health clinic, one of the community members protesting its closure call the protest the “Birmingham of the mental health movement”. The closure of six of the twelve City of Chicago’s mental health clinics, forcing most patients to travel long distances by transit and to walk through unfamiliar neighborhoods, has produced a city-wide protest movement that is focused at the Woodlawn occupation.

The occupation cannot have tents, and people have been arrested for putting up tents. The occupation consists of 24-7 set up of tabling of literature about the protest, tables of donated food, blankets, and clothing, and a 24-7 occupation by a van with a sign “Save our Mental Health Clinics”. At night, folks sleep in the van and in cars. The Chicago Police Department has one round-the-clock patrol car stationed opposite the occupation site.

Today, a busload of protesters will protesting a various locations in the Loop. I will liveblog the events of today.

5:30 pm The press conference started at 5:00 pm and was tolerated because of the presence of the large number of local media. At 5:30 pm, after Horace, a clinic patient in a walker who has been arrested multiple times in sit-ins about the clinic, made a statement that he was willing to be arrested as many times as necessary to save the clinics and provide healthcare to the communities. Then, a number of clinic patients rushed the mayor’s office door seeking to get in; six were arrested.

There were a total of seven arrests over the day with one person, the first arrested, remaining in custody at least overnight. As the protest moved from picketing to the press conference, the wooden doors of the mayors office, which are behind the glass doors, were opened to present the image of an “open door” policy.

Considering the number of press there and the dual press conferences – inside in front of the mayor’s office for patients and supporters and outside for clinic staff and Illinois Nurses Association representatives, the protest was successful in drawing coverage. How much coverage got on the air was not known at the time of last night’s debriefing.

4:48 pmThe sit-in continues in the hall in front of the mayor’s office. A Chicago Police Department officer is standing directly in front of the mayor’s office. The City Hall closes officially at 5 pm; likely some of the protesters will insist on remaining sitting in.

1:30 pmWhile I was recharging batteries, a separate action occupied Rahm Emmanuel’s office as a sit-in. Already there is a report of one arrest.

Nanobots (image: kaioshin/flickr)

There are two resources you should keep your eye on in interpreting the current positions of the defenders of large military budgets.

The first is the Strategic Studies Institute of the US Army War College and the other is the Project for National Security Reform (PNSR).

Since 2005, both of these organizations have done a series of studies on what they call “national security reform”, studies that look to redefine the mission and structure of the US national security institutions on as sweeping a scale as was done in 1947 — but to do it in order to preserve high levels of defense funding.

One of the studies that PNSR did was a visioning study of needed changes to US national security institutions. This study hypothesized nine threats to US security and gamed how they would be dealt with now and how they could be deal with after the instituion of certain reforms.

The scenarios that the PNSR vision working group picked are:

1. Red Death – A country struggles to get back on its feet after a major biological attack in the midst of a debate about the future US role at home and abroad.

2. Peoples War – The US is caught up in global asymmetric warfare against a nuclear-armed great power. The US must respond to anonymous attacks at home and abroad without escalating to a nuclear conflict.

3. Grand Strategy – The utility of an the capability to develop an integrated grand strategy in smoothing the transition from one presidential administration to the next.

4. A New Economy – The US faces its greatest economic crisis since the Great Depression.

5. Pax Robotica – Continuation of the trend of escalating robotic and sensor technology. Public policy choices to enable more real-time interaction between the military, diplomatic and intelligence organizations of the US government.

6. Who Holds the High Ground – A land grab for the moon.

7. A Brave New World – A plan to provide proven neuroscience, psychiatric, and medical techniques to control pathological behaviors in a world awash in readily accessible weapons of mass destruction.

8. A Warm Reception – Developing international consensus of the matter of global climate change and possible unintended consequences.

9. It’s a Small, Small World – Nanobots have become ubiquitous. These are expanding in novelistic detail in pages 23-77. Read from the standpoint of the craft of fiction for an interesting perspective on the use of your tax money.

That is by far the most fascinating document. However a report for the Strategic Studies Institute used case studies of Truman, Nixon, Mondale, George H. W. Bush, and Al Gore to make a proposal to institutionalize the behind-the-scenes (then they won’t be, eh) foreign policy responsibilities of the vice-president. We need to monitor these discussions carefully. They intend to influence policy. And we need to frame some alternative proposals from our vision and present it in more realistic and better-thought-through terms than the nine scenarios.

On the road from the Chicago Public Library main branch. Keep our libraries public and free.

A Glimpse of NATO HQ - Utenriksdepartementet UD

Here are some resources for preparation for understanding what is a stake at the NATO Summit in Chicago.  They relate to the necessity for the US to review its 65-year old national security institutions, including NATO, that are rapidly driving a military-industrial crony capitalism and a national security state toward the end of democratic government in the US.

One of the first things to consider in the demilitarization of the American garrison society is proclaiming NATO a success, ending it, and ending the 67-year-old US occupation of Europe.   It also means an end to the US military doctrine of forward deployment of military resources.

Editor’s Note: TarheelDem is travelling to the NATO conference in Chicago as an activist and citizen journalist. Thanks for this great resource guide! -Kit

This is the fifth diary about the upcoming NATO Summit in Chicago. The other diaries are:

Why I Am Protesting at the NATO Summit

Preparing for NATO in Chicago: The World as NATO Sees It

Preparing for NATO in Chicago: NATO’s 2012 Agenda

Preparing for NATO in Chicago: 65 Years of War is More Than Enough

The End of the Post-World War II Occupation of Europe

(photo: Rob__ , flickr)

Joseph Gerson, American Friends Service Committee in New England, has an analysis of the current crisis in NATO and NATO’s Chicago agenda–and argues that this a critical moment for the changing of priorities in the North Atlantic Treaty area (North America and Europe).

Joseph Gerson, NATO in Crisis and Agendas for Chicago

Thus, sixty-seven years after the last of World War II’s bombs and bullets in Europe claimed their human tolls, a sophisticated form of military occupation continues across nearly all of Europe.Russiais contained. German militarism is capped. And Washington has a rear base to reinforce its now contested dominance of Eurasia’s southern flank: the oil-rich Middle East and occupied Afghanistan.

The economic crisis in Europe has reduced European nations’ participation in funding NATO. That indicates that European nations do not have a heightened sense of national security threats. It also indicates that NATO is still an instrument of a 65-year-old US strategy.

NATO and the European Union have created intra-European stability. The role of North American nations in NATO is consequently less important to European security even as the US drives European nations into conflicts unrelated to European security but related to US ambitions and global reach. It is time for US (and any Canadian) troops to withdraw from Europe completely.

The US can no longer sustain economically the level of military spending for its total-capability, global forward-deployment strategy. In short, the American empire has reached its sustainable limits.

To deal with this overreach, the US will be deploying 6000-7000 troops away from Europe and consolidating Western European bases within the next few years. It’s time to end the forward-deployment strategy altogether because $1.8 trillion a year is expensive insurance of national security.

Because of the lack of a mission after withdrawal from Afghanistan and the coming European austerity budgets, NATO’s future is now the NATO Summit’s agenda.