Talk of the Town

“Organizations like NATO are detached from the reality of living in the world today when you aren’t as privileged as others,” said student Mara Hodgeson. “I work harder than ever to put myself through school with no help and several outside jobs to make a living in the meantime. These people are paying no attention to the millions struggling with student debt or health insurance problems,” she said. “All this money spent on war is saddening to me, when there are so many other issues that need to be addressed.”

There is no single reason why citizens are banding together in disapproval, yet with each and every personal story, there is a thread that runs through them all, outlining a number of important and shared problems within the people of our world.

Major events around the globe in 2011, from Tahrir Square to Zuccotti Park, have instilled a great urgency in many of the protesters and lead them to understand how complex conditioning by global processes has given the 99 percent of the world more in common than they dared to imagine before.

Here’s a list of some of the groups who have identified themselves as anti-NATO summit.

Occupy Chicago

Our city has seen an increasing amount of action from demonstrations and marches organized by the Occupy movement as the recent months have passed.

“Occupy Chicago does not endorse and never has endorsed the two dominant parties, Democrat and Republican, that are currently carrying out the agenda of the 1 percent. Our only affiliation is with those who want to end the entanglement of big business and government,” states occupychi.org

They viewed the NATO summit as an opportunity to garner attention for their overall cause.

“Shouting out against the NATO war machine, Occupy Chicago [organized] a week of actions highlighting the violence and oppression of NATO, and [called] for the organization to be disbanded,” said the site. Occupychi.org

The Coalition Against NATO/G8 War & Poverty Agenda (CANG8)

According to their website, the protest events “give people a place to have their voices be heard and to share a vision of what the world could be when people are put before profit; when money goes to jobs, healthcare, education, pensions, housing and the environment, not war; when we say no to war and austerity.” CANG8.org

Chicago Independent Media Center (CIMC)

Chicago Indymedia, the Chicago Independent Media Center, is a grassroots volunteer collective of media makers committed to reporting on progressive issues and grassroots struggles for economic and social justice. They are part of the global Indymedia project, dozens of likeminded collectives around the world all working together but separately for the same cause. Chicago.indymedia.org

The People’s Summit

The People’s Summit is a radically democratic meeting to discuss the type of world that they would like to see, “one that transcends our present condition of corporate plutocracy and military empire,” said the website.

Their purpose? To educate communities about war, austerity, global capitalism, and corporatization in the 21st century, and what it means for the ways we all live in this world. peoplessummitchicago.org