Lost in the NATO Protests: Crime and a War Hawk Still Rule Chicago

During his remarks at Occupy Wall Street this past fall, Slavoj Zizek made the following point about the current formulation of radical possibility: "What do we perceive today as possible? Just follow the media. On the one hand, in technology and sexuality, everything seems to be possible. You can travel to the moon, you can become immortal by biogenetics, you can have sex with animals or whatever, but look at the field of society and economy. There, almost everything is considered impossible. You want to raise taxes by little bit for the rich. They tell you it's impossible."

One runs into the same problem when confronted with the existence of NATO. Yes, we might be able to agree it's not the best solution to the world’s problems, but who can envision it ceasing to exist? The only robust commentary regarding the destruction of the organization, that I can remember, was provided in the form of snarky editorials written by vitriolic right-wingers during the Clinton administrations attack on Yugoslavia. Throughout the most recent Iraq War, liberals lamented the bad name Bush was giving NATO as a result of his wrongheaded invasion and subsequent swagger. But what's so bad about giving NATO a bad name?

World leaders don't even bother justifying NATO any longer and summits, like the one held in Chicago this weekend, are largely symbolic gestures designed to keep war spending immersed in the status quo of American culture. NATO was created over 20 years ago to protect Western Europe from Russia. After the Soviet Union collapsed, rather than disband the group, it was expanded eastward, in full violation of concessions made to Mikhail Gorbachev.

Since then NATO has come to represent death and destruction for citizens of many countries. Protestors descended on Chicago to make this point and, as these things tend to go, the mainstream media ran with the standard "Cops and Protestors Clash" variety of headlines, obscuring the message of the protests and ignoring some crucial moments, like the litany of powerful speeches given by military veterans.

But the issues brought up by the protestors don't merely apply to troops, bombs, and drones in far off lands. Many were there to highlight the inherent contradictions of our permanent war economy, and the public sector being broken down while we continue to spend on war. Critics of the military-industrial complex couldn't ask for a better symbol to illustrate the issue than the perpetually sardonic visage of Mayor Rahm Emanuel.

As chair of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, Emanuel worked diligently to assure that pro-war candidates won out in toss-up Democratic races. A section from the book he co-authored with Bruce Reed, The Plan: Big Ideas for America, details his military vision: "We should reform and strengthen multilateral institutions for the twenty-first century, not walk away from them. We need to fortify the military's “thin green line” around the world by adding to the U.S. Special Forces and the Marines, and by expanding the U.S. army by 100,000 more troops."

Shortly after being picked as Obama's Chief of Staff, a reporter asked the Likudnik hawk's father if his son Rahm would influence the President to be more pro-Israel. "Obviously he [Rahm] will influence the president to be pro-Israel… Why wouldn't he be [influential]?" the senior Emanuel responded. “What is he, an Arab? He's not going to clean the floors of the White House.”

As mayor, Emanuel's legislative policy has been predicated on hacking away at the public sector: shutting down mental health clinics, snipping away at library hours, and cutting jobs; that is to say, dismantling the New Deal consensus that Democrats of yesteryear worked so hard to create. "City Hall is not an employment office," Emanuel told Chicago.

As the Chicago Reader reported earlier this year, "Chicago has cut more than 5,800 jobs, most of them held by residents of black and Hispanic neighborhoods already struggling with unemployment, foreclosures, disinvestment, and dwindling public services." These facts fit into a much broader local reality: despite impressive progress over the last couple years, Chicago remains the most segregated city in the United States, according to a census data study conducted earlier this year by the Manhattan Institute of Policy Research. As Gary Younge observed in the The Guardian, leading up to the summit:

The murder rate in Chicago in the first three months of this year increased by more than 50% compared with the same period last year, giving it almost twice the murder rate of New York. And the manner in which the city is policed gives many as great a reason to fear those charged with protecting them as the criminals. By the end of July last year police were shooting people at the rate of six a month and killing one person a fortnight. This violence, be it at the hands of the state or gangs, is both compounded and underpinned by racial and economic disadvantage. The poorer the neighbourhood the more violent, the wealthier the safer. This is no coincidence. Much like the Nato summit – and the G8 summit that preceded it – the system is set up not to spread wealth but to preserve and protect it, not to relieve chaos but to contain and punish it.

While people around the world focused on the protests happening in the sanitized downtown area this weekend, on the other side of the

city

7 people were killed and 22 were injured as a result of gun violence.

• Two men were shot and killed while they ate tacos.
• Alejandro Munoz, 26, was shot in the head.
• Esteban Alvaraz, 27, was shot in the abdomen. He was taken to Mount Sinai Hospital where he died.
• Joseph Owens, 25, was found shot and killed behind an apartment.
• Dwayne Billingsley, 35, was shot and killed
• Nazia Banks, 12, was shot twice in the head.
• Melvin Jacobs, 23, was one of six who were shot at a birthday party. He was the only one who didn't survive.
• Alejandro Jamie, 14, was shot in the back and died shorty after.

Last week, The Reader's Mick Dumke reported that:

We currently have 300 fewer officers to deploy than when Emanuel took office just a year ago. Incidentally, a Tribune poll this week found that the mayor gets his lowest marks from voters on his handling of crime and policing. He responded yesterday by unveiling a new community policing initiative, except that he didn't call it a community policing initiative, since that's what Daley and the rest of the country have been calling such initiatives for the last two decades. Mayor Emanuel wants to give us something new, even if it's just a name. Plus, if he called it community policing, it would have to involve collaborating with the community, and not just descending into it.

The report also makes mention of the fact those in the mayor's office are doing well. The average salaries are up from the time of Daley, now hovering around $88,200 a year. They have also added nine new employees as part of an innovation team as a result of a $6 million grant. Who granted the Mayor's office with so much cash? The private foundation of Michael Bloomberg. Facts worth protesting, I would say.

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