Apathy and Inconvenience
Opinions about NATO Protest

Anti-NATO Demonstration 5.20.12

Capitalism and NATO may seem like they provide security for some living here, but they certainly interrupt and inconvenience other societies around the globe. In China, people are working as near slaves to provide us with the lovely parts for our newest IPad. Iraq and Afghanistan have been devastated through decades of war for their resources and strategic positioning. Countless other countries have been severely disrupted through military and economic interventions. And we don’t want to stop to think about who is causing the continuation of such destructive policies, and how we can effectively involve ourselves in changing these policies.

The global system of concentrated wealth and power has successfully made us strangers to one another while it steals from all of us and kills some of us without notice… …Since no power ever dismantles itself, especially when it is us who consent to their power, we require worldwide dissent. In this age of dying hearts and minds, dissent is love. It is in such dissent that we’ll find our way.

UNC’s first “Alternative Commencement,” held to honor graduating students sympathetic to the Occupy Wall Street (OWS) movement and similar movements. New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg was the speaker for the main ceremony, and he had ordered the forced closure of the OWS encamplent-demonstration at Zuccotti Park. This group chose alternative speakers including three-time Nobel Peace Prize nominee Kathy Kelly.

by Buddy Bell
May 17, 2012

On what is now the 17th day of our walk from Madison to Chicago, the number 165 does not seem to encapsulate all the progress we have made. We are 17 days and 165 miles away from the day I drove into Madison, where news arrived that Air Force One had descended on pre-dawn Kabul for the forging of the Enduring Strategic Partnership Agreement.

When I spoke at the May Day rally later the same day, I denounced what all indications show to be Obama’s continuing-for-another-decade war in Afghanistan. Almost immediately a lone man in the dwindling crowd started shouting vulgar slurs at me, with a lack of decency that was amazing considering young kids were present.

AAGSTAW

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By Robert C. Koehler
May 5, 2012

The city of Chicago and the federal government will be putting on a $55 million security extravaganza later this month to protect NATO delegates, representing the most powerful military force on the planet, from nonviolent protesters who want to see an end to war.

Sallamah Aliah
May 8, 2012

How do I relate to conflict? I tend to either challenge or avoid it. But, today I search and struggle for an alternative. To retaliate or avoid the truth creates more discomfort in my own life and for those around me. To challenge my default, I must work hard to acknowledge the conflict and take responsibility for my own actions. My professor once asked our class to contemplate the question: “What would I do if I wasn’t afraid?” The answers to this question never stop coming. This question challenges me, however slowly, to see what role fear plays in my life. Fear of failure, violence, rejection, but most importantly how my perceptions, filtered through fear create the world in which I live and consequently the actions I take or don’t based on this view.