NATO Summit Protest March
Sunday, May 20, 10:00 am
Methodist Temple, Washington and Clark
Prayer Service - Blessing for the March
10:00 am Outside
After the prayer blessing join the march to Grant Park for the NATO Summit Protest.
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Bring your families, children, musical instruments, signs, props, cameras, balloons, bicycles, horns, kazoos,
funny hats and all other merry-making apparatus.
After the prayer blessing join the march to Grant Park for the NATO Summit Protest.
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Why are we protesting NATO?
NATO is a military collective of 28 nations, bound together by an all-for-one and one-for-all alliance, a
policy that provides the rationale for a constant state of combat. NATO action has contributed to an
unprecedented proliferation of weapons and weapons commerce worldwide; increased international
geopolitical tensions and economic catastrophes. Worst of all - the existence of NATO has diminished
commitment to the enterprise of peaceful diplomacy.
The US gave NATO over $800 million in 2011. As the European Nations step up their austerity programs
and cut their defense budgets, we taxpayers in the US will be required to fund even more weapons, more
drones, more wars and more money for the $1 Billion NATO headquarters currently under construction in
Brussels.
Using Chicago as a "Global Crossroads" NATO comes to us to plot their next wars. We gather in protest to
tell NATO to SHUT IT DOWN. Close the doors. We can't afford you anymore. We don't need you
anymore. We want to spend our money plotting peace, not war.
We gather in protest to say WE ARE SORRY to those countries whose innocents have been victimized by
NATO. We are sorry for giving our hard-earned dollars to an organization that has killed your innocent
children, your mothers, your fathers, your sisters and brothers. And WE ARE SORRY to our own children
and grandchildren and fellow citizens because we have been silent about our government funding a war
machine instead of saving our air and water and plants and animals and giving our grandmothers and
grandfathers a secure and healthy dotage.
- MLK, Jr.: "History will have to record that the greatest tragedy of this period of social transition was not the strident
clamor of the bad people, but the appalling silence of the good people."