Thousands of
nurses and other protesters began gathering at a downtown Chicago plaza Friday
to demand a "Robin Hood" tax on banks' financial transactions, the largest
protest yet ahead of a two-day NATO summit that is expected to draw even larger
demonstrations.
National Nurses
United officials expect about 2,000 nurses to attend Friday's rally to call for
the tax to offset cuts in social services, education and health care. They were
joined by members of the Occupy movement, unions and
veterans.
Meanwhile,
lawyers for NATO summit protesters said police on Friday morning released four
of nine activists arrested Wednesday on accusations that they had or planned to
make Molotov cocktails.
Chicago was
originally going to host the G-8 economic summit, too, and the nurses' rally was
initially intended to coincide with that. But the G-8 summit was moved to Camp
David, Md.
Midwest Director
Jan Rodolfo said the nurses decided to go forward with the rally in the hope
that their message would reach a worldwide audience.
Shawmaf Khubba,
a student at Montclair State University in New Jersey, took a 14-hour bus ride
on Thursday with 40 others to join the Chicago protests. He said he wanted to
raise awareness and tough questions about what he called NATO's unwarranted
military aggression around the world.
"NATO is a
strong arm of the U.S. that gives an excuse to go everywhere around the world,"
he said before Friday's rally. "I'm here because I care about what happens to
people around the world."
Scattered
protests over the past week have been relatively small, including a march
through the "Magnificent Mile" shopping district that drew about 100 people
Thursday.
But the much
larger nurses' rally will mark a ramp-up to Sunday's anti-NATO march by
underscoring that money spent fighting wars means less money for health care,
education and other social programs, said Andy Thayer, an organizer of the
anti-NATO march. His group - Coalition Against the NATO/G8 War & Poverty
Agenda - has been working to draw those connections ever since President Barack
Obama moved the G-8 summit, potentially dampening enthusiasm for a Chicago
demonstration.
"I think it's
really going to be big ... with the nurses," Thayer said. "That is going to be
the 99 percent staking itself against the 1 percent, drawing the connections
between the war abroad and the war on working people here at
home.
"They are the
front-line caregivers ... and the nurses, to their credit, understand the
connections between NATO, G-8 and the deplorable state of health care in our
country and are speaking out about it." Chicago Tribune
AHT/HJ
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