Below is an announcement we have received concerning a large demonstration being organized by Occupy Chicago this Saturday.
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Sisters and Brothers:
As many of you know, 175 people were arrested last Saturday night, during an attempt to set up a 24 hour protest in Grant Park. Many who were arrested were teachers, students, workers, union members, people with and without work, young and old. At Occupy Chicago we understand this as a gross violation of our First Amendment right to peacefully assemble. Free speech and assembly is a 24 hour right. It does not magically disappear at the park’s Curfew. In a world that continues to have its public space privatized, indeed that continues to have all things public stolen from us, it is essential that we reclaim and build a public space to bulwark ourselves against the oncoming tide of corporate greed. We are trying erect a public space, one that is not owned or sponsored, where ideas, democracy, and the resistance against the ever increasing cuts that affect all us, can be fostered.
This is why, on Saturday, we will again march out and try to encamp at a yet undisclosed location. This time we march with the full support of the SEIU, CTU, National Nurses United, Stand Up Chicago, Jobs with Justice, the United Electrical Workers, and more. We are joining forces with the rank and file workers of this city who are caught in the same struggle and willing to engage in the same fight. Let us rally in the name of the workers; let us march against a system bent on stealing our futures; and let us end with the construction of a new public sphere: Occupy Chicago’s new permanent home.
Come help us rebuild the public sphere, take back our right to free speech, and demand that the charges against those arrested last week be dropped. Come march with us. Come stand against austerity with your brothers and sisters. Come help us rebuild and take back what has been stolen from us.
Where: Jackson and LaSalle
When: 6:30, October 22nd
Please Forward Widely!
