![Protesters demonstrate outside Boeing's corporate offices Monday, May 21 2012, in Chicago, on the final day of the NATO summit. (AP Photo/Charles Rex Arbogast) Protesters demonstrate outside Boeing's corporate offices Monday, May 21 2012, in Chicago, on the final day of the NATO summit. (AP Photo/Charles Rex Arbogast)](https://www.mintpress.net/wp-content/uploads/2012/05/NATO-Summit-Chicago_Webf-8-690x389.jpg)
(CHICAGO) MintPress — As NATO leaders wrapped up their two-day summit in Chicago Monday, Occupy activists once again took to the streets, this time marching to Boeing headquarters to protest the defense contractor’s building of aircraft and missiles for the U.S. military.
“Boeing is a war criminal and plays a huge role in NATO’s war machine,” said Occupy Chicago in a statement on its website.
Boeing moved its headquarters to the “Windy City” in 2001 in a plan that Occupy claims “stole over 20 years worth of free rent from Illinois taxpayers.”
“How are your property taxes?” shouted one activist to the crowd. “Are they high? Do you work your ass off to pay them?”
“Boeing does not give a s**t. It laughs while it kills innocents around the world,” he continued. “The people of Chicago, we are here for you. Please come to our side.”
As protesters chanted, “Ah anti, anti capitaliste,” many threw paper airplanes adorned with messages such as “Boeing smells” and “BOEING” with a swastika symbol written on the wings.
“They are messages of hope, in contrast to what the building here represents,” announced one female supporter. “We are peaceful, they are not.”
Festive atmosphere
But Occupy Chicago was calling this a victory party more than a protest, and indeed, the mood was far less emotionally charged than it was at Sunday’s march by thousands of anti-NATO demonstrators to the convention center where the summit was taking place.
The police turnout, for one, was far less than it had been the day before, and state troopers were nowhere in sight.
Officers stood by the side of the road as protesters made their way to City Hall and the office of Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel, chanting, “We are the 99 percent, and so are you.”
Seriously, mayor
Still, Occupiers were adamant about addressing some of the most critical social issues they continue to tackle.
“Rahm Emanuel recently passed a budget full of austerity measures,” roared an Occupy Chicago leader into a bullhorn. “I’ll detail them so we can publicly reprimand him.”
“Here we go Mayor 1 percent Rahm Emanuel,” he continued, before leveling charge number one:
Rahm Emanuel closed 6 of 13 mental health clinics and privatized the rest.
“That means several people no longer have access to care the therapy they desperately need. Some of those clients have already committed suicide.”
Rahm Emanuel says he is turning around the public schools.
“That’s double speak for closing them and firing everyone who works there. He has turned them over to charter schools owned by private corporations.”
Rahm Emanuel has closed the public library because it took too much money.
“Luckily, there are enough literate and educated people to stand up to his bulls**t.”
The demonstrators left City Hall chanting, “Rah, Rahm Emanuel, take your cuts and go to hell.”
Chasing the powers that be
After reaching the downtown headquarters of Chase Bank, the protesters once again sat down to block the streets.
“If we work together and stay together, we can stay in our homes,” intoned the newest march leader. “They may have money but we have the numbers.”
“And if we stand up and say ‘you will not take our homes, you not take our lives away,’ we have power in solidarity,” she continued to a chorus of approval.
Full circle to the commander in chief
The protest ended outside the nearby election headquarters of Barack Obama, where the first arrests of Occupy activists took place in the week leading up to the NATO meeting.
At about the same time, Obama was addressing the press at the end of the summit. When asked about the protesters, he replied, “That is what NATO is here to protect…that’s what America is all about.”
But the president’s message was long lost on many of his former supporters, who were among the rank and file of the Occupiers in the streets of his hometown.
In an open-mic session to the president for whom many Occupiers had once worked, Obama was frequently chastised.
Said one woman from Occupy Nashville to the president, “Twenty years ago you would have been marching on the streets with us. You would have been fighting to end poverty, and now you are causing it. You are a traitor.”
She continued, “We need food for our people, shelter for our people, education for our people. Barack Obama, go back to the right side. Go back to the left side. Go back to the streets. March with us.“