Chicago’s population is more than one-third Latino, but you’d have never known it by looking at the protesters who marched against NATO last weekend.
I covered most of the events held by the anti-NATO demonstrators, from the People’s Summit on the South Side to the die-in at Boeing on Monday, and I was hard-pressed to find a Latino to talk to about why he or she was protesting.
Even at an immigration rally, only about 50 Latino activists marched from Little Village to the Immigration Court Building on Van Buren. There, they joined a group of mostly white young activists from Occupy Chicago to demonstrate against deportations.
I found a more diverse crowd at the nurses’ rally at Daley Center Plaza on Friday. The nurses stole the anti-NATO show wearing Robin Hood costumes and dancing to the Beatles. More importantly, they sent a clear message that the United States should impose a tax on finance house trades to help pay for health care for all those people hurt by the economic crisis that, the nurses say, the banks and financial institutions created.
I found Omara Chiardello, a nurse from California, who captured in a few words what a lot of Americans are going through.
“Many of my patients have to decide between buying food for their children or their medicine,” she said. READ MORE
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