Protesters get ‘oiled’ up
Protesters lay down in the middle of Stetson Avenue and Lake Street and smeared “oil” on their bodies Thursday to protest the building of pipelines in Canada and the United States.
Dressed in bathing suits, shorts and jeans, four women and four men reached into a 100-foot-long plastic prop of an oil pipeline and rubbed the dark substance — actually vegetable oil, corn starch, flour and chocolate syrup — into their bare skin and clothes.
Then, they lay “dead” to illustrate the damage they said pipelines cause.
“Shut it down,” the environmentalists screamed. “Get up, get down. We need clean energy in this town.”
“These are being developed in areas where there is wildlife that doesn’t exist anywhere else, with polar bears and wolves,” said Nathan Titus, 28, of Occupy Montana. “We are pretty much for the environment, so that would mean we’re against anything that would destroy it.”
The group mostly chanted slogans against the proposed Keystone XL oil pipeline, which would carry oil from Canada to the Texas Gulf Coast.
“There’s economic and environmental injustice going on and NATO highlights the drastic priorities we have as a society, spending mostly on war and destruction as opposed to environmental sustainability,” said Dan Massoglia, a Chicago-kent law student.
The late afternoon demonstration, which featured roughly 100 people on foot and on bicycles, started at La Salle and Jackson and ended near the Canadian Consulate, which had been blocked off from traffic by po- lice in advance of the protest.
Chicago Police Supt. Garry McCarthy was with about 30 officers at the protest.
“Things are going well. What you see is what you get,” he said. “We’re doing everything exactly like we said we’d be doing. They’re protesting peacefully. We’re facilitating that and helping with that.”
When asked about the possibility of pie-throwing protesters dressed as clowns, Mccarthy said: “Any liquid or substance thrown on an officer is a battery, and that has to be made clear to anybody, and I don’t care if they’re dressed up as a clown, or if they’re dressed in a Halloween costume, that’s a fact. . . . This really isn’t a game, so if people think that they’re coming here to have fun and play a game, they’re making a mistake.”
He added that the police computer systems have “absolutely, positively have not [been hacked into].”
No protesters were arrested Thursday, leaving the total arrested this week at 12.
“The protesters have been very well behaved,” said Mccarthy, adding he does not expect police to use sound cannons or tear gas, but if necessary, the order would come directly from him.