Chicago May 2012 G-8/NATO Summit: how crazy will it get?

[dropzone]

(showing my age) Compared with '68? Piffle.

From someone on the the other side, a ex-boss was in the Reserves and manned a .50cal machine gun parked at the end of the armory opposite the end with the big door. Crazy days.

[lindsaybluth]

@Eva_Luna

So how bad do you think it could get in the Loop? And how fouled up is public transportation likely to get? There is probably a fair amount of stuff I can do from home, but I have no idea how receptive management will be, and there’s also a fair bit of stuff that it would be totally impractical to do from home. (I’m not going to meet with clients at home, for example, and pretty much everything I send out needs to be reviewed and signed by an attorney first.)

I’m in Pittsburgh, so I’ll share what it was like during the G20 summit a couple years ago.

1. Roads got paved that “needed” it. Aka the ones the president and visiting dignitaries were traveling on. You will get no warning nor any explanation and the detours will be miserable for weeks in advance.

2. I know a lot of people who were arrested (or corralled into areas to be arrested and then were let go) like journalists and just interested people in the commotion. It’s very easy to get caught in the swell.

3. There will be a lot of property destruction; broken windows and illegal marches of dirty, filthy anarchists and hipsters and disaffected liberal arts majors. They are violent and have a mob mentality. Please be careful!

4. The cops automatically assume ANYONE out during that time is an instigator. Expect to meet with/pass by/be instructed by militarized cops from various states. It is extremely unpleasant. It doesn’t feel like a democratic republic it feels like…a fascist state.

5. We have an idiot boy mayor but I’d be doubly nervous to have Rahm running the show.

My own advice for you: Do as much as possible as you can from home. If you can, I’d go so far as to suggest taking the really “big” days off; the days where the most stuff is happening. We were out of town for half of the G20 and I wish we’d opted out of the whole thing.

ETA: Just saw that the G8’s been moved, so I would just revise my advice to everything except the last paragraph; I don’t think you’ll need to actually take the days off since the G8’s been moved.