The Chicago Tribune’s War On Dissent: Activists Respond

Author: CIMC

NATO3

On February 10, the influential Chicago Tribune published a lengthy and extraordinary editorial embracing police spying, entrapment and law enforcement tactics grounded in the billy club and the agent provocateur. The paper’s beef? A jury had found three defendants innocent days earlier of bogus state terrorism charges in the NATO 3 case. The  defendants’ ‘crime’ — assembling four primitive Molotov cocktails on the eve of protests to oppose the May 2012 gathering of NATO officials in Chicago — was wholly initiated, incited and put into motion by two undercover cops, whose bosses admitted they colluded with federal authorities to create the case.

The Tribune’s op ed was stripped, for all intents and purposes, from States’ Attorney Anita Alvarez’ vitriolic defense of her political prosecution of the NATO 3. Dozens of respected activists and groups came together to rebut the Tribune’s endorsement of state-sponsored spying, entrapment and the use of undercover police agent provocateurs to wage war on dissent — a response that the Tribune has refused to publish. Instead, that full response is published here.