Chicago Police Round Up 130 Obama Supporters

Don't worry though, they were very peaceful.

For the second weekend in a row, anti-Wall Street protesters marched through the downtown streets in another attempt to take over Grant Park. And once again, police arrested those that refused to leave after the park closed.

Organizers and police estimated that approximately 130 demonstrators were arrrested in Grant Park early Sunday. Those arrested faced misdemeanor charges, such as trespassing on park district property.

Between 1,500 and 2,500 protesters marched Saturday night from LaSalle and Jackson to the northeast corner of Congress and Michigan, where organizers said they again planned to set up a camp with the hopes of spending the night. Organizers said they were hoping to move the entire Occupy Chicago protest from the financial district to Grant Park going forward.

“We are going to hold this space, and that’s what we are going to do,” said Brit Schulte, 23, an organizer who was arrested at Grant Park last week and who has been protesting for 25 days straight. “Our ability to invoke our civil rights to protest shouldn’t be limited, and we shouldn’t be censored.”

Schulte, who recently moved to Chicago from Texas, said organizers didn’t request a permit to spend the night because they didn’t think they needed it.

As of midnight, only one tent had been set up and only about 100 protesters remained in the park. Police set up metal barricades around the group. A few hundred people stood in support outside the barricades on the sidewalks around and across the street from the park and watched.

At 12:40 a.m., a protester ran out of the barricades and quickly returned holding two pizzas. Police stopped him from rejoining the crowd, but then he sat down and another protester ran up and grabbed the pizzas from him. That woman then delivered the grub to the crowd.

At 12:50 a.m. Sunday, police began to handcuff and arrest protesters. Police carried out some who refused to move, but others walked with officers to police wagons. As they left the area, police snapped photos of those taken into custody.

“CPD is the 99 percent” protesters chanted as the arrests were being made.

As the arrests were underway, organizers said they were upset that Mayor Rahm Emanuel did not make an exception and allow them to stay in the park after it closed.

“Other mayors with the same sorts of laws have not only done that but they have come out to speak” at rallies, said Cathy “Sugar” Russell, a spokeswoman for Occupy Chicago. Russell, 33, a marketing student at DeVry who lives in Avondale, said while protesters will remain at LaSalle and Jackson around the clock, where the protests started, they sought to move to Grant Park because they “need an appropriate space where we can do the work for social and economic justice.”

At an earlier rally at Grant Park, crowds chanted, “We are the 99 percent!” and “What do we need? Revolution. When do we need it? Now!”