Hate it or love it, NATO is here in Chicago. While the summit doesn’t start until tomorrow, the expected protests are in full effect. This morning I found out about a march toward Rahm Emanuel’s home in the Ravenswood neighborhood. When I saw the newscast I saw what seemed to be 100-150 people gathered in a park. By the time I arrived, I was surprised to see approximately 500-600 protesters marching toward the Mayor’s home.

I tried to capture a few different perspectives of the march. For the most part, I was ‘marching’ right alongside the protesters in the middle of the street recording the various chants. Here’s a collection of what I caught:

Soon, I heard about an even bigger protest beginning downtown. I arrived just in time for the protesters to begin their march from Daley Plaza to McCormick Place, the location of the summit. This seemed to be a much larger scale event, with perhaps 1500 protesters and hundreds of police officers in riot gear. The protesters completely shut down the area as they marched down Michigan Avenue.

Again, I found myself in the middle of all of this, trying to capture the feeling of being in the march. The chants sounded really neat in the downtown environment. All of the buildings allowed for some interesting reflections/reverb.

We decided to leave at around 6:00 pm. I was satisfied with everything I caught. I had over 2 hours of recordings along with a nice sunburn. While (as of now) I’m not sure what happened after we left I have to say I’m proud of how everyone handled things today. There didn’t seem to be any kind of vandalism/fights/etc. I only witnessed one arrest, and the tension between the police and protesters was relatively minimal for the situation. I’m glad I got the chance to capture as much as I did.

All recordings: Zoom H4n Internal Mics | 96/24 Stereo | Unprocessed