[Peace] candlelight vigil and 9-11

[charles joseph smith]

I had the deepest courage to speak out in the 9-11 candlelight vigil.

But there was something I did keep under wraps as I faced the mike during
open mic in the rather brisk wind and light rain at the Quad at the U. of
I. Let me tell you right now...

I was afraid that downtown Chicago would turn into a police state if
any of the suicide planes crashed into the city's tall buildigns and if it
were, I swore that I would never visit downtown Chicago again. I feared
thousands of arrests in downtown Chicago for even trivial offenses would
occur as part of its war on terrorism. That didn't happen. Two years
before I was born in 1970, you probably know about the anti-war protests
in Chicago at the DNC, and the arrests and the police brutality that
happened there, which of course, worsened with the assassinations of
Robert Kennedy and Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. in 1968.

There were, however, a few changes that did happen in downtown Chicago
after 9-11:

1. The Dirksen Federal Building has been awashed with a concrete-barrier
   curtain to stop any outrunning vehicles which could be laced with
   explosives from going into and crashing the building. I am afraid of
   explosives too. I found that out with the Oklahoma City bombing of the
   federal building.

2. A vehicle now stands as  a natural barrier to the delivery area in the
   Board of Trade center complex.
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