Midwest Unrest
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Midwest Unrest is a small collective in Chicago formed by anarchists and anti-capitalists in a planning meeting for that city's mobilization to the protests against the Free Trade Area of the Americas summit in Miami in the November of 2003. Midwest Unrest organized a pre-mobilization consulta, and took part in the week of protests that was met with a style of repression now often referred to as the Miami model. Then it organized a protest against the Central American Free Trade Agreement that December, and became something of a fixture of citywide and anti-fascist protests in Chicago.
The collective experienced internal conflict the next August over allegations of rape that were levelled against one of its members, who was then expelled from the group.
More recently, the MWUR collective participated in a citywide campaign to prevent threatened service cuts and fare increases by the Chicago Transit Authority. Through aggressive agitation in public hearings, meetings and flyering, the group pushed the Fare Strike tactic set for December 15 of 2004. The CTA postponed its decision for six months in what many community groups in the city heralded as a total victory, but well in advance of the fare strike. The proposed fare increase still took place, as the agency's funding proved inadequate to sustain service, as its funding continues to prove inadequate today at the source.
As of 2006, the Midwest Unrest collective has disbanded
