By Miranda Leitsinger, msnbc.com
Miranda Leitsinger / msnbc.com
Thousands marching through Chicago Sunday in protest of a two-day NATO summit.
Updated 4:24 p.m. ET: CHICAGO -- Chanting "N-A-T-O, NATO has got to go," rows of veterans marched in formation Sunday leading thousands in a protest of the wars as world leaders gathered here for a two-day NATO summit.
Upon arrival near the convention center where the summit is taking place, one soldier threw the medals on the road, calling them symbols of lies.
"I choose human life over war," Jerry Bordeleau shouted through a microphone.
"This isn't an easy decision for anybody here,” Steven Acheson, an Army veteran, said before sending off his medals. He served for five years, including more than a year in Iraq and was among the dozens of veterans who planned to return their war medals.
“I'm going to spend a little extra time with my medals before I give them away," Acheson said. "It's the most significant year in my life to this point and to turn that back into NATO – it’s really going to be significant for me."
Alongside the veterans were a dozen Afghans who waved the Afghan flag and held up peace fingers.
Among the protesters was Arianna Norris-Landry, of St. Louis, dressed as an turn-of-the-century suffragette. She said she and 60 other women were protesting the war and a sense that women's rights are being targeted by conservatives.
Calling themselves "Grannies at the G-8" and "Nanas at NATO," some of the women were dressed as World War II feminist icon Rosie the Riveter, others as 1950s' housewives.
"We need to be feeding our children, not the war machines," said Kellie Stewart, a 47-year-old from Saint Croix Falls, Wis. "We need to keep the money, we don't have housing, we don't have jobs. It's just not right what's going on here at home."
During the two-day summit, leaders of NATO's 28-member nations were to discuss the strategy for ensuring a peaceful Afghanistan after the United States removes its combat troops by 2014.
Organizers hoped 10,000 people would attend the protests during the 2.5-mile march that ends near McCormick Place, the convention center where NATO is meeting. Some protesters have prepared provisions for the march, such as food and water, while others had gas masks and bandanas to ward off the effects of pepper spray and tear gas. Some have earplugs to shield against the crowd-control noise devices authorities reportedly have.
Iraq War veteran Steve Acheson posed at his home in Platteville, Wisc.
Although unclear how many protesters were on site, Chicago Police Superintendent Garry McCarthy told reporters that there were fewer than expected, according to The Associated Press.
Two activists appeared in court Sunday morning on terrorism-related charges. Cook County prosecutors charged Mark Neiweem, 28, with attempted possession of explosives or incendiary devices and Sebastian Senakiewicz with falsely making a terrorist threat. Three others made court appearances on Saturday, accused of assembling Molotov cocktails – firebombs made by filling glass bottles with gasoline – to attack, among other places, President Barack Obama’s campaign headquarters in Chicago.
Thirty-seven people had been arrested by Sunday morning, Kris Hermes, a spokesman for the National Lawyers Guild in Chicago. Chicago has assigned 3,100 officers to the NATO summit to protect the city against the sort of violence that broke out in the streets of Seattle at the World Trade Organization meeting in 1999. They are being assisted by hundreds of officers from Milwaukee, Philadelphia and Charlotte-Mecklenburg, N.C., NBCChicago.com reported.
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Officers on bike, horseback and foot have trailed protesters as they’ve wound through the streets on marches. In one exchange on Saturday between a police officer and a female protester toting a sign reading “NATO=WW2,” the officer said: “We support the First Amendment just as much as you do.”
The city has imposed limits on how close the protesters, which include dozens of unions and anti-war, environmental, education, health care and civil liberties’ groups, can get to McCormick Place -- within “sight and sound” of it, according to the Chicago Tribune -- raising the ire of the demonstrators. The American Civil Liberties Union has released guidelines for protesters to consider under a new federal law that it said has “expanded the ability of the Secret Service to suppress protests” near people under its protection.
Three men were charged with conspiring to commit acts of terrorism at high-profile locations in Illinois ahead of the NATO summit. NBC's Kristen Welker reports.
A number of the protesters said the highlight for them will be when 30-50 veterans from the post-9/11 era conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq return their service medals on Sunday in a rare form of protest that was last done on a large scale in 1971 by anti-war Vietnam vets.
In the process of searching for a way to heal after their time in conflict zones, “we came to these symbols of the occupations, which are these medals that we carry around and we still have,” said Aaron Hughes, a 30-year-old organizer for Iraq Veterans Against the War who served six years in the Army, including 15 months in Iraq and Kuwait. He will return two medals. “They’re these … reminders of what we’ve done, that it’s time to let go of.”
“I think it’s something that many of us are conflicted about, but we also feel like this is the right action to take,” he said. “It is a sacrifice, but it’s one that we feel is worth it.”
NBC's Kristen Welker reports from Chicago, Illinois, where authorities are getting ready for an expected wave of protests while an ongoing NATO summit is in town this week.
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