Midwest Unrest was a small collective in

Chicago Chicago is the List of municipalities in Illinois, most populous city in the U.S. state of Illinois and in the Midwestern United States. With a population of 2,746,388, as of the 2020 United States census, 2020 census, it is the List of Unite ...

formed by

anarchists Anarchism is a political philosophy and movement that seeks to abolish all institutions that perpetuate authority, coercion, or hierarchy, primarily targeting the state and capitalism. Anarchism advocates for the replacement of the state w ...

and

anti-capitalists Anti-capitalism is a political ideology and movement encompassing a variety of attitudes and ideas that oppose capitalism. Anti-capitalists seek to combat the worst effects of capitalism and to eventually replace capitalism with an alternative ...

in a planning meeting for that city's mobilization to the protests against the

Free Trade Area of the Americas The Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA, , ALCA, Portuguese: ''Área de Livre Comércio das Américas'', ALCA, French: Zone de libre-échange des Amériques, ZLEA) was a proposed agreement to eliminate or reduce the trade barriers among all ...

summit in

Miami Miami is a East Coast of the United States, coastal city in the U.S. state of Florida and the county seat of Miami-Dade County, Florida, Miami-Dade County in South Florida. It is the core of the Miami metropolitan area, which, with a populat ...

in November 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. It then organized a protest locally against the Central American Free Trade Agreement that December, and became something of a fixture of citywide and anti-fascist protests in Chicago. Additionally, as a result of connections made via the anti-FTAA consulta, it attempted to formalize networking with similar groups regionally. The collective experienced internal conflict the next August over allegations of

rape Rape is a type of sexual assault involving sexual intercourse, or other forms of sexual penetration, carried out against a person without consent. The act may be carried out by physical force, coercion, abuse of authority, or against a person ...

that were leveled against one of its members, who was then expelled from the group. More recently, the Midwest Unrest collective participated in a citywide campaign to prevent threatened service cuts and fare increases by the

Chicago Transit Authority The Chicago Transit Authority (CTA) is the operator of public transport, mass transit in Chicago, Illinois, United States, and some of its suburbs, including the trains of the Chicago "L" and List of Chicago Transit Authority bus routes, CTA bu ...

. Through aggressive agitation in public hearings, meetings and flyering, the group pushed the

Fare Strike A fare strike is a direct action in which people in a city with a public transit system carry out mass fare evasion as a method of protest. Jumping turnstiles, boarding buses through the back or very quickly through the front, and leaving doors op ...

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 victory. As of 2006, the Midwest Unrest collective has disbanded.

External links

Midwest Unrest document archive at libcom.org
Underground organizations based in Chicago Defunct anarchist organizations in North America Anarchism in Illinois {{Poli-org-stub