CHICA­GO – Although the world’s most pow­er­ful man calls Chica­go home, the city’s boost­ers still have a chip on their shoul­der. In 2009, their bid for the 2016 Olympics end­ed in fail­ure, but May­or Rahm Emanuel has con­vinced his old boss, Barack Oba­ma, to let Chica­go host the G8 and NATO sum­mits in May. The stage is now set: Lead­ers of the mil­i­tary alliance and ​“Group of Eight” rich coun­tries haven’t met in the same place at the same time since 1977.

The U.S. Constitution guarantees freedom of speech and assembly, but not freedom from the capricious dictates of the Chicago Police Department and the Secret Service.

“If you want to be a glob­al city, you’ve got to act like a glob­al city,” Lori Healey, exec­u­tive direc­tor of the Chica­go G8 & NATO host com­mit­tee and a leader of the city’s Olympic bid, said in Jan­u­ary. But as activists have learned, cities play­ing their glob­al role tend to sys­tem­at­i­cal­ly squelch dis­sent. The U.S. Con­sti­tu­tion guar­an­tees free­dom of speech and assem­bly, but not free­dom from the capri­cious dic­tates of the Chica­go Police Depart­ment and the Secret Ser­vice, which could nul­li­fy protest per­mits imme­di­ate­ly before the summits.

On Jan­u­ary 18, the Chica­go City Coun­cil over­whelm­ing­ly passed two ordi­nances pushed by Emanuel that restrict protest rules and expand the mayor’s pow­er to police the sum­mits. Among oth­er things, they increase fines for vio­lat­ing parade rules, allow the city to dep­u­tize police offi­cers from out­side Chica­go for tem­po­rary duty and change the require­ments for obtain­ing protest per­mits. Large signs and ban­ners must now be approved, side­walk protests require a per­mit, and per­mis­sion for ​“large parades” will only be grant­ed to those with a $1 mil­lion lia­bil­i­ty insur­ance pol­i­cy. These are per­ma­nent changes in city law.

The­o­ret­i­cal­ly, peo­ple can now be fined for not get­ting a per­mit before hold­ing a pick­et line or spon­ta­neous protest, accord­ing to Jef­frey Frank of the Nation­al Lawyers Guild, which is pro­vid­ing legal sup­port to groups protest­ing the sum­mits. ​“How can that not be chill­ing?” says Frank. ​“I don’t think peo­ple ought to be sub­ject to the dis­cre­tion of police offi­cers in terms of their First Amend­ment rights.”

Dan Mas­soglia, a spokesper­son for Occu­py Chica­go and a stu­dent at Chica­go-Kent Col­lege of Law, says that although May­or Emanuel back­tracked on some pro­posed ordi­nance changes after activists’ out­cry, ​“What essen­tial­ly remains are the tools for sup­press­ing peace­ful dis­sent in this city for the fore­see­able future. It’s big­ger than Occu­py Chica­go. It’s a threat to all of us that would like to peace­ably take to the streets — or the side­walks — to peace­ful­ly peti­tion our government.”

Tight­en­ing rules gov­ern­ing pro­test­ers ahead of major polit­i­cal events, how­ev­er, has become stan­dard pro­ce­dure in the Unit­ed States. Thir­teen years after the ​“bat­tle in Seat­tle” dur­ing a World Trade Orga­ni­za­tion meet­ing, ​“free speech zones” have become com­mon­place and offi­cials habit­u­al­ly raise the prospect of destruc­tive bands of anar­chists to jus­ti­fy tight­en­ing con­trol of pub­lic assem­bly. In 2004, after Georgia’s gov­er­nor pre­emp­tive­ly declared a state of emer­gency ahead of the G8 sum­mit near Savan­nah, the near­by city of Brunswick gave police the pow­er to halt any protest. Last year, Chica­go Police Super­in­ten­dent Gar­ry McCarthy said his depart­ment, which is work­ing with the U.S. Secret Ser­vice and oth­er fed­er­al agen­cies to train 13,000 offi­cers in ​“mass arrests.”

Joe Ios­bak­er, a leader of the Coali­tion Against NATO/G8 War & Pover­ty Agen­da (CANG8), says local and fed­er­al author­i­ties have cre­at­ed a cli­mate of fear. The Chica­go Sym­pho­ny Orches­tra, Colum­bia Col­lege and Roo­sevelt Uni­ver­si­ty have changed their sched­ules to keep patrons and stu­dents away from down­town dur­ing the summits.

“[Author­i­ties are] paint­ing this pic­ture of ram­pag­ing pro­test­ers harm­ing peo­ple on the street,” Ios­bak­er says. ​“But when they say vio­lent pro­test­ers, we say baby strollers.” CANG8 has been grant­ed a per­mit for a large ral­ly and march through down­town Chica­go on May 19, but because the sum­mits are a ​“nation­al secu­ri­ty” event, the Secret Ser­vice can at any time block the demonstration’s route near the con­ven­tion hall where the sum­mits will take place. (Oth­er protests dur­ing the six-day sum­mit peri­od are planned by Occu­py Chica­go and Stand Up! Chica­go, a coali­tion of unions and com­mu­ni­ty groups.)

“If the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment swoops in and decides to can­cel a sig­nif­i­cant part of our per­mit, then how do you expect peo­ple to react?” asks Andy Thay­er, anoth­er CANG8 leader. ​“We will not allow the police or any­one else to intim­i­date us from exer­cis­ing our First Amend­ment rights.”

Still, in a city where mem­o­ries of police vio­lence dur­ing the 1968 Demo­c­ra­t­ic Nation­al Con­ven­tion (DNC) linger, local and fed­er­al offi­cials and activists may defuse some ten­sions through meet­ings planned in the weeks before the sum­mits. (Adbusters, the Cana­di­an mag­a­zine that sparked the Occu­py move­ment last year, didn’t exact­ly help in late Jan­u­ary when it invoked the infa­mous DNC police vio­lence while call­ing for 50,000 peo­ple to ​“flock to Chica­go” and set up ​“peace­ful bar­ri­cades” through­out the month of May.)

Mar­i­lyn Katz, who helped orga­nize both the anti-Viet­nam War protest dur­ing the DNC and Chicago’s first major anti-Iraq War ral­ly in 2002, says, ​“Nobody should make the police the issue. If you want to be a boost­er for Chica­go, then you should be a boost­er for democ­ra­cy and free speech. Amer­i­cans didn’t expect Egyp­tians to have insur­ance to protest.”