The Criminalization of Protest
Dan Clore
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/smygo
http://reason.com/archives/2009/12/30/the-criminalization-of-protest
The Criminalization of Protest
Police and politicians ignore the First Amendment when we need it the most.
by Radley Balko
January 2010
I�ve lived in the Washington, D.C., area for the better part of the last
10 years. So I�ve seen my share of demonstrations, although more often
than not I just try to avoid the traffic nightmares they cause. Among
the various classes of protests -- pro-life, anti-war, environmental,
and now tea parties -- the most destructive are the anti-globalization
marches. So when cops clashed with anti-globalization demonstrators at
the Pittsburgh G-20 summit in September, it was easy to assume that most
of the altercations represented justified police responses to
overzealous protesters.
But a number of disturbing photographs, videos, and witness accounts
told a different story. Along with similar evidence from other recent
high-stakes political events, they reveal an increasing, disquieting
willingness to smother even peaceful dissent.
On the Friday afternoon before the G-20 meeting kicked into high gear, a
student at the University of Pittsburgh snapped a photo showing a
University of Pittsburgh police officer directing traffic at a
roadblock. What�s troubling is what he�s wearing: camouflage military
fatigues. It�s difficult to discern a practical reason why a man working
for an urban police department would need to wear camouflage, especially
while patrolling an economic summit. He�s a civilian dressed like a
soldier. The symbolism is clear, and it affects the attitudes of both
the cops wearing the clothes and the people they�re policing.
The campus cop wasn�t alone. Members of police departments from across
the country came to Pittsburgh to help during the summit, most of them
dressed in paramilitary garb. In one widely circulated video, several
officers dressed entirely in camouflage emerge from an unmarked car,
apprehend a young backpack-wearing protester, stuff him into the car,
and drive off. The sequence evoked the �disappearances� associated with
Latin American dictatorships or Soviet Bloc countries. When Matt Drudge
linked to the video, he described the officers in it as members of the
military. They weren�t, but it�s easy to understand how someone might
make that mistake.
In another video, members of a police unit from Chicago who took
vacation time to work at the summit prop up a handcuffed protester and
gather behind him. Another officer then snaps what appears to be a
trophy photo. Two men in faraway Queens were arrested for posting the
locations of riot police on Twitter, as though they were revealing the
location of troops on a battlefield. Another video shows dozens of
police in full body armor confronting and eventually macing onlookers
(who weren�t even protesters) in the neighborhood of Oakland, far from
the site of the summit, as a recorded voice orders any and all to
disperse. Students at the University of Pittsburgh claim cops fired tear
gas canisters into dorm rooms, used sound cannons, and shot bean bags
and rubber bullets.
The most egregious actions took place on September 25, when police began
ordering students who were in public spaces to disperse despite the fact
that they had broken no laws. Those who moved too slowly, even from
public spaces on their own campus or in front of their dorms, were
arrested. A university spokesman said the aim was to break up crowds
that �had the potential of disrupting normal activities.� Apparently a
group of people needn�t actually break any laws to be put in jail. They
must only possess the �potential� to do so, at which point not moving
quickly enough for the cops� liking could result in an arrest. That
standard is a license for the police to arrest anyone anywhere in the
city at any time, regardless of whether they�ve done anything wrong. In
all, 190 people were arrested during the summit, including at least two
journalists.
It can�t be easy to both keep order and protect civil liberties at such
events. But that doesn�t mean police and city officials shouldn�t be
expected to try. Yes, some protesters damaged some property at the G-20
summit, although there wasn�t much of that this time around. But the
presence of a few unruly demonstrators doesn�t give the police carte
blanche to crack down on every young person in the general vicinity, nor
should it give the city free rein to suppress all public protest. It�s
unfortunate that when the global press and the leaders of the world�s 20
largest economies came to Pittsburgh, the images that emerged were not
of a society that values free expression and constitutional rights but
of one willing to grant police powers normally seen in authoritarian states.
This projection of overwhelming force at big events is becoming more
common. At last year�s Republican National Convention in Minneapolis,
police conducted peremptory raids on the homes of protesters before the
convention began. In all, 672 people were jailed, including at least 39
journalists. According to the Minneapolis Star-Tribune, 442 of those 672
later had their charges either dropped or dismissed.
Four years before that, more than 1,800 people were arrested at the
previous Republican National Convention in New York City. Ninety percent
were never charged with a crime. One notorious photo from the 2008
Democratic National Convention in Denver shows a small mass of
protesters, zoned far off from where any delegates or media
representatives could hear them, surrounded by two walls of riot police
who outnumbered them at least 2 to 1. Denver�s police union later issued
a commemorative T-shirt of the event emblazoned with an illustration of
a menacing cop wielding a baton and the slogan, �We get up early to beat
the crowds.�
The trend may have started at the 1999 World Trade Organization summit
in Seattle, which saw both actual rioting and police overkill. Mayor
Paul Schell not only declared a state of emergency, imposed a curfew,
and designated swaths of the city �no-protest� zones; he actually banned
civilian possession of gas masks. Police then gassed entire city blocks.
The victims included many owners of the stores the police were
ostensibly protecting from looters. Assistant Police Chief Ed Joiner,
who was in charge of security for the event, would later tell reporters
that future summits should be held only in destinations with military
governments.
These are precisely the kinds of events where free speech and the
freedom to protest need protection the most: when influential figures
make high-level decisions with far-reaching consequences. Instead, we
see the opposite. The higher the event�s profile, the more powerful the
players involved, and the more important the decisions being made, the
more determined police and politicians are to make sure dissent is kept
as far away from the VIPs as possible. Or silenced entirely.
Radley Balko (rba...@reason.com) is a senior editor at reason.
--
Dan Clore
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Skipper: Professor, will you tell these people who is
in charge on this island?
Professor: Why, no one.
Skipper: No one?
Thurston Howell III: No one? Good heavens, this is anarchy!
-- _Gilligan's Island_, episode #6, "President Gilligan"
jos boersema
On 2010-01-01, Dan Clore <cl...@columbia-center.org> wrote:
[...]
> These are precisely the kinds of events where free speech and the
> freedom to protest need protection the most: when influential figures
> make high-level decisions with far-reaching consequences.
The laws of freedom of speech are not primarily there to be enforced
for the people by the Government, but they are there to be used by
the people against the Government, to give the People some chances
to use the Police and Justice systems against a would be tiranical
Government. That is why it is so hard to change the Constitution
(oficially), it is designed against state Tirany.
If you can't go to court on these things when your constitutional rights
are broken, if you can't get police to protect your freedom at the court
request, have ill behaving police officers be punished for breaking the
Constitution, then obviously the people making up the various Government
branches are failing to sufficiently honor the Constitution. Effectively
the Constitutional republic has failed: it is now a tirany.
This obviously happens when all or most branches of Government are
corrupted, which seems to be the case in war-hungry USA.
I suppose all this didn't start shortly ago, it all started when you
killed the first native indian.
The answer is therefore to get active beyond the scope of the
Constitution, because no parts of Government respect that Constitution
anymore. Thus: extra-parliamentary revolution is the answer,
particularly because even the voting system itself is corrupted, making
the USA an autocratic tirany by thugs, who choose to respect no law
until it is layed down on them (which I guess it will, and then they will
pay in court for breaking the laws.)
--
http://www.socialism.nl