Beware of the "Coordinated Strategy" to Roll Back Our Right to Protest

PAUL JAY, SENIOR EDITOR, TRNN: Welcome to The Real News Network. I'm Paul Jay, coming to you from New York City. We're at Rizzoli Bookstore in New York, which generously provided the space. A year ago in Toronto, more than 1,000 people were arrested while they protested the G-20 that was taking place. Most of them were let go within a few days. And that was part of the problem. No charges were laid, and there was thus no way for people--whose rights the Ontario ombudsman said were violated--could have any recourse. In fact, the ombudsman said the arrests at the Toronto G-20 was the most massive compromise of civil rights in the history of Canada. But is this only happening in Toronto? Or is this in fact part of a North American-wide strategy on how to deal with dissent? And what about the right to mass protest right across the continent? Now joining us to talk about all of this is Michael Ratner. He's the president of the Center for Constitutional Rights. He's also the co-author of a new book, Hell No: Your Right to Dissent in 21st-Century America, which he did together with Margaret Ratner Kunstler. Thanks for joining us.

MICHAEL RATNER, CENTER FOR CONSTITUTIONAL RIGHTS: Good to be with you, Paul.

JAY: So, first of all, talk a bit about what inspired you to produce the book?

RATNER: Since I'd been a young activist, protest has been a key part of my life and a key part of how we actually change what's going on in the United States and across the world, whether from Vietnam to Central America, to the beginnings of the war with Iraq, where we really had millions of people in the street all over the world. So to me, protest is really a fundamental underpinning of how we make progressive social change in the world. And, of course, we saw recent examples in Egypt in Tahrir Square. We saw a recent effort at that in Madison, Wisconsin, where they were protesting the cutbacks on workers. So it just is the main method, really, that people have, which is, really, acting with their feet in an organized way out in the streets.

JAY: It was interesting what happened in Toronto, because being connected with the G-20--and the G-20 was a very important point in terms of this consensus amongst governments to pursue austerity measures once they had completed a certain amount of stimulus during the recession. And they come to this deal that they're going to halve the deficits by 2013 and have a major cut in debt-to-GDP ratio by 2016. So the austerity measures they agreed to--there was a demonstration right outside that building of what to do with mass protest in opposition to it. And, of course, we've seen what mass protests in Europe have done. They really are shaking the political debate. But here they seem to have a strategy to suppress it. So to what extent do you think this is--actually really is a broader strategy than just one event in Toronto?

RATNER: No, I think it's a very broad strategy, and I can articulate some of that across the United States in particular. One interesting thing you said is in Canada was the G-20 and austerity. And if you look at a number of these protests, yes, some are about the Iraq war, some are about other things, but the massive big ones are about economics and the G-20, the G-8, the WTO, the World Trade Organization. Those are where you're getting hundreds of thousands of people sometimes in the streets. That's Madison, Wisconsin [snip] about the austerity that was going to be imposed on the workers in Wisconsin. The WTO in Seattle was, again, about the WTO making up these trade agreements that were going to really impoverish people. The G-20 in Florida in 2000, in which massive surveillance, massive disruption was done against the demonstrators, was again about austerity. We had a G-8 in Pittsburgh in which, again, massive demonstrations, again, massive intervention. And if we look at the techniques used, you would have to say that there's a coming together first of a variety of police forces from all over the United States, and conceivably even working with people in Canada.