First They Came for the Protesters

By Rachel Neumann, AlterNet. Posted September 3, 2004.

Tourists, old ladies and gentlemen, a building superintendent who was taking out the garbage, teenagers on their first date to a play, ministers, students, bicycle messengers and a good number of bruised and dirty yet singing and chanting protesters. It's the kind of diversity that New York City is famous for, and during this past week, the best place to find it was in the makeshift jail at Pier 57. The biggest underreported story of the Republican National Convention was not Laura Bush's Botox or conservative women making fools of themselves for California's manly governor. It was this: how could 1,800 people be arrested when they had done nothing wrong with the exception of crowding the sidewalks or block traffic? These events happen a thousand times every second in New York City. If these are crimes, all of New York should be arrested every single day.

In a country that engages in preemptive war against a small nation that had neither the intention nor the ability to attack us, preemptive suppression of dissent is the next logical step. But the word "preemptive" is misleading here, because it implies that a crime was about to be committed. It implies that Barbara Gates, 78, whose plans were as nefarious as walking at a slow pace to somewhere near the Convention and lying down, is a criminal and a threat to society. It implies that Julia Gross, 24, arrested while walking away from a "kiss-in," is a potential terrorist. These arrests, the lack of media attention concerning them, and the simultaneous pageantry within the convention imply that there is a legitimacy, in these "unsafe" times, for arresting anyone who has the audacity to even think about speaking up for dissent, even before they do so. After all, the Boy's Choir of Harlem is about to sing and the show must go on.

Some are calling the pier where the arrestees were held "Guantanamo on the Hudson." While the comparison is obviously a gross and privileged exaggeration (arrestees were released within days, not years, and none were interrogated, tortured, or isolated to the extent of the Guantanamo detainees), it does emphasize the cold but consistent policies of this administration: bomb, suppress, detain, arrest and shoot first, defend and prevaricate later. The police officers and the major newspapers were generally full of nothing but praise for the unconstitutional tactic. "It's been a good day," said Police Detective Kevin Czartorsyski on Tuesday, a day when over 800 people were arrested. "Things have pretty much happened as planned."

At the 2000 Republican National Convention in Philadelphia, 420 people were arrested – more than 75 of whom were locked up for sleeping in a large space used for making puppets. It wasn't until April 2004, almost four years later, that the final arrestees stood trial and were acquitted on all charges. The arrests and protesters' subsequent treatment in jail brought heavy criticism from the ACLU, Human Rights Watch, the National Lawyers Guild, Amnesty International and other civil rights organizations, but so far there hasn't been either acknowledgement or compensation to people who experienced the excessive arrests.

So the arrests in New York were not a surprise. There were a number of comparisons made, pre- and post-Convention, to the Chicago '68 demonstrations, in which the police were much more violent but arrested half as many people. The main difference between New York and Chicago, however, is the media savvy of both the police and the protesters. There were no pictures in New York of protesters being violently beaten by police. There were too many cameras around for that. Instead, protesters were just peacefully and unconstitutionally arrested. Similarly, there were no pictures of protesters being violent, and not because they didn't get the chance, but because – as protest organizers made clear – it was never in their plans.

The protests and arrests in New York raise two interrelated questions. First, how do we hold police and other agencies accountable in blatant examples of "preemptive arrests?" The second, and the one asked less often, is: what constitutes a strategically effective protest in a time of mass media conglomeration and constitutional disregard?

The first question is an easier one to answer. Christopher Dunn, associate director of the New York Civil Liberties Union, told a Boston Phoenix reporter that "the common denominator" in alleged civil rights violations in Philadelphia, Los Angeles, and Miami was the presence of the Secret Service. In a pending lawsuit, the ACLU accuses the agency of discriminating against President Bush's critics, confining them to protest areas where the president and media will not see them. Gross and others arrested said they are also considering civil suits against the New York Police Department for unlawful arrest and chemical burns that occurred while staying in the toxic and uncleaned pier.

Rachel Neumann is Rights & Liberties Editor at AlterNet.

Liked this story? Get top stories in your inbox each week from Rights and Liberties! Sign up now »