Greetings from Lockdown City

By Michael Blanding, AlterNet. Posted July 27, 2004.

"Welcome to the DNC Free Speech Camp – line up!" yelled the drill sergeant, a black, military-style cap pulled down to his sunglasses. Following his orders, a dozen or so "prisoners" put black hoods over their heads and had their hands bound behind their backs, then knelt with their heads touching the ground. Other men and women walked around with gags over their mouths. "We are gathered here today in solemn and silent protest at the incarceration of pro-democracy demonstrators in the barbwire cage known as the DNC Free Speech zone," yelled the drill sergeant. "What does it mean when Boston, a city built on the history of revolutionary dissent, builds a barbaric confine for people who want to express their democratic rights?"

This bit of street theater kicked off the protests at the first official day of the Democratic National Convention, a day focused ironically on protesting for the right to protest. The scene around these activists this morning could hardly be more confining. The so-called free-speech zone set up by police occupies a narrow stretch of pavement underneath elevated train tracks, which are in some places so low that police have painted girders with orange "Caution - Watch Your Head." The area is further covered overhead by netting, in some places supplemented by coils of barbed wire and surrounded by a 12-foot high chain link fence draped with an translucent black mesh. The overall effect is more reminiscent of the camps set up for interment of Japanese prisoners in World War II, or the prison for enemy combatants at Camp X-Ray. What's worse, say protesters, police did not reveal the full extent of their plans for the area until a week before the convention, leaving little time for a legal challenge.

"It's really a penitentiary pit, not a free speech area," says Naomi Archer of the group Save Our Civil Liberties, after taking off her gag. "People in this protest pen feel claustrophobic, constrained, and criminalized, and that's not acceptable in US 2004."

The free-speech zone is part of the overall sense of lockdown on the streets of Boston for the convention, which feels more like Bogota or Tel Aviv than the so-called Cradle of Liberty. Some 5,000 policemen stand sentry on almost literally every corner downtown – city officers in their regular uniforms, state police flexing their muscles in full riot gear, and national guardsmen patrolling the streets in camouflage. The constant din of helicopters drones over the city, broken only by the intermittent sound of police sirens, causing even some delegates to complain about feeling like they are in a police state.

Ironically, the first day of the convention had already been set aside to protest civil liberties; but little did activists know they would be protesting their own repression. A march on police brutality and the PATRIOT act drew several hundred anarchist youths to march to the FleetCenter where the convention is being held, and where security is tightest. Dozens of police in riot gear, armed with submachine guns, looked on from behind the security fence as the march approached the center. Once there, however, the march refused to enter the "protest pen" as protesters call it. Sitting down in the middle of the street, they ignored calls by police to disperse, playing spin the bottle and duck-duck-goose in the middle of the road. Eventually, the march broke up without arrests.

"We have no intention of giving up every right we have in this country to enter that area," says Elly Guillette of the Bl(a)ck Tea Society, a self-described "anti-authoritarian" group that participated in the march. "We believe that the existence of the free-speech area is itself an affront to the First Amendment."

In addition, police are conducting searches of passengers entering subway stations and of pedestrians nearby the FleetCenter. Police have also reportedly engaged in preemptive searches and aggressive questioning of activists. On July 19, protesters say, the FBI visited the home of an activist and questioned individuals sitting on the porch about DNC protests. After being refused entry into the home, police lingered on the property for 10 minutes. The incident follows similar reports of questioning activists about this summer's conventions in New York, Colorado, Missouri, and Kansas.

Michael Blanding is writer and editor for Boston Magazine.

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