Here's a tiny legal notice in the ad section of the Philadelphia Inquirer
for June 7, sent to me by an alert citizen of that city, John Jonik. The
box, in what looks like 6-point type, is headed City of Philadelphia, and
then, on the next line, Public Hearing Notice. "Public Hearing on June 12,
2000, 12.00 p.m., Room 400, City Hall to hear testimony on the following
item: An Ordinance amending Title 10 of the Philadelphia Code entitled
'Regulation of Individual Conduct and Activity' prohibiting concealed
identities in certain instances. Immediately following the public hearing, a
meeting of the Committee on Public Safety, open to the public, will be held
to consider the action to be taken on the above listed item."
What we have here is clearly preliminary clearing of the decks for the
demonstrations expected to take place during the Republican convention in
Philadelphia in July. Constitutional protections for free speech and
assembly will be swept aside, with police permitted to arrest anyone wearing
ski masks, hooded sweatshirts, scarves acting in a suspicious manner, and so
forth. As Jonik wryly asks, "Some women's hats include net veils. Included?
Illegal in a demo? Are real beards legal and fake ones not? What about wigs
and/or hair coloring, fake scars, tattoos and piercings? Big sunglasses?"
And what about those big, wearable puppet outfits that featured big in the
anti-WTO demonstrations in Seattle and Washington?
In Los Angeles, scheduled to host the Democratic convention in August, the
cops are also preparing. California State Sen. Tom Hayden, sitting on a
budget subcommittee, recently noticed a request by the California Highway
Patrol for $1 million for "security equipment" for the Los Angeles Police
Department. Hayden got hold of the detailed list of what the LAPD feels it
needs: $125,000 worth of pepper spray, tear gas and gas guns; 40
semiautomatic launchers to fire 20,000 pepper balls; 20 40mm gas guns; plus
$60,000 worth of surveillance cameras, $19,000 worth of bolt cutters,
$263,000 in bomb detection and demolition services; plus mountain climbing
gear and a $2,400 paper shredder.
It turns out that the LAPD was embarrassed to go to the L.A. City Council
with that sort of request, not least for the paper shredder required by a
police force that's been in trouble for framing people. So, it routed its
budget request via the CHP, which was finally shamed by Hayden's probe into
cutting back the request to $340,000. Add this amount to a security bill for
the convention that, on a calculation by the Los Angeles Times, presently
totals up to about $25 million, put up by the feds, state and city for
police costs and overtime for a 40-day convention.
The demonstrations in Seattle and Washington, particularly the former, have
provoked complete hysteria in authorities in cities anticipating protests of
this kind. Windsor, Ontario, right across the river from Detroit, recently
hosted what turned out to be a demure meeting of 34 foreign ministers of the
Organization of American States. All 2,000 cops in Windsor were issued with
gas masks. A brick road was tarmaced to prevent the bricks from being used
as missiles. The venue of the scheduled talks was surrounded with a high
fence. On the other side of the river, 4,000 U.S. police officers were on
full alert.
Naomi Klein, a very smart writer who recently published the first-class "No
Logo: Taking Aim At The Brand Bullies" about corporations like Nike, wrote
an acrid column about the Windsor event for the Toronto Globe and Mail,
pointing out that we are being firmly guided toward the view that public
protest is somehow per se illegal, and properly dealt with by savage police
violence. Constitutional protections are automatically suspended, and anyone
preparing to participate in an entirely legal manner in a demonstration is
treated as though he or she is a felonious terrorist.
Klein reported a graphic designer in Windsor getting preemptively hassled
by cops in Windsor, just for making signs. She described meeting young
demonstrators in Washington wearing goggles and bandannas soaked in vinegar,
"not that they were planning to attack a Starbucks, just that they thought
that getting gassed is what happens when you express your political views."
Civil disobedience such as sit-ins, Klein correctly pointed out, is now
automatically equated by the cops, prosecutors and judges as "violence."
Arrested last year in Philadelphia for demonstrating near the Liberty Bell
in support of Mumia Abu-Jamal and Leonard Peltier, a New York green named
Mitchell Cohen and several others were convicted in U.S. District Court of
failing to obey the order of a Park Service officer. This is the sort of
charge that usually gets dismissed a few days after the demonstration. Cohen
and the others not only got fined $250 plus $25 to the victims' restitution
fund, but also drew a year's probation, meaning the threat of warrantless
searches, urine tests, and so forth. Cohen also got his passport lifted.
Another Abu-Jamal organizer got a request from the FBI for 10 years' worth
of financial records.
The message of the state is clear enough. The only "good protesters" are
those waving a couple of placards in a cop-designated parking lot 4 miles
from downtown. All others are "bad demonstrators," targets for pepper spray,
police bludgeons, wire taps, preemptive hassles and a very hard time in
court if they have the audacity to contest whatever charges the local
prosecutors lay on them. We haven't moved far from that infamous police riot
in Chicago against antiwar protesters outside the Democratic convention. The
only difference is that there's no public outcry at these militarized
assaults on the rights of free speech and assembly.
To find out more about Alexander Cockburn and read features by other
columnists and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate web page at
www.creators.com.
COPYRIGHT 2000 CREATORS SYNDICATE, INC.
