Fw: Account of mass arrests @ April 15 anti-PIC demo in DC

["Jay Moore" <research@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

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From: <iacenter@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
To: activist general <iacenter@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Wednesday, April 19, 2000 6:27 PM
Subject: Account of mass arrests @ April 15 anti-PIC demo in DC


An account of the April 15 anti-Prison-Industrial Complex
demonstration and the illegal detention and arrest of 678 people
By Brian Becker

Becker is Co-Director of the International Action Center (IAC)
and was arrested with 678 others on April 15 in Washington DC.
The IAC is exploring a legal action against the Washington DC
police on behalf of those arrested. If you were among the
arrested or if you want more information on the action contact
www.iacenter.org or call (212) 633-6646.

Hours after the Washington Police carried out a raid on Saturday
morning April 15 closing down the anti-IMF protest headquarters
known as the "Convergence" Center, the same police illegally
arrested more than 600 people following a demonstration demanding
"Shut Down the Prison-Industrial Complex, Free Mumia Abu-Jamal."
The demonstration was called by the NY-based International Action
Center.

Shoppers, passers-by and even some members of the press were
among the 678 who were swept up and detained for as long as
twenty-four hours. The mass arrests were part of a policy that DC
Mayor Anthony Williams described as a "proactive, precautionary and
preventive" police strategy. Put differently, this strategy amounts to an
unconstitutional "preventive detention" policy. Opponents of the U.S.
government are arrested not for what they've done but for who they are.
The 678 arrested people had planned to join protests against the
pro-capitalist and anti-people International Monetary Fund (IMF) and
World
Bank. Those protests were scheduled to take place the next day on
April
16.

The April 15 sweep was one of the largest political mass arrests in
recent U.S. history.

The arrests took place following a spirited and lawful march from the
Justice Department at 9th St. and Pennsylvania Ave., NW to 20th and
K St.
NW. The police chief later justified the mass arrests when he told the
media that the marchers were "parading without a permit and refused a
police order to disperse." This explanation is simply false propaganda.
Hundreds of eyewitnesses dispute the police account. The New York
Times,
Washington Post, and National Public Radio did major stories that
conflict
with the police account.

What are the facts? The International Action Center (IAC) had
obtained a permit to hold a rally at the Justice Department. It is not
necessary to obtain a permit to have a sidewalk march in the District of
Columbia. The IAC organizers, including this reporter, negotiated an
agreement with the police to conduct a march to the area where the
IMF
headquarters is located and ending with a follow-up rally at Dupont
Circle.

That the police agreed to the march was obvious because a large
number of police cruisers and foot cops were in the front of the
march and stopped vehicular traffic at the intersections so that the
demonstration could proceed on a route between the Justice
Department and
the area around the IMF

When the march reached 20th St. and K St., NW, just a few blocks
before arriving at the final destination of Dupont Circle, it was halted
by a line of riot-gear clad police who blocked the forward march. The
police line stretched from corner to corner. No one was allowed to leave
the block. At the rear of the demonstration another full-block length line
of police started advancing on the back of the demonstration.

The IAC organizers explained over a loud speaker system that the
police were setting a trap for large-scale arrests and asked people
whether it wasn't the better part of wisdom to end the demonstration so
that everyone could be available the next day for the April 16 mass
actions to shut down the IMF. The demonstrators acted with great
discipline and agreed to immediately end the protest and disperse in
small
groups as protection against police harassment. Hundred actually
made it
out of the block to the south of the police line located at 20th and K St.
The police command, realizing that the organizers had ended the
activity,
quickly assembled a solid wall of cops stretching the length of the
southern end of the block. Within minutes they had sealed the whole
block
and refused to let anyone else leave.

The police never ordered people to disperse. Just the opposite.
Without explanation they refused to allow anyone, except credentialed
media, to leave. IAC organizers explained to the trapped crowd, all of
which was assembled peacefully on the sidewalk, "We are insisting on
the
right to leave. The police are fundamentally violating our rights. This
was a legal demonstration; it was entirely within the law. There has
been
no property damage. The only people possessing weapons are the
police.
Yet, we are illegally detained here and the police are bringing in buses
to transport us to jail. This a gross violation of peoples rights to free
speech. The police are acting as agents of the IMF and the capitalist
establishment. We will remain calm and strong and determined never to be
intimidated by these illegal tactics." The highly spirited crowd of mostly
young people responded with the chart "There ain't no power like the power
of the people because the power of the people won't stop!"

An hour after they sealed the block at 20th St. and K. St., a police
commander bellowed "platoon." Without warning, the police at both ends of
the block started marching on the trapped protestors, pushing them with
their riot clubs together into a tighter and tighter pack. Then the
arrests began, three at a time were led away into the waiting school
buses.

The 678 demonstrators were taken to various jails, remote police
academy stations, and many were kept handcuffed tightly behind their backs
and confined on the buses for more than 12 hours.

The mass arrest was illegal and the police of course knew this. So
throughout the next 24 hours the prisoners were encouraged to
immediately pay a "post and forfeit" $50 fine to the charge of
parading without a permit. This would not be an admission of guilt and
close the case. The advantage for the arrested, the majority of whom lived
outside of Washington DC, would be that they could get released and not
have to come back to Washington DC for a trial. The advantage for the
police was that they would not have to answer in court for their illegal
actions. The police maintained the prisoners in conditions of maximum
discomfort so that they would "post and forfeit."

I was among those who refused to "post and forfeit" for "parading
without a permit." Enraged by our refusal to pay the $50 fine the
police subjected this group to on the spot punishment carried out by the
DC police and the thugs who make up the US Marshals headquarters. Those of
us who insisted on a trial were separated from the others at 3:00am,
shackled firmly right hand to left foot for three hours and then placed on
bus and driven to an underground garage. There the police refastened the
handcuffs to the tightest level and let us sit again on the school bus
until 7:00am when the demonstrators were turned over to the custody of the
US Marshals. The US Marshals slapped prisoners, pushed them into walls and
put them in heavier leg and ankle chains if they protested their
treatment. Although there were many vacant cells, thirteen of us were
confined together in a 6` by 13' cell.

When we appeared before an arraignment court on Sunday afternoon
our charges, interestingly, were changed from "parading without a
permit" to that amorphous catchall called "disorderly conduct." The
parading without a permit charge was for public consumption, dished
out to the media as a seemingly "legal" explanation for what appeared to
any eyewitness of the arrests to be a brazen political act aimed at
removing political dissidents from the streets of Washington DC. The media
reported on Saturday, April 15, "demonstrators were arrested for marching
without a permit." This was simply a smokescreen for one of the largest
"preventive detentions" in recent years.

Everyone who was arrested discussed these and other political issues all
night long while they were in custody. This was a case study that
democratic rights to free speech and expression only really exist until
the capitalist state apparatus feels threatened by the exercise of these
rights. Then those rights are revoked by the real power in society, the
apparatus of repression dominated by the police, the prisons and jails,
the courts and the military in the background.

The institutions of police and military repression constitute the "real"
system. The "democracy" is a thin façade. Democracy exists for the rich,
the capitalists. They are neither in prison nor on death row. The police
do not brutalize them. Their free speech comes through loud and clear
because they own the TV networks, the daily newspapers, cable station and
major movie studios.

Why were the demonstrators on April 15 illegally suppressed? "We
were protesting the ever-expanding Prison-Industrial Complex and
police brutality," stated Larry Holmes, one of the protest organizers.
"The demonstration grew from several hundred to more than a thousand
people, mostly youth, with its spirited opposition to the prisons, police
terror, racism and capitalism. The police hated the message of the
demonstration and they wanted to start the weekend by publicly displaying
that they would use aggressive, even brazenly illegal, tactics."

The mass media is now putting a positive spin on the police conduct in
Washington DC. They are giving the police "high marks" for "good tactics."
They are even spreading the lie that "many of the protestors" thought the
police treated them well. This is a fabrication.

In summary, the police role included: the illegal raid and shutting down
of the Convergence Center protest headquarters on Saturday morning April
15; the preventive detention arrest of 678 peaceful protestors in the
afternoon demonstration of April 15 against the Prison-Industrial Complex;
severe mistreatment of these demonstrators in an attempt to force them to
"post and forfeit" for a crime that they never committed; the beating and
abusive conduct, including pepper spraying, of hundreds of protestors on
April 16th and 17th.

In addition to mass arrests and beatings, the homes of political
activists in Washington DC were raided and ransacked by the police
in the days leading up to the April 15-17 protests. The vehicles of
organizers were stopped and searched without cause by the Secret
Service agents. When one of the leaders of the IAC, who managed to
avoid arrest at the Prison-Industrial Complex demonstration, stopped to
pick up food at a restaurant a few hours after the demonstration his car
was "stolen" in the few minutes that he was inside.

The repressive apparatus consisting of the police, prison, courts and army
revealed itself for what it is really: not an impartial arbiter
maintaining public order and safety in society, but a tool of class
violence and coercion. This apparatus is employed every day in a virtual
war against the youth of the African American and Latino communities. What
the battle in Washington revealed is that the capitalist political
establishment utilizes this instrument of force against any who seriously
challenge the "smooth operations" of the profit- system. The new
movement
for social change that is still in its infancy must draw all the
political, theoretical and organizational implications of the reality
presented by the state apparatus.

International Action Center
39 West 14th Street, Room 206
New York, NY 10011
email: iacenter@xxxxxxxxxxxx
web: www.iacenter.org
CHECK OUT THE NEW SITE www.mumia2000.org
phone: 212 633-6646
fax:   212 633-2889