INSIDE STORY BEHIND MASS ARRESTS

[jacdon@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx]

INSIDE STORY BEHIND MASS ARRESTS APRIL 15

Brian Becker, who organized the April 15 anti-Prison-Industrial
Complex demonstration, leading to the illegal arrest and detention
of 678 people in Washington, here tells the inside story. Becker is
Co-Director of the International  Action Center (IAC).

By Brian Becker, April 18

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 protesters,
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....