[PEN-L:36268] Terror in Albuquerque

["e. ahmet tonak" <eatonak@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

> From a friend's email:

Terror in Albuquerque




"...As many of you know, the economy is NM is heavily dependent upon war, and if we(in
the peace movement) did not understand the ramifications of that before
we certainly learned what it meant from the police, mayor and many
citizens last Thursday night.  The plan of our groups had been to meet
at the UNM bookstore at 5:00 the day after the bombing started.  We
assembled, dazed that all of the signals to our government had meant
nothing.  Rain poured on us, but no one left.  A man on the megaphone
signaled for us to start marching down Central Ave. on the sidewalk.  I
crossed the street to return to the Peace Center where another woman and
I were going to spend the night.  As I crossed the street a big white
police van filled with special police went by.  I looked at the other
end of Central and saw police officers strung accross the  Central.  The
group saw them as well and assumed that it meant that they could go out
into the street.  From behind, police on foot and horses, closed the
back of the line.  People started being pushed by the police and horses,
tear and pepper gas was thrown by the police and one man that I know was
hit pointblank by some bullet called a bean bag.  People (mostly people
of color and high school students) were pulled out of the crowd and
arrested.  It was all of the awful things that you can imagine.  At the
Peace Center we stayed up all night helping people to get out of jail.
Their jail experience was a lesson in brutality.  The next day some of
them were visited by the police and told that they were under
surveillance until the protests stopped and the police could do this
under provisions of the Patriot Act. (not true, but they meant to be
bullies.)  Many think that the police were so rough because they
intended  to silence us.  The videotapes verify that the crowd did
nothing to justify this kind of action.  The next day, the mayor called
a meeting with the police, National Lawyer's Guild lawyers, and some
demonstrators, saying that we had a right to assemble and a right to
free speech, saying that we could march on Friday night (we did, with
the company of heavily armed police blocking the streets) and assemble
at the Civic Plaza that Sunday (we did, my first public speech on the
Bill of Rights Defense Committee's work).  After the meeting, the mayor
had a press conference in which he said that he considered the police
action appropriate because of our behavior.  It has always struck me as
amazing how something like that can be said and then becomes the truth
about which people have to defended themselves.  On Sunday, mounted
police came into the crowd with no warning, and literally picked up a
Moroccan man and carried him away.  He was supposedly armed but nothing
was found on him.  People were not allowed to come to the Plaza after we
had assembled.  One of the latest spins is that the sheriff of Bernillio
County is going to bill the NLG lawyers and the protesters for the
$8,000/day that this has supposedly cost.  Someone said that they would
bill Homeland Security and we know that could well mean that we will be
labelled as domestic terrorists for demonstrating.  The definition of
DT's in the Patriot Act could certainly be twisted that way.  There is
mounting evidence of houses being entered, strange things happening with
email as well as phones being tapped. There are many other twists, all
of which are amazing.  Ghandi said that each movement has three
stages:   when you are ignored, when you are ridiculed, and when you are
repressed..."






E. Ahmet Tonak
Professor of Economics

Simon's Rock College of Bard
84 Alford Road
Great Barrington, MA 01230

Tel:  413 528 7488
Fax: 413 528 7365
www.simons-rock.edu/~eatonak