|
CounterPunch
February
27, 2003
The Day of the Barricades
New York City
Against the People
by ELLEN CANTAROW
photos
by JOANNE MARINER
"I was maced in the left eye and
face by a police officer at 53rd Street and Third Avenue. We
were forced by the police to march into a cul-de-sac, and the
weight of the people behind us pressed the crowd against the
pen, whereupon a police officer sprayed me and several other
people. Another police officer refused to allow me out of the
pen to get medical assistance."
-from a report by a 65-year-old
woman to the New York Civil Liberties Union after February 15
"Severe restrictions were made even
on First Avenue. Each block was surrounded by guardrails, with
the exits and entrances guarded by officers. Protesters were
not allowed to move from one block to the next, and were even
held at the block above the one containing the rally stage, despite
plenty of room. Exits were made easy, while entrances were nearly
impossible."
-protester's comment to the
New York Civil Liberties Union about difficulties of accessing
the main rally in Manhattan February 15
At http://people.cornellcollege.edu/a-free/feb15.htm,
you can revisit the global February 15 rallies (the one in Antarctica
is a gas -- few people but lots of color and even more snow;
at over a million people the one in London was so huge there
are three photos, not just one) and feel your exhilaration mount,
photo by photo--We are a world-wide movement! (Other figures:
Rome, 2 million; Barcelona, 1.3 million; Sydney, 200,000.) Included
is the familiar New York City photo The New York Times ran on
its first page the next day: a sea of protestors on First Avenue
against a backdrop of the 59th Street Bridge's arches. The picture
gives no hint of the repressive nature of the day, which followed
from the New York Police Department's refusal to allow a march
(Mayor Michael Bloomberg soon seconded the ban)--the only such
refusal, apparently, to have been issued anywhere in the world.
The New York Civil Liberties Union (NYCLU) challenged the order
in District Court where Judge Barbara Jones argued that post-9/11
security concerns and the week's terror alert trumped a march
of such "size and uncertainty." The United States Court
of Appeals for the Second Circuit upheld the District Court with
"a logic that," in the words of Anthony Lewis writing
in The New York Times February 24 (p. A21) "would have justified
bans on marches led by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. in the 1960s."
While the march was prohibited, the rally
itself seemed to get an initial green light from Assistant Chief
Michael Esposito, southern Manhattan's commanding officer, who
said it could fill First Avenue as far north as necessary. But
even this prospect was scotched as early as 11 a.m., a full hour
before the rally was to begin, as cross-streets between 33rd
and 63rd were sealed off by police barricades. In a statement
to the NYCLU one writer described an experience shared by tens
of thousands of other demonstrators:
"I [tried] to reach the rally site
from 11 a.m. As I walked up 2nd Avenue from 33rd Street expecting
to be able to approach the rally site somewhere along my route
by turning east on a cross street, I was directed by the police
blocking every cross street to proceed to X street where a crossing
would be allowed. Each time I reached that cross street it had
been sealed off and we were directed to the next until the stream
of protesters grew to a size that could no longer be kept along
the sidewalk. We filled in the avenue and eventually reach 63rd
Street where we were told we would be able to cross over to First
Ave. Again we met a road block of at least 12 to 16 police."
It was the triumph of the crowds (estimated
at around 400,000) to turn long stretches of Second and Third
Avenues into innovative sub-rallies; to create an anti-war cafe
society in restaurants along the way; to brave the hideous cold
(below 0 degrees given the fierce wind-chill factor); their triumph
to be almost uniformly patient and pacific, with few tempers
erupting into anger in the face of immense frustration. Those
who did reach First Avenue found barricades stretching vertically
between cross-streets, while other barricades sealed the boxes
fore and aft at the north and south sides of the cross streets,
across four of six lanes. The result was a long series of pens
in which the crowd stood about restively in the bitter cold.
According to former NYCLU Executive Director
Norman Siegel, the cattle-pen method of crowd control was introduced
in New York, about a decade ago for New Year's Eve festivities
in Times Square. But while he feels this might be appropriate
for mass parties, it should not be used for protest rallies.
In his opinion the right to march in protest is "sacrosanct,
a First Amendment safety valve," and what he calls "visuals"
essential. "Imagine August,1963, Dr. King in front of the
Lincoln Monument giving his 'I have a dream' speech. It changed
race relations in the US. The visual is still of thousands of
Americans on the mall. Think of the model they're now using for
protest, separating people in chunks of 5000, the visual on the
mall would be very different than it was in '63." In the
process of the initial litigation over the prohibition a police
department official testified that since fall of 2002 the NYPD
has had an unwritten practice of banning marches larger than
1000 people. "Veterans of protest," says Siegel, "have
to step back and realize what has happened. This is a terrible
precedent. It's a seminal moment in social justice. If it happened
in New York City it can happen anywhere else."
This past January the crowd in Washington,
DC braved a cold almost as great as February 15's in Manhattan
[see my report, "We The People," COUNTERPUNCH], but
the event was relaxed, even festive. To march down Pennsylvania
Avenue towards the Navy Yard and look back was to see a vast
ocean of people, sense the connection between oneself and the
hundreds of thousands: maybe we can change history! This is what
political protest marches are all about: I had my first experiences
of them in the anti-Vietnam war movement in the US in the late
60s, and in Italy in the early 70s. Nothing can duplicate the
feeling of power inherent in one's connection to a vast throng.
Singing and chanting through bullhorns is also a time-honored
part of it all; so is carrying placards affixed to sticks. Both
bullhorns and sticks were prohibited in Manhattan February 15
(at a pre-rally protest of Israel's occupation of the West Bank
and Gaza, busses letting off demonstrators at the Israeli Consulate
at 42nd and Second Avenue were met by police who searched backpacks
and took away anything resembling a "stick.") Throughout
the day crowds were split up all over midtown Manhattan. There
were hundreds of innovative responses to the day's frustrations--examples:
the enterprising fellow walking around in the low 50s on Second
with a boom box blaring out John Lennon's "Imagine;"
a "Rhythm Workers Union Jamming for Justice" which
set up a merry din on drums, cowbells and chimes at 53rd and
Second. The jam was soon scuttled by mounted police who wrote
their horses into a crowd, while a bullhorn blared, "Move
north or face arrest!" The feel of the day could be described
as patient; frustrated; puzzled; angry; resigned; freezing --
but hardly relaxed.
On my own odyssey up Second Avenue to
find the yellow brick road that would take me to main-rally Oz,
I spoke with several people who felt the police had a clear divide-and-conquer
strategy. "What you're observing," said Martin, 66,
a psychiatrist who works with families of 9/11, "is a new
technique so there can be no mass gathering." "This
is only to divide, to keep crowds from gathering," said
Rita Leistner, a 48-year-old photographer. At 53rd Street 46-year-old
Henry Haggerty was handing out blue postcards: a heart-shaped
American flag was superimposed with a stylized ascendant human
figure beside which Haggerty had printed the legend, "A
visual prayer for the souls who left us on September 11. May
we honor them forever. May they ever rest in peace." "I'm
just infuriated by the arrogance of what they're doing,"
said Haggerty. "It's outrageous that we can't march. If
we could march on Pennsylvania Avenue three weeks ago, why can't
we do the same here?" I phoned the NYPD Public Information
division with that question: "I don't have the answer at
this point," said a female voice, "but I'm sure it's
for crowd control." Crowd control? For what? To control
them how? "Your party has rung off," came a robot voice,
"If you wish to continue, dial. . . "
* *
*
Police abuses flowed from the extraordinary
restrictions on crowd movement. "As tens of thousands of
protesters were forced onto Third and Second Avenues, the sidewalks
became full to overflowing and people were forced into the streets,"
NYCLU Executive Director Donna Lieberman told New York's City
Council September 25. "There was also extreme congestion
at the intersections, where protesters congregated in an effort
to move east towards First Avenue. At various times, mounted
police rode into the throngs of protesters and, apparently without
provocation, began to charge into the crowds." According
to Lieberman the NYCLU received "numerous complaints"
on that score. Writes a 79-year-old "wounded and decorated
combat infantryman" who went to the rally with his wife
and twin five-year-old sons:
"[A]ll of a sudden a troop of mounted
police officers moved into the crowd . . . falling bodies came
towards me. My son and I were knocked over, I onto my back and
he, fortunately, on top of me, but a woman in front of him was
about to fall on him and crush him when I used my arms to deflect
her . . . I did sustain substantial damage to my arm and shoulder
. . . I am not writing to make a claim against the City other
than to ask that the idiot who [ordered] these beasts into the
herd of humanity which had been placed there by police officers
be . . . appropriately punished . . . for reckless disregard
of the safety of citizens exercising their Constitutional rights."
There was much other police abuse. An
elderly woman who came to the rally in a wheelchair told the
NYCLU:
"We were herded into pens, like
cattle [on First Avenue, the rally site.] The police were a nightmare.
Somehow, I got to 58th and First. . . . After about 4 hours,
I started to feel sick, and I had to pee as only an old diabetic
woman who has had too much surgery can have to pee. I started
to go home, and a nasty policewoman named Lawrence said I couldn't
go downtown. I couldn't believe my ears. I've been demonstrating
since I was a young woman in 1958, but I've never seen anything
more vulgar than what started to happen. I was sick, so I quietly
started to wheel downtown, and Lawrence grabbed my wheelchair,
swung me around, and broke my chair. The metal was bent, I couldn't
reach the controls, and I couldn't move from the spot. I started
to panic. Eventually, after a couple of hours, someone got an
ambulance . . . . One stupid cop, his face red with rage, was
trying to make me get on the sidewalk where there was no wheelchair
ramp. He demanded me to tell him who had brought me. I told him
that I had come by myself. He started to yell at me, 'What's
the matter with you? Didn't you foresee problems?' I said, 'No,
I thought this was America.'"
377 arrests were made, with much inappropriate,
even brutal conduct that included beatings and pepper-spray attacks
on demonstrators posing no physical danger to the police. Once
arrested, rally-goers were held in barely-heated paddy wagons
for up to eighteen hours with no access to food, water or toilets.
Some on medication were prevented from getting their pills from
backpacks. During the evening, inexplicably, about a dozen arrestees
were made to stand for an hour and a half in the freezing cold
on Police Plaza, handcuffed--some with no gloves. Most arrests
were for offenses so trivial they ultimately drew "Desk
Appearance Tickets," a summons roughly the equivalent of
a minor driving violation. It should be processed in under six
hours. But many of the arrestees were held as long as 48 hours
before arraignment.
For hours after the arrests, lawyers
were prevented access to clients, and only three were able to
get into central booking at One Police Plaza. They gained access
to only ten clients. Says former NYCLU-head Norman Siegel, one
of the three, "When they said they'd give me six at a time,
in three hours I got ten, finally I said, 'This is a game I'm
not playing anymore, you're not giving me access, I'm leaving.'"
With no lawyers there to tell the arrestees about their Fifth
Amendment right to remain silent, police grilled them about their
political affiliations and reasons for attending the demonstration.
A whiff of the "Red Squads" that used to exist in police
departments across the US, and the FBI's infamous "Cointelpro"
activities in the 1960s? Such repression victimized citizens
engaging in peaceful organizing and dissent--Dr. Martin Luther
King and Malcolm X were only the most famous: thousands of unknown
civil rights, antiwar and women's movement activists were surveilled,
"visited" by the FBI, their phones tapped, their groups
infiltrated by agents provocateurs on errands of disruption and
vilification. Those with memories stretching back 30 years may
feel the chill winds of past witch-hunts; those too young to
remember might turn to their history books to bone up on the
assaults America can deal the Constitution and Bill of Rights.
(Among other books see Nelson Blackstock's Cointelpro: The FBI's
Secret War on Political Freedom, Vintage Books, 1975.)
* *
*
Leslie Cagan, co-chair of United for
Peace and Justice, the coalition that organized the New York
rally and many others around the world February 15, has called
for the resignation of Police Commissioner Raymond W. Kelley.
An NYCLU civil suit pending against the City on behalf of United
for Peace and Justice challenges New York's policy of not permitting
protest marches. According to NYCLU attorney Chris Dunn, the
civil liberties organization has asked the City to produce information
about its policies and about permits handled since 9-11. "We're
going to try to get to the bottom of this as soon as we can,
in a matter of weeks. Either they'll have to get rid of the policy
or we'll take it to federal court. Will NYCLU win? "These
are tough times, but it's hard to believe the federal courts
will allow New York City to ban all protest marches." Says
Donna Lieberman, "[O]ur President and his advisors seem
intent upon going to war. This has stirred strong feelings--feelings
of patriotism as well as deep opposition. There is a long, proud
American tradition of 'talking with our feet.' A city that claims
to be a cultural and intellectual capital of the world cannot
be a place where protest marches are a thing of the past."
Ellen Cantarow
plays jazz piano professionally in Boston and New England. She
can be reached at: ecantarow@attbi.com
Readers who attended the New York City
rally September 15 and who have complaints about police conduct
should contact the New York Civil Liberties Union at nyclu.org
or at 212-344-3005.
For related articles on New York City's
assault on civil liberties February 15, see: nyc.indymedia.org,
"Handschu Decree Gutted by Haight," by Leif Linder
unitedforpeace.org,
"Protestors Say City Police Used Rough Tactics at Rally,"
by Sheila Dewan, New York Times February 19, 2003; Verena Dobnik,
February 18, "Organizers
accuse NYPD of misconduct at peace rally"
Yesterday's
Features
CounterPunch Exclusive!
Ann Harrison
Mistrial?
Rosenthal Jurors Say They Received Outside Legal Advice
Carl Estabrook
Israel
and the US War on Iraq
Ken O'Keefe
Diary
of a Human Shield
Ray McGovern
Colin
Powell's Blurry Pictures: A Former CIA Man Asks If Intelligence
Analysts Are Still Free to "Tell It Like It Is"
William Hughes
Mona Charen: a True Enemy of Freedom
Linda Heard
Sharon's Bitter Dream of Empire
Fran Quigley
The
Survival of Both Peoples
Paul Dean
The Infallible Opinion Poll
Alexander Cockburn
Crowds
and Panic; Hitchens and Booze; Lomax and Son House, the Rip-Off
Continues
Tom Wells
Peek-A-Boo with Duct Tape
Edward Teague
An Open Letter to Tony Blair: Stand Tall, But Tell the Truth
Jack McCarthy
Press Ganging Sami Al-Arian
Website of the Day
Rummy
and Saddam: the Handshake
Keep CounterPunch Alive:
Make
a Tax-Deductible Donation Today Online!
home / subscribe
/ about us / books
/ archives / search
/ links /
CounterPunch Available Exclusively
to Subscribers:
- CounterPunch Special:
The Persecution of Gershon Legman by Susan Davis: Smut, the Post Office, Commies
and the FBI;
- Reeling Democrats: Is Pelosi the Answer?
- Gandhi v. Hitler: the Secret Race for the Nobel
Prize;
- Sullying Mario Savio's
Memory;
- Lynching Then and Now;
- Earn While You Learn: Chris Whittle and Child Labor;
The Case of the Pompous
Professor;
- The Class Struggle in
Boston: All that
Effort, But What Did They Get?
Remember, the CounterPunch website is
supported exclusively by subscribers to our newsletter. Our worldwide
web audience is soaring , with about seven million hits a month
now. This is inspiring, but the work involved also compels us
to remind you more urgently than ever to subscribe and/or make
a (tax deductible) donation if you can afford it. If you find our site useful please: Subscribe
Now!
Or Call Toll Free 1 800 840 3683
home / subscribe
/ about us
/ books
/ archives
/ search
/ links
/
|
February 22
/ 23, 2003
Laura Flanders
Security Threat?
Bernadette Devlin McAliskey Barred Entry to US
Alexander Cockburn
The Trouble with E-Bombs
Kathy Kelly
Letter from Baghdad
Tight Squeeze
Subcomandate
Marcos
A Universal
No to the War of Fear
William Cook
Armageddon Anxiety
Jo Freeman
Conservative Women
Michael Colby
Howard Dean is No Green
Ben Tripp
Fact-Checking the Constitution
Joanne Mariner
Pets Unite!
Richard Falk and David Krieger
Iraq and the Failures of Democracy
Uri Avnery
War Crimes and Sharon
Ian Williams
John Bolton in Jerusalem
Michael Wolff
How Sanctions Destroyed Iraqi Education
William Hughes
The Zev and Ari Show
Susanna Sonnenberg
Boxing Missoula
Michael Ortiz Hill
Peace and Humility
Anis Shivani
When Kafka Aligns with Orwell
John Mihelich
The Hidden History of Butte's
Working Class
Rich Procter
Bush and His Fabled Gut
Adam Engel
Voice of the Nation
Becky Johnson
The Hopscotch Rebellion
Krieger, Tripp, Ashley
Poets' Basement
Website of
the Weekend
The
Pedro Martinez of Palestine
February 15
/ 16, 2003
Alexander
Cockburn
Colin
Powell and the Great "Intelligence Fraud"
Rep. Dennis
Kucinich
The Whole World is Watching
Edward Said
A Monumental Hypocrisy
Wouter Hijink
Report from Amsterdam
"War: Do Not Feed!"
Linda Heard
At Last! Proud to be British
Lawrence Ferlinghetti
Taking a Stand on Iraq
Robert Fisk
The Case Against War
Lev Grinberg
Lessons from Israel
A War Without Legitimacy
Chris Floyd
Cold Fronts:
Bush War Profits
Ahmad Faruqui
Stepping Back from the Brink of War
Norman Madarasz
French Kisses from the Citizens of France
Adam Lebowitz
Scott Ritter in Tokyo
Kurt Nimmo
Bring Us the Head of Osama bin Laden
Forrest Hylton
The Revolt in Bolivia
Col. Dan Smith
Irrelevance and Credibility:
Bush, NATO and the UN
Wayne Madsen
The Lies of Tom Lantos
Ranjit Hoskote
The Invisible Modernities of the Islamic World
Emily Zitter-Smith
Who's Safe Now?
An American in Cairo
Rich Procter
Anybody Remember the Powell Doctrine?
Poets Basement:
Eliot
Katz, Scott Handleman, and Bruce Tomczak
Website of the Weekend
Anti-War
Posters
Read
Whiteout and Find Out
How the CIA's Backing of the Mujahideen Created the World's Most
Robust Heroin Market and Helped to Finance the Rise of the Taliban
and Osama bin Laden
Whiteout:
CIA, Drugs & the
Press
by Alexander
Cockburn
and Jeffrey St. Clair
|