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[Nettime-bold] Post-International Demo Press Confrence NYC + Breaking Through the Panic |
From: "Michael Green" <greenmonkey30@yahoo.com> To: "Recliam" <rtsnyc@mediajumpstart.net> Sent: Tuesday, February 18, 2003 5:59 PM Subject: [RTSNYC] Press Conference held today at UFPJ about Police Brutality...Feb 15th Article on Press conference held (2/18/03) at the united for peace and justice office. 12:00pm. Media in attendence: Fox, NY1, NBC, ABC, NY Times, WBAI, Indymedia...lots of betacams and microphones with plastic cubes around them and corporate logos) (tried to post on NYC.indymedia.org website, but with my DSL it was too slow and pissed me off that it didn't get posted) Amidst a treacherous route of travel due to the recent snowstorm many people and media outlets arrived at the united for peace office for a press conference today. This meeting was held to address police misconduct at the massive anti-war rally, which was held in NYC on February 15th. All the major news agencies were there in attendance to hear testimonial and watch a videotape prepared by independent videographers working with the New York independent media center. Leslie Cagen, co-organizer of United for Peace and Justice was on hand to speak to the media about the various legal battles her organization had been facing throughout the upcoming weeks leading up to the protest. This protest was hailed as one of the largest in history due to the fact that it was held in over 300 cities across the globe on the same day of Feb. 15th. Millions of people were in attendance in cities such as Rome, London and Paris. New York city seemed to be the most clamped down upon and squashed of its civil rights of legal assemble and freedom of expression. UFPJ had been caught in a legal battle with the city and was denied its right to have a march. The cities response was that it was too dangerous of a time for people to gather especially with the country on high alert form terrorism. UFPJ claims that this is a new policy of the city reflecting a more centralized motive of clamping down on the nations rights of dissent with evidence of this in having federal and local lawyers present at the court battle throughout the week. Jesse Cagen, Leslie mother and also a UFPJ organizer claimed that the government is doing everything in their power to stop this demonstration from happening. As well as denying the right to march the city also banned extra tents to house speakers and port-a-poties for participants, claiming these were security threats. UFPJ was granted an assembly point outside of the United Nations on 49th street and said participants could have all of 1st Ave. North of 49th St. The permit was for 100,000 people and the numbers turned out to be at least 3 times this number which organizers anticipated and tried to persuade the city to prepare for. The actual day of the protest became a whole new story which created a need for this press conference today. Demonstrators were not allowed into the protest area on many occasions. They were lied to by individual police officers. They were told certain areas were closed and instructed to enter the site as far as 70th street. Many of their entry points were blocked and demonstrators were given no reason. Instead they faced off with angry police officers, which lead to standoffs, shouting matches and the occasional use of excessive force by police both on foot and on horseback. Eyewitness accounts and those captured on videotape show horses being moved into the crowds of people, riding up on the sidewalk and blocking people form entering. Police had warned demonstrators before that they were not allowed into the streets and that they couldn't block sidewalks. However, on the day of protest, people were forced into the streets only to be surrounded so they couldn't leave and had mounted police moving back and forth either through them or over them. Most people in these situations claimed they were merely trying to get to the 49th street location to hear the speeches and fill up the protest site that they were allowed to attend. This was only the beginning of the troubles. At today's press conference several lawyers and legal aids were on hand to give their eyewitness accounts and to report on thousands of complaints they heard about or heard through clients they were representing. Rebekah Wolf of the people's law collective described many accounts of police officers engaged in misconduct which included everything from the use of pepper spray, batons, pushing and repeated trampling of police mounted horses. Debbie Hrbek of the National lawyers guild and Simone Levine of the Association of Legal aid attorneys were also present in the UFPJ press conference to speak against the detainment of arrestees. They said demonstrators were held in custody for up to 8 hours without being processed through central booking, a totally unheard of situation. People were handcuffed and kept outside for several hours with out gloves. Many arrested protestors were kept on busses without food, access to restrooms, medical attention or being given the ability to take medication that they needed. Several attorneys were on hand outside the Jacob Javits center where demonstrators were held on busses. They were not allowed to see the people and had eyewitness accounts of blood being smeared on the inside windows of the busses as a sign that people were not getting treatment for injuries sustained by the police. After demonstrators were taken to police precincts and central booking in lower Manhattan. Legal officials were not allowed access to clients even those who had made call for them by name. The response from the police was that they did not have adequate facilities or personnel to deal with the amount of people who were arrested. Donna Lieberman of the NY civil liberties union explained to the rows of cameras and journalists in the office, that the response of police was hard to believe especially about inadequacies of personnel. She explained that police clearly had a sense of the numbers that would be at the demonstration citing the number of police that were in the streets and numbers of barricades. Donna had been dealing with the city and UFPJ in their struggle for the permit. She explained that it was her belief that if the city had allowed the rally to also include a march, the protest would have remained peaceful and many of the disruption was the result of people's frustration to not exercise their constitutional rights of public assembly. Also in the room was Bill Perkins, New York city council member who was appalled not only by the police misconduct and infringement of people's legal rights but also by the blatant denial of the right for people to march. He believes the reactions of the city are a new deal which is politically motivated and a direct response to the federal government cracking down on dissenting voices. Mr. Perkins will be working with the city council to enact public hearings so more people can become involved with the disturbances of Feb. 15th. and express their concern on the treatment of protesters in New York City. Leslie Cagen concluded the introductions of the press conference by saying that UFPJ was not targeting specific police officers as individuals, rather the organization is upset with the orders from above and wants the resignation of the 49th chief of police, Joesph Esposito. Leslie Cagen explains that we need someone in this position who respects the rights of people to express themselves in protest. After the panel spoke videotape was played put together from street media activists on hand to document the misconduct of police. The video showed clear evidence of police officers denying people entry to the demonstration, the use of horses and many incidents of pepper spray, which the police force claimed, wasn't used. Copies of this tape are being duplicated for the media to have access too and to include in their follow up stories about what happened on Feb. 15th. Currently on New York 1 news (3:00-4:00pm) they are continuing to report that the demonstration had 250 arrests. Lawyers and legal observers have reports of 350 confirmed arrests. They also are running the constant story of Mayor Michael Bloomberg talking about what a successful job he claimed the police did in handling the demonstration and providing a fair balance to allow people to demonstrate. New York 1 news was on hand at the press conference today and witnessed what was said and the videotape.perhaps their coverage will change. <<<MORE>>> CounterPunch February 18, 2003 An Afterward to February 15 Breaking Through the Panic by BENJAMIN SHEPARD As the week before Feb. 15th march progressed, things only got weirder. The Bush Administration sent attorneys from the Justice Department to file a friend of the court brief backing the City of New York's case that the march represented a security threat. After the Office of Homeland Security put the country on "orange" full terrorist alert, the New York Dailey News ran a headline with an ominous black cover with the words, "SHOW OF FORCE, Officials warn of stepped-up security will jam city streets, crossings, subways," on February 10th. By Tuesday, the New York Times' cover showed a picture of police officers with automatic riffles in Times Square (where activists planned to converge during the march) with the headline, "Alert on Terror." The paper reported that courts had rejected United for Peace and Justice's appeal for a permit, arguing, a "Stationary Rally Poses Less Risk." The same edition published the administration's guide to preparedness for a chemical attack: duct tape, plastic sheeting, and fresh water, in a message which seemed reminiscent of the cold war warnings for school children to hide under their desks if attacked by an atomic bomb. In the years before, such warnings had been considered a nonsensical joke. The following day, papers showed long lines of people stockpiling duck tape, as hysteria took hold nationwide. In the meantime, FOX news ran "Homeland Security: Terror Alert High" graphics during evening programming about the new Bin Laden tape broadcast around the world; silly putty in his hands. As the week progressed, news became more and more Orwellian, "You're not afraid during an a code orange. Ok, how about a code red? Now are you scared?" the news programs seemed to taunt after the codes were pushed up again. "Better not go to the protest." Protestors at the rally responded to the sentiment. "We're already at War with Iraq. We've always been at war with Iraq. War is Peace!" one placard read. Riffing on1984, another stated, "Support the Military Tribunals. If you've done nothing wrong, you have nothing to fear." Countless others played on the duck tape warnings. It was clear that in the interstices between the warmongering, a backlash was unfolding. The Saturday march offered its culmination. By Saturday, the administration was acknowledging that the information they had about the immenent attack was not quite as solid as first thought and was back peddling that it didn't really wanted people to start ducking tape their homes, just yet. The day of the rally, the City of New York had withheld permits, cut off the UFPJ's phones, escalated terror alerts to discourage marchers, and shut down trains and transportation routs from Brooklyn to Manhattan and throughout the city--all contributing to a climate of panic. Despite the state imposed barriers, activists from all walks of life descended on city. The day of the march, the police sent horses to break up the marches, sought to separate crowds from each other, pushed marchers off sidewalks with batons, and tear gassed those in the streets. My father, a 66-year-old retired pastor, who was in town over the weekend observed, "We started out at 51st St, then 57th, then 62nd, and then 68th up 2nd Avenue. At 68th Street, we realized we were being pushed out of town. Every time we'd try to turn down to go to the rally, the police would push us up away from the rally. It was perfectly clear that was what they were trying to do. It was crowded like a VE day. They brought out batons to push us and we chanted, 'Let us through!!! Let us through!!!' Every time it would calm down, the police would try with to stop us, yet most of us broke through anyway. I was just a citizen trying to gather with other citizens to have a conversation with the President. I was trying to communicate how I felt about this. I'm a citizen. I pay for this war. My friends are going to go get shot for it. I'd like to have a say so. I don't want to have my head patted or told what to think, being told my opinion doesn't count. Being told to pay attention to people who know what they are doing like Kenny Boy and Dick Cheney, the important people. We're going to war. Bush says, Trust me. I've got a memory long enough to remember the last time a president said, trust me, I have a secret plan. Nixon's secret plan to get us out of Vietnam was to invade Cambodia. All Saturday, it was quite clear they were running the marchers out of the streets, like a defense used to run Tony Dorsett out of bounds. They were running people away from the rally." By the end of the day, this 66-year-old retired pastor had engaged in direct action, working with a crowd to push up through a police line to get past police to get to the rally. And he was not alone. Over a half a million marched through the streets of New York, in coordination with protests held around the world; 700,000 mobilized in London, one million in Rome. All weekend long, the protests were the top news story. Many described the day as the largest day of simultaneous peaceful protest in world history. Two days later, the New York Times cover story compared the weekend's mobilization with the Velvet Revolution of 1989 and the Revolutions of 1848. "The fracturing of the Western alliance over Iraq and the huge antiwar demonstrations around the world this weekend are reminders that there may still be two superpowers on the planet: the United States and world public opinion. In his campaign to disarm Iraq, by war if necessary, President Bush appears to be eyeball to eyeball with a tenacious new adversary: millions of people who flooded the streets of New York and dozens of other world cities..." Chills run through my body as I think about the possibility that the weekend created. Seattle is no longer the baseline for protest. Out of the ashes of an extraordinary backlash, we have created a new organizational possibility for a global peace and justice movement. Benjamin Shepard is co-editor of From ACT UP to the WTO: Urban Protest and Community Building in the Era of Globalization (Verso, 2002) and author of White Nights and Ascending Shadows: An Oral History of the San Francisco AIDS Epidemic (Cassell, 1997). He can be reached at benshepard@mindspring.com. http://www.counterpunch.org/shepard02182003.html _______________________________________________ Nettime-bold mailing list Nettime-bold@nettime.org http://amsterdam.nettime.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/nettime-bold