[Nettime-bold] Post-International Demo Press Confrence NYC + Breaking Through the Panic

["ricardo dominguez" <rdom@thing.net>]

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

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