NEW YORK - October 8 - "This is classic bait and switch," says G. Simon Harak, Anti-Militarism Coordinator of the War Resisters League and one of the
200-plus August 31 arrestees against whom all charges were dropped
yesterday. "On August 31, we obeyed the police directives, and they still
arrested us. Now they're saying that they can't convict us in court, but
they're still trying to convict us in public opinion."
Assistant DA William Beesch declared Wednesday that he was declining to
pursue the charges of disorderly conduct and marching without a permit
because he was "unable to prove" that the defendants were guilty. "The DA
couldn't 'prove' we were guilty because we weren't," Harak says. "A fair
number of the people who were arrested weren't even participating in the
protest."
Some 200 people were arrested near the "Ground Zero" site of the World
Trade Center on the afternoon of the 31st. The protest had begun with a
one-hour vigil at Ground Zero and was to be followed by a solemn march
toward the Republican National Convention and then a "die-in," an act of
nonviolent civil disobedience calling attention to the terrible toll the
Bush administration wars in Afghanistan and Iraq have taken. Just before
the march was scheduled to begin, police and march organizers negotiated
about how the march might be held without disrupting traffic; a march that
doesn't disrupt traffic is legal under the First Amendment whether or not
it has a permit.
Yet once the march began, police fenced off an entire block and arrested
everyone within the area, including bystanders, some legal observers and
some members of the press. "After Mayor Michael Bloomberg's declaration
that free speech was a not a right, but a privilege [on August 16, at the
John Jay College of Criminal Justice], we thought his administration might
try to annul our First Amendment rights," said WRL Board member, Frida
Berrigan. "So we planned for the march to start from several different
places. Some of us completed the march and the die-in. Generals aren't the
only ones who know how to plan campaigns."
The arrestees were flex-cuffed; some had to sit in the sun for several
hours. They were taken to a former bus depot on the Hudson River's Pier 57
and held in wire-link cages topped with razor wire, with few seats other
than a cement floor covered with oil and other chemical contaminants. After
many hours, they were again cuffed and transferred to the Criminal Court
Building at 100 Centre Street, where they were finger-printed. So in the
space of two weeks, the exercise of free speech went from being a
constitutionally guaranteed right, to being a revocable privilege, to being
a criminal act.
Dropping the charges is not enough, "we require some form of redress for
the violation of our civil rights," Harak said.
To demonstrate that we will not be cowed or intimidated by the government's
tactics, the War Resisters League would lead another nonviolent march,
again beginning from the World Trade Center site. "We need to reclaim that
public space for the people," Ruth Benn said, "and away from those who
would deprive us of our First Amendment rights."
Printer Friendly Version
E-Mail This Article
