NEW YORK--At first the enemy is foreign, alien, incomprehensible: to post-9/11 America, a nation founded by fundamentalist Calvinists, they were Afghans, Iraqis, Muslims in general. We locked them into places like Abu Ghraib and Guantánamo Bay and we threw away the key. Denied access to a lawyer, never charged with a crime, their names and locations hidden from family and the media, dismal treatment--including torture--was inevitable.

In a classic step in the devolution from democracy to police state, we've run out of foreigners to bomb and imprison. Our rulers have been forced to look inward, among the previously protected class of United States passport holders, for new scapegoats. Like their brethren at the naval base in Cuba, these Americans are being deprived of their most basic human rights. They are people who dare to pick up a sign and march against such Bush Administration policies as the war against Iraq.

Media accounts of massive protests against the Republican National Convention--some 500,000 people, ranging from leftists to pacifists to mainline Democrats came to New York--focused on attacks on the police and GOP delegates. "The most damaging act of violence, in fact, appeared to occur against a police officer, who was kicked as he lay on the ground," reported The New York Times. "In addition, there were the demonstrators who consistently and at times aggressively badgered delegates, telling them in unprintable words that they ought to leave Manhattan posthaste."

Intentionally ignored and on a vast scale was the shameful experience of marchers arrested by a brutal NYPD between Friday, August 27 and Thursday, September 2.

Recognizing that political demonstrations are a fact of life in New York, police and marchers used to work together to ensure that peace prevailed. As a veteran of such rallies during the Reagan years, I remember shooting the breeze with cheerful cops between chants. We even helped them move barriers. In the rare cases when jittery police demanded that protesters clear a street--typically when some official was about to pass--they gave us every opportunity to leave. If you got arrested, you were given a "desk appearance ticket" and released on one's personal recognizance after a few hours.

Tensions escalated at the big anti-Iraq war demonstration in March 2003. No doubt inspired by the tough talk coming out of Washington, mounted police reared their horses to menace marchers with trampling. Cops ran through the streets pell-mell, arresting shoppers and tourists who hadn't been part of the march. New metal barricades were used to bludgeon and crush antiwar activists.

Beginning with a mass round-up of bicyclists participating in their monthly Critical Mass ride to encourage urban biking on the Friday before the convention, New York police arrested anyone they could get their hands on. They beat people who weren't resisting arrest, broke out their teeth, destroyed their personal property and confined them incommunicado under atrocious conditions for days at a time, prompting a local judge to fine the city for violating a New York rule that requires charging suspects within 24 hours or releasing them.

"The conditions of my arrest were pretty appalling," says Maria Cincotta, a 26-year-old New York teacher who was arrested on Tuesday night of convention week near Union Square. "We were given no order to disperse. Had I been asked to leave, I would have in a second." When Cincotta complained to police that her plastic handcuffs were too tight--other arrestees' hands turned blue--they replied with a boilerplate "Sorry, we can't do that."

City officials converted a disused bus depot on the Hudson River's Pier 57 into what detainees nicknamed "Little Guantánamo" for its outdoor setting and maze of pens divided by chain-link fencing. Numerous arrest victims reported being denied food and water or access to an attorney or a phone. ("Sorry, I can't do that," police said.) Children, some who happened to be walking down the street when the cops arrested everyone present, were locked up for several days. Police refused to tell their frantic parents where they were. Adding to the misery was a resinous layer of gasoline and toxic cleansers coating the floor. "Everybody was laying in filth," said Cincotta. "Nobody was sleeping. A lot of people were screaming in agony." The Times reports that "scores" of RNC detainees contracted mysterious rashes and lesions.

Prisoners were shuttled between Pier 57 and the city's central holding jail in similarly dismal conditions. Wendy Stefanelli, a 35-year-old TV hair stylist, spent several hours locked in a hot bus--the weather was humid with temperature in the high 80s--with a man whose colostomy bag had burst. "He was throwing up all over the back of the bus," she said. "The entire bus begged the officers present to please get medical attention to this man. They completely ignored us."

"My experience wasn't nearly as bad as other folks'," says Jon Goldberg, 26, of Brooklyn. "There were people roughed up who were not resisting arrest. I saw one person with bruising on his head; he said a cop had kneeled on his head. A lot of people had their cameras destroyed. One had his photos deleted except for one, a new image of a police officer's boots and his hand protruding toward the lens--showing 'the finger.'"

Some police confirmed an illegal policy of intentionally delaying the release of demonstrators until the end of the RNC. "For disorderly conduct, they don't usually hold people," said Goldberg. "There was a deliberate attempt to get people off the street." Cincotta, the teacher, was ultimately released more than 48 hours after her arrest. I asked her what charge she faced. "I don't know," she said. "I never got to see a lawyer."

Few of these Americans broke any law. Many were hapless pedestrians, not even part of a political demonstration. Go ahead, call them whiners or hippies or commies or whatever retro-Nixon-era moniker you prefer. Turn the page or click the next URL. That's what your government wants you to do, because they're fresh out of Muslims to throw into prison. Someday they'll be fresh out of liberal demonstrators too.

COPYRIGHT 2004 TED RALL

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