Please send as far and wide as possible. Thanks, Robert Sterling Editor, The Konformist http://www.konformist.com 8/21/00 POLICE STATE CRACKDOWN by Jim Redden [EMAIL PROTECTED] It's official - anarchists are the new Public Enemy Number One. Ever since the World Trade Organization riots in Seattle, the federal government has been cracking down on the Far Left with the same ferocity it went after the Far Right in the wake of the Oklahoma City bombing. Government officials are orchestrating a propaganda campaign against the emerging anti-globalization movement, seizing on the actions of a handful of anarchists to accuse all of the activists of being violent. Protest leaders have been arrested on trumped-up charges. Demonstrators are being followed and photographed. Law abiding political organizations are being infiltrated by undercover operatives. Peaceful activists have been accused of stockpiling biological weapons, explosives, guns, Molotov cocktails, and even acid-filled balloons. As a result, anti-globalization protesters are being portrayed as domestic terrorists in the media - and law enforcement agencies are reacting as though they are conspiring to overthrow the government with force. The WTO protests in late 1999 caught the government unprepared. The size and intensity of the Seattle protests surprised federal, state and local law enforcement agencies. A small number of militants willing to break a few windows provoked a massive over-reaction which embarrassed local authorities and forced the police chief to resign in disgrace. But this was just the first battle in a much longer war, and the government is now in for the long haul. The first reactions were laughable. The city of Portland, Oregon almost cancelled its downtown New Year's celebration when rumors circulated that anarchists from Eugene were coming to town. The bash went on only after heavily-armed federal agents were mobilized and riot gear-equipped police surrounded the party site. No anarchists showed up. The rumors were wrong. Fear of anarchists forced the United Steelworkers union to cancel a labor rally at the Kaiser Aluminum plant in Tacoma, Washington on March 27. Tacoma police said an anarchist from Eugene was coming to the rally with a bomb. The police also said they stopped an anarchist in a car full of guns. The Seattle Weekly newspaper denounced both claims as bogus, pointing out that no one was arrested in either incident. Law enforcement officials again raised the specter of violence when mass protests were scheduled for the World Bank and International Monetary Fund meetings in Washington DC in mid-April. Federal, state and local law enforcement agencies used the threat of violence to justify spying on the activists. Their meetings were infiltrated, their public gatherings disrupted, their phones tapped, and police were posted outside their homes and offices. Even the corporate media took note of the harassment. "Some protesters think they are being watched. They are correct." the Washington Post reported on April 1O. Three days later, USA Today reported government agents were going undercover online to thwart the protesters. "[T]hey have been monitoring 73 internet sites where the groups have been exchanging messages to learn more about their plans. Sometimes, officers have even gone online posing as protesters," the paper said, adding that police were physically following suspected anarchists throughout the capitol city. "They have been monitoring the movements of nearly two dozen self-proclaimed anarchists who have arrived in Washington." As the meetings approached, all 3,500 DC police officers were put on alert, along with unknown number of law enforcement agents from at least 12 federal and state agencies, including the FBI and Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms. The authorities spent over $1 million on new body armor and bullet-proof shields. They set up three mass detention centers where arrested protesters would be taken. They removed 69 mailboxes where bombs could be hidden. The day before the meetings began, police raided a warehouse used by protesters to paint signs and plan marches. Law enforcement officials claimed they found materials for making Molotov cocktails, a laboratory for mass production of pepper spray, and bomb-making materials. These claims help justify arresting nearly 1,200 protesters during the meetings, most on petty charges such as blocking streets and sidewalks. In a later retraction, the police admitted the Molotov cocktail supplies were merely plastic containers and paint rags, the pepper spray factory was nothing more than a kitchen, and the bomb-making materials were simple plastic water pipes - all consistent with making protest signs. The full extent of the government's surveillance operation was not revealed until May 4, when the Paris-based Intelligence Newsletter carried a story titled "Watching the Anti-WTO Crowd" which reported that U.S. Army intelligence units were monitoring the anti-corporate protesters. Among other things, the newsletter discovered that "reserve units from the US Army Intelligence and Security Command helped Washington police keep an eye on demonstrations staged at the World Bank/IMF meetings ... [T]he Pentagon sent around 700 men from the Intelligence and Security Command at Fort Belvoir to assist the Washington police on April 17, including specialists in human and signals intelligence. One unit was even strategically located on the fourth floor balcony in a building at 1919 Pennsylvania Avenue with a birds-eye view of most demonstrators." The newsletter also charged that much information being collected about the protesters was being fed into the Regional Information Sharing System (RISS) computers used by law enforcement agencies across the country. The RISS system was originally created with federal funds to help track organized crime networks. It connects the computer files stored at six regional centers serving more than 5,300 member law enforcement agencies in 50 states, two Canadian provinces, the District of Columbia, Australia, Guam, the U.S. Virgin Islands, and Puerto Rico. The vast majority of the agencies are at the city and county levels, but more than 280 state agencies and 650 federal agencies are also members. The federal agencies include the FBI, the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration, the Internal Revenue Service, the Secret Service, Customs, and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms. The government is adding the protesters to the RISS database under the guise that they are "terrorists." As the Intelligence Newsletter put it, "to justify their interest in anti-globalization groups from a legal standpoint, the authorities lump them into a category of terrorist organizations. Among those considered as such at present are Global Justice (the group that organized the April 17 demonstration), Earth First, Greenpeace, American Indian Movement, Zapatista National Liberation Front and Act-Up." The government considered the massive show of police force to be a success, and it soon became a national pattern. Police in Portland, Oregon over-reacted to a peaceful May Day march, attacking protesters with batons and nylon shotgun rounds filled with steel pellets. Dozens of people were arrested. The police justified their actions by claiming anarchists from Eugene were taking part in the march. After a public outcry, the police chief apologized to the City Council for the actions of his officers. But he did not promise to change the tactics. Police in Eugene arrested over 70 young people during a June 15 to 19 "punk fest." Two anarchists were charged with setting fire to a new Silverado pickup at a local care dealership, and of almost blowing up a gasoline tanker truck near a working class neighborhood. Craig Marshall and Jeffrey Luers have pleaded not guilty to all charges. Local activists claim the charges are false, intended to create the impression that anarchists are dangerous. "They go out at night, wear disguises and cause chaos," Police Chief Jim Hill said. Animal rights activists planned to protest a meeting of the International Society of Animal Geneticists in Minneapolis in July 2000. Several days before the meeting was to begin, local police claimed that large quantities of ammonium nitrate had been stolen from a nearby storage facility, and that unidentified protesters were suspected of the theft. On the day of the major march, police claimed that a cyanide bomb had been detonated in a McDonalds restaurant. The FBI called this an act of terrorism, and assumed control of the law enforcement action efforts. The next day the federal Drug Enforcement Agency raided a house where some protest organizing had taken place. Residents were roughed-up, arrested and taken to a hospital. Computers and political literature were seized, along with less than an ounce of marijuana and a small amount of psychedelics. Charges against all but one of the residents were dropped, and the police eventually admitted they had no reason to believe the activists were involved in the ammonium nitrate theft. The cyanide attack at the McDonald's turned out to be nothing more than a harmless smoke bomb. By the time the Republic National Convention began in Philadelphia, the government had its tactics worked out. In the weeks leading up to the convention, activists reported at least five instances in which unidentified men were seen photographing people entering and leaving protest planning meetings. A reporter with the Philadelphia Inquirer observed two men dressed in casual clothes watching activists arrive for a meeting at the offices of the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom. The pair sat on the hood of a maroon Plymouth, taking pictures of the activists as they came and went. Both men refused to answer any questions from the reporter, and a police spokeswoman denied they were officers. But then the reporter traced the license plates on the Plymouth to the police department. Confronted with proof of his agency's role in the surveillance operation, department spokesman David Yarnell reluctantly admitted the activists were right. "We were watching. We were making surveillance efforts. It's just prudent preparations for anything," he confessed. "This is just outrageous," responded organizer Michael Morrill "If this is in fact going on, and city officials are lying about it, I wonder what else they're doing." Shortly before the mass protests, police raided a warehouse where activists were painting signs and building large puppets for their marches. Before the raid, law enforcement officials claimed the warehouse was being used to store C4 explosives and acid-filled balloons, presumably to throw at police. The police also impounded a bus which they said contained poisonous snakes and spiders. No explosives or weapons were found in the warehouse, and all of the animals in the bus turned out to be harmless. "It was a smart move by the police," noted Free Radical editor L.A. Kauffman, who was at the convention. "Stripped of our means of communication, we looked as if we had no message to convey. This perception became a running theme in corporate media coverage of the August 1 demonstrations; we were cast as mindless hordes wreaking random havoc." The day after the convention ended, Philadelphia Police Commissioner John Timoney called a press conference and announced that his intelligence officers had uncovered a vast left wing conspiracy. Sounding like anti-Communist fanatic Joe McCarthy, Timoney declared that outside agitators had conspired to cause violence and property damage at the convention. He called on the federal government to investigate this subversive plot, saying, "There is a cadre, if you will, of criminal conspirators who are about the business of planning conspiracies to go in and cause mayhem and cause property damage in major cities in America that have large conventions or large numbers of people coming in for one reason or another." One of the alleged conspirators was John Sellers, director of Ruckus Society, a Berkeley-based organization which trains political protesters in civil disobedience tactics. Although all of the charges filed against Sellers were misdemeanors, District Attorney Cindy Mertelli asked that his bail be set at $1 million, far more than all but the most dangerous felons are required to post. In seeking the high bail, Mertelli produced a 27-page "dossier" on Sellers. She called him "a real risk of danger to the community," noting he had been "involved in Seattle, a situation with almost dead bodies." Shortly after bail was set, CBS News was reporting that Philadelphia police had pinpointed the "ringleaders" of the most violent protests against the Republicans and had been stalking them throughout the day. Sellers was identified as one of the ringleaders that were stalked. Timoney's conspiracy theory got a boost when it was embraced by Bruce Chapman, president of the Discovery Institute and a former U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Organizations in Vienna. Writing in the Washington Times, Chapman claimed several left wing political organizations had conspired to cause violence in Seattle, Washington DC, Philadelphia and Los Angeles. He ended his piece by calling for a federal investigation. Protesters faced a similar surveillance and harassment campaign in Los Angeles. On July 13, the Los Angeles Times printed a guest editorial by Mayor Richard Riordan which warned of violence by "international anarchists." In the piece titled "A Fair Warning to All: Don't Disrupt Our City," Riordan said the protesters coming to town had attended "training camps where they have learned strategies of destruction and guerrilla tactics." Before too long, the authorities and media were alluding to the possibility of domestic terrorism. On July 23, the Los Angeles Times reported the Secret Service and other government agencies were warning that a biological agent might be released in or around the Staples Center, where the convention was scheduled to be held. "We have purchased a lot of equipment, specialized masks and gowns," said Dr. Robert Splawn, medical director of the California Hospital Medical Center, the closest hospital to the center. The police also began visiting businesses near the center, showing them videos from the Seattle protests and advising them to consider boarding up glass walls and windows, hiring additional security guards, and stocking up on emergency provisions like flashlights, food and water. "It's almost like a tornado," said LAPD Detective Darryl. "You can see it coming, but you don't know where it's going to go." Butler also implied the Eugene anarchists were already in town. He claimed police had arrested a handful of people for taking pictures of downtown buildings from rooftops and other unusual places, and that their addresses all traced back to Oregon. On August 7, the Southern California chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union complained about round-the-clock police surveillance on the protesters. ACLU attorney Dan Tokaji wrote a letter to Police Chief Bernard Parks and Deputy City Attorney Debra Gonzales accusing the police videotaping the four-story protest headquarters, and recording license plate numbers of cars used by activists. "They've crossed the line separating legitimate security preparations from unlawful harassment that violates protesters' First and Fourth amendment rights. The mere potential for a disturbance does not justify the suspension of our constitutional rights," the letter said. When the city didn't respond, the ACLU went to federal court on August 11 and obtained a temporary restraining order prevent the police from raiding the building without a warrant. In its complaint, ACLU lawyers cited 22 separate incidents of surveillance and harassment, including random police visits without warrants, low helicopter overflights, and people being followed and searched after leaving the building. But the injunction didn't stop the police from infiltrating the protest organizations. On August 12, a group called The Youth Are the Future! We Demand a Better World! held a meeting Luna Sol Cafe. They were planning to participate in the next day's Mumia Abu-Jamal protest march. As the meeting was breaking up, uniformed police officers rushed through the cafe's door and threw three of the main speakers up against a wall. Several of the meeting's participants also jumped up and helped with the arrests, revealing themselves to be undercover officers. Activist/journalist Tim Ream correctly summarized the police state tactics in an August 10 dispatch from Los Angeles, writing, "A disturbing trend is developing regarding police pre-emptive response to mass protest. In numerous situations since WTO protests in Seattle in late 1999, police have issued misinformation claiming unsubstantiated evidence of violent plans by protesters gathering for mass actions. The false information is then used as a pretext for unwarranted police actions. The misinformation concerning protester plans have ranged from chemical weapons to bomb-making. None of the numerous claims of violent plans have been substantiated. Nonetheless, many media outlets appear to have been predisposed to repeat information provided by police without fact-checking or seeking responses from the organizations accused. The damage to free speech and the mass protest movement has been extensive." Hundreds of protesters were arrested during the Democratic National Convention, including a number who had apparently been identified as "leaders" by undercover operatives. They were all given high bails to ensure they would not be released until they had identified themselves - and all of their names were entered into the growing computer database being compiled by the government. Even Ream conceded the police tactics were having the desired effect. "Editorial pages and conversations on the street are full of critiques that protesters are not clear about what they stand for and seem more interested in violence than meaningful change. This is as clear a sign as any that protester voices have been effectively silenced and police positioning of protesters is carrying the day," he wrote, noting that nearly 2,500 protesters had been arrested since November 30, 1999. "In addition, activists are scared. Anyone who has been involved in the mass protest movement through a major event of the last six months has friends who have been brutalized at the hands of the system." Protest organizers now face the challenge of keeping the movement growing in the face of such repressive measures. (Jim Redden is looking for specific examples of police surveillance and infiltration. If you have any stories or know of anyone who does, please contact him at [EMAIL PROTECTED]) If you are interested in a free subscription to The Konformist Newswire, please visit http://www.eGroups.com/list/konformist/ and sign up. Or, e-mail [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the subject: "I NEED 2 KONFORM!!!" (Okay, you can use something else, but it's a kool catch phrase.) 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