From a friend's email:
Terror in Albuquerque
"...As many of you know, the economy is NM is heavily dependent upon war, and if we(in the peace movement) did not understand the ramifications of that before we certainly learned what it meant from the police, mayor and many citizens last Thursday night. The plan of our groups had been to meet at the UNM bookstore at 5:00 the day after the bombing started. We assembled, dazed that all of the signals to our government had meant nothing. Rain poured on us, but no one left. A man on the megaphone signaled for us to start marching down Central Ave. on the sidewalk. I crossed the street to return to the Peace Center where another woman and I were going to spend the night. As I crossed the street a big white police van filled with special police went by. I looked at the other end of Central and saw police officers strung accross the Central. The group saw them as well and assumed that it meant that they could go out into the street. From behind, police on foot and horses, closed the back of the line. People started being pushed by the police and horses, tear and pepper gas was thrown by the police and one man that I know was hit pointblank by some bullet called a bean bag. People (mostly people of color and high school students) were pulled out of the crowd and arrested. It was all of the awful things that you can imagine. At the Peace Center we stayed up all night helping people to get out of jail. Their jail experience was a lesson in brutality. The next day some of them were visited by the police and told that they were under surveillance until the protests stopped and the police could do this under provisions of the Patriot Act. (not true, but they meant to be bullies.) Many think that the police were so rough because they intended to silence us. The videotapes verify that the crowd did nothing to justify this kind of action. The next day, the mayor called a meeting with the police, National Lawyer's Guild lawyers, and some demonstrators, saying that we had a right to assemble and a right to free speech, saying that we could march on Friday night (we did, with the company of heavily armed police blocking the streets) and assemble at the Civic Plaza that Sunday (we did, my first public speech on the Bill of Rights Defense Committee's work). After the meeting, the mayor had a press conference in which he said that he considered the police action appropriate because of our behavior. It has always struck me as amazing how something like that can be said and then becomes the truth about which people have to defended themselves. On Sunday, mounted police came into the crowd with no warning, and literally picked up a Moroccan man and carried him away. He was supposedly armed but nothing was found on him. People were not allowed to come to the Plaza after we had assembled. One of the latest spins is that the sheriff of Bernillio County is going to bill the NLG lawyers and the protesters for the $8,000/day that this has supposedly cost. Someone said that they would bill Homeland Security and we know that could well mean that we will be labelled as domestic terrorists for demonstrating. The definition of DT's in the Patriot Act could certainly be twisted that way. There is mounting evidence of houses being entered, strange things happening with email as well as phones being tapped. There are many other twists, all of which are amazing. Ghandi said that each movement has three stages: when you are ignored, when you are ridiculed, and when you are repressed..."
E. Ahmet Tonak Professor of Economics
Simon's Rock College of Bard 84 Alford Road Great Barrington, MA 01230
Tel: 413 528 7488 Fax: 413 528 7365 www.simons-rock.edu/~eatonak
