What’s Wrong Today:
No
American wants to live in a repressive, regimented society where police are free to do whatever they
wish in order to punish suspected law breakers. Also, we know that cruel and unusual
punishment is outlawed by our Constitution.
As of now, we still have some
rights left (speech, assembly) of those originally guaranteed by the US
Constitution before its recent shredding by GW Bush, Barack Obama and Congress. Anyway, in our society,
punishment is left to the courts to determine and the penal system to
administer, and there are many examples where state and federal courts have
held just that.
But
now we are seeing a growing number of examples where police, mayors and
municipalities are limiting access for the press, for demonstrators as well as for ordinary
citizens, to public spaces:
- The
Zucotti Park early
morning rousting of the Occupy Wall Street protestors
- The
arrest of a man photographing the arrest of an unrelated woman in Austin,
TX
- The
over-the-top pepper spray
response by campus cops to peaceful protestors at UCAL-Davis
- The
violent Oakland CA OWS rousting
- Seattle
suing a citizen who sought copies of police dash cam videos
- The
6000
tickets (and 1600 arrests) by New York City in 2011 of subway riders simply for putting their
feet up on subway seats
All of these and many more
incidents, are justified by mayors and chiefs of police as being necessary to
maintain civil order.
So,
What’s Wrong?
Erosion
of rights accompanied by the use of excessive force is what’s wrong.
What
we all risk through indiscriminate use of rough tactics, pepper spray and LRADs
by police and the para-police (and the defense of these tactics by our public
officials), is losing our civil society altogether.
Should
we be surprised when a NY Times reporter is roughed up by the NYC police while
working a story? Maybe. At a New Year’s Eve demonstration at
Zuccotti Park,
a police captain began pushing Colin Moynihan, a reporter covering the protest
for The Times. After the reporter asked the captain to stop, another officer
threatened to yank away his police press pass. “That’s a boss; you do what a boss tells
you,”
the officer said, adding a little later, “You
got that credential you’re
wearing from us, and we can take it away from you.”
In November, the police commissioner, Raymond W. Kelly, ordered every precinct in NYC to
read a statement. Officers, the commissioner said, must “respect
the public’s
right to know about these events and the media’s right of access to report.”
Any officer who “unreasonably
interferes”
with reporters or blocks photographers will be subject to disciplinary actions.
Hasn’t
happened that way, not at Zucotti Park in mid-November, or elsewhere in New
York since November, or around the country where similar “rules”
apply.
When
challenged, New York’s police commissioner and mayor both shrug off complaints
and fight court orders. Bloomberg even argued that to let the press watch the
police retake Zuccotti Park would
violate the privacy of the protesters. “It wouldn’t
be fair,”
he said.
As
arguments go, this is ass-backwards, and it reflects a scary mindset that is
growing throughout the country.
And there is more to this hot
steaming pile of Wrong:
We are seeing flowering of a
fundamental constitutional issue that has been years in the making. City ordinances about city property
have had the effect of quasi-privatizing public space, with the municipal
corporation as the owner. Public space
is not owned. Public space is supposed to be
available to the public, with only limited conditions. The very act of having to ask the officers of a municipal corporation
for permission to use public space underscores that cities have privatized
this part of the commons.
The Occupy Wall Street encampments
exposed another little secret about municipal ordinances. They were designed in part to harass
homeless people and encourage them to leave town. The alliance of middle class Occupy Wall
Street protesters and the homeless and the many issues THAT raises, is what
spawned some of the initial crackdowns on Occupy Wall Street encampments.
And about those laws: The origins of
these permits and ordinances were to suppress particular groups. In the South in the 1960s, cities
facing civil rights demonstrations passed parade permit ordinances. And recently, towns that did not
already have anti-camping ordinances rushed to pass them after an Occupy Wall
Street encampment
appeared.
All of these ordinances are designed
by and to work for a certain segment of “citizens”. The system is
first and foremost about working for the upper middle class and higher. Those
“citizens” want the pols to keep them insulated from unpleasantness
and fear. The deal between law enforcement and these “citizens” is
very simple – do whatever is necessary to keep them from being directly
affected by the masses (except when they want to score some pot). If city councils do that, the
“citizens” will write the check and not actually look too closely at
what’s happening in public spaces or in neighborhoods not like theirs.
When our laws are manipulated in order
to suppress a free press, or personal speech, it shows contempt for the entire idea of a free people or a
government of laws.
Peaceful protest is and must remain a protected
constitutional right.
The
Nazi’s took over Germany one intimidated citizen at a time. People averted
their gaze and meekly stood by as their Jewish neighbors were arrested by
Swastika-banded “police” and shipped to concentration camps.
I agree that today, we are a country with limited
repression. Nazism is not what we are witnessing, but it isn’t
necessarily a long slide down the slippery slope from here to there.
I am reminded of the infamous words
of Mayor
Daley in 1968 at time of the Chicago Democratic Convention demonstrations: “Gentlemen, let’s get this
straight. The policeman isn’t there to create disorder, the policeman is there
to preserve disorder.”
Wouldn’t that be WRONG?
