Amy Goodman: Don’t Cage Dissent

[marmar]

from Truthdig:



Don’t Cage Dissent

Posted on Aug 13, 2008
By Amy Goodman

The bulwark against tyranny is dissent. Open opposition, the right to challenge those in power, is a mainstay of any healthy democracy. The Democratic and Republican conventions will test the commitment of the two dominant U.S. political parties to the cherished tradition of dissent. Things are not looking good.

Denver’s CBS4 News just reported that the city is planning on jailing arrested Democratic Convention protesters at a warehouse with barbed-wire-topped cages and signs warning of stun guns in use. Meanwhile, a federal judge has ruled that a designated protest area is legal, despite claims that protesters will be too far from the Democratic delegates to be heard.

The full spectrum of police and military will also be on hand at the Democratic Convention in Denver, many of them coordinated by a “fusion center.” These centers are springing up around the country, as an outgrowth of the post-9/11 national-security system. Erin Rosa of the online Colorado Independent recently published a report on the fusion center, which will be sharing information with the U.S. Secret Service, the FBI and the U.S. Northern Command. The center is set up to gather and distribute “intelligence” about “suspicious activities,” which, Rosa points out, “can include taking pictures or taking notes. The definition is very broad.”

Civil-rights advocates fear the fusion center could enable unwarranted spying on protesters exercising their First Amendment rights at the convention. Documents obtained by I-Witness Video, a group that documents police abuses and demonstrations, revealed that the CIA and the Defense Intelligence Agency were receiving intelligence about the protests at the 2004 Republican National Convention in New York City. The growing problem is that legal, peaceful protesters are ending up on federal databases and watch lists with scant legal oversight.

Former FBI agent Mike German is now a national-security-policy counsel for the American Civil Liberties Union. He said, “It’s unclear who is actually in charge and whose rules apply to the information that’s being collected and shared and distributed through these fusion centers.” Maryland State Police were recently exposed infiltrating groups like the Baltimore Coalition Against the Death Penalty. German explains how police expand “beyond normal law-enforcement functions, and start becoming intelligence collectors against protest groups. The reports that we obtained ... make clear that there was no indication of any sort of criminal activity. And yet, that investigation went on for 14 months, and these reports were uploaded into a federal database. ... When all these agencies are authorized to go out and start collecting this information and putting it in areas where it’s accessible by the intelligence community, it’s a very dangerous proposition for our democracy.” ......(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/20080813_dont_cage_dissent/

[MrModerate]

1. This is a very tough issue. National figures have been inciting people . . .

To disrupt the Democratic convention using means well outside the definition "legal and peaceful." Although I haven't heard about it, I suspect the same is true of the Republican convention.

So, there's a lot of chatter about lawless activity being planned. At the same time, the very notion of a "free-speech zone" remote from the site of the event one wants to speak freely about is absurd and disquieting.

Police officials are severely challenged to come up with a reasonable response; as we all know, the FBI cannot be relied upon to follow the law; and at the same time, the conventions are not primarily designed as fora for dissent, but designed to allow people's representatives select new leadership.

I'm not sure what the right course is here.