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Via Workers World News Service
Reprinted from the April 27, 2000
issue of Workers World newspaper
-------------------------Mass arrests at march against police repression
By Brian Becker
Washington
Becker is co-director of the International Action Center.
He was arrested with 678 others
on April 15 in Washington.Hours after Washington police carried out a raid on the morning of April 15 on the Convergence Center, closing down the headquarters of the protests against the International Monetary Fund, the same police illegally arrested nearly 700 people.
The mass arrests followed a demonstration to shut down the prison-industrial complex and free Mumia Abu-Jamal. The demonstration had been called by the New York-based International Action Center.
Shoppers, passersby and even some members of the press were among the 678 who were swept up and detained for as long as 20 hours. The mass arrests were part of a policy that Washington Mayor Anthony Williams described as a "proactive, precautionary and preventive" police strategy.
Put differently, this strategy amounts to an unconstitutional "preventive detention" policy. Opponents of the U.S. government are arrested not for what they've done but for who they are. Most of the 678 arrested people had planned to join protests against the pro-capitalist and anti-people International Monetary Fund and World Bank the next day.
The April 15 sweep was one of the biggest political mass arrests in recent U.S. history.
The arrests took place after a spirited and lawful march from the Justice Department at 9th Street and Pennsylvania Avenue NW to 20th and K streets NW.
Police Chief Charles H. Ramsey later tried to justify the mass arrests when he told reporters that the marchers were "parading without a permit and refused a police order to disperse." This explanation is simply false.
Hundreds of eyewitnesses dispute the police account. The New York Times, Washington Post and National Public Radio carried major stories that conflict with the police account.
The facts
What are the facts?
The International Action Center had obtained a permit to hold a rally at the Justice Department. It is not necessary to obtain a permit to hold a sidewalk march in the District of Columbia.
The IAC organizers, this reporter included, negotiated an agreement with the police to conduct a march to the area of the IMF headquarters and end with a follow-up rally at Dupont Circle.
It was obvious that the police agreed to the march. Many police cruisers and foot cops were in the front of the march. They stopped vehicular traffic at the intersections so that the demonstration could proceed on the route between the Justice Department and the area around the IMF building.
When the march reached 20th and K streets, NW, just a few blocks before arriving at the final destination of Dupont Circle, it was halted. A line of police in riot gear blocked the marchers from proceeding forward.
The police line stretched from corner to corner. No one was allowed to leave. At the rear of the demonstration another line of police started advancing.
The IAC organizers explained over a loudspeaker system that the police were setting a trap for large-scale arrests. They asked people whether it was better to end the demonstration so that everyone could be available the next day, April 16, for the mass actions to shut down the IMF.
The demonstrators acted with great discipline, verbally agreeing to immediately end the protest and disperse in small groups as protection against police harassment. Hundreds actually made it out of the block to the south of the police line located at 20th and K Streets.
The police command, realizing that the organizers had ended the activity, quickly assembled a solid wall of cops stretching across the southern end of the block. Within minutes they had sealed the whole block and refused to let anyone else leave.
The police never ordered people to disperse. Just the opposite. Without explanation they refused to allow anyone, except credentialed media, to leave.
IAC organizers explained to the trapped crowd assembled peacefully on the sidewalk: "We are insisting on the right to leave. The police are fundamentally violating our rights. This was a legal demonstration; it was entirely within the law. There has been no property damage. The only people possessing weapons are the police. Yet, we are illegally detained here and the police are bringing in buses to transport us to jail.
"This is a gross violation of people's right to free speech. The police are acting as agents of the IMF and the capitalist establishment. We will remain calm and strong and determined never to be intimidated by these illegal tactics."
The highly spirited crowd of mostly young people responded with the chant, "There ain't no power like the power of the people 'cause the power of the people won't stop!"
Illegal mass arrests
An hour after the police sealed the block at 20th and K streets, a commander bellowed "Platoon!" Without warning, the police at both ends of the block started marching on the trapped protesters, using riot clubs to push them together into a tighter and tighter pack.
Then the arrests began. Three at a time, people were led away into waiting school buses.
The 678 people were taken to various jails and remote police academy stations. Many were kept confined on the buses with their hands cuffed tightly behind their backs for more than 12 hours.
Workers World Party presidential and vice-presidential candidates Monica Moore head and Gloria La Riva were among the arrested. Also confined with them were Teresa Gutierrez and other leaders and members of the Party. They were confined in a small room at a Washington corrections facility that was splattered with blood and vomit.
The mass arrest was illegal. The police of course knew this. So throughout the next 24 hours the prisoners were encouraged to immediately pay a "post and forfeit" $50 fine to the charge of parading without a permit. This would not be an admission of guilt and would close the case. For most of those arrested, who live outside Washington, they could get released and not have to come back.
The advantage for the police was that they would not have to answer in court for their illegal actions. The police maintained the prisoners in conditions of maximum discomfort so that they would "post and forfeit."
Pressure to 'post and forfeit'
This writer was among those who refused to "post and forfeit." We were subjected to on-the-spot punishment carried out by the Washington police and U.S. Marshals.
We were shackled firmly, right hand to left foot, for three hours. Then we were placed on a bus and driven to an underground garage.
There the police refastened the handcuffs to the tightest setting and left us again to sit on the school bus until 7 a.m., when the demonstrators were turned over to the custody of the U.S. Marshals.
The marshals slapped prisoners, pushed them into walls and put them in heavier leg and ankle chains if they protested this treatment. Although there were many vacant cells, 13 of us were confined together in a six-foot by 13-foot cell.
When we appeared at arraignment court on Sunday afternoon, April 16, our charges were changed from "parading without a permit" to "disorderly conduct."
The parading without a permit charge was simply a smokescreen for one of the biggest "preventive detentions" in recent years.
Why were the April 15 demonstrators illegally suppressed?
"We were protesting the ever-expanding prison-industrial complex and police brutality," said Larry Holmes, an International Action Center leader and an organizer of the April 15 protest. Holmes was among those arrested.
"The demonstration grew from several hundreds to more than a thousand youth with its spirited opposition to the prisons, police terror, racism and capitalism. The police hated the message of the demonstration and they wanted to start the weekend by publicly displaying that they would use aggressive, even brazenly illegal, tactics."
The mass media are now putting a positive spin on the police conduct in Washington. They are giving the police "high marks" for "good tactics." They are even spreading the lie that "many of the protesters" thought the police treated them well. This is a fabrication.
The police role included: illegally raiding and shutting down the Convergence Center protest headquarters on Saturday morning, April 15; preventive detention arrests of 678 peaceful protesters at the demonstration that same afternoon against the prison-industrial complex; severely mistreating these demonstrators in an attempt to force them to "post and forfeit" for a crime they never committed; beating, pepper spraying and other abusive conduct against hundreds of protesters on April 16 and 17.
In addition to carrying out mass arrests and beatings, police raided and ransacked the homes of political activists in Washington in the days leading up to the pro tests. Secret Service agents stopped and searched organizers' vehicles without cause.
The repressive apparatus consisting of the police, prison, courts and army revealed itself for what it really is: not an impartial arbiter maintaining public order and safety in society, but a tool of class violence and coercion. This apparatus is employed every day in a virtual war against the youths of the African American and Latino communities.
The battle in Washington revealed that the capitalist political establishment uses this instrument of force against any who seriously challenge the "smooth operations" of the profit system. The new movement for social change must draw all the political, theoretical and organizational implications of the reality presented by the state apparatus.
The IAC is collecting eyewitness accounts from people who were arrested or witnessed arrests. This information will help organizations preparing a class action suit on behalf of all those arrested. Email iacenter@iacenter.org
or call (212) 633-6646.This article is copyright under a Creative Commons License.
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