“New name, same shame”: SOA continues bloody mission

By Megan Reilly-Buser

On Thursday, May 18, the US House of Representatives, by a 214 to 204 margin, voted to close the US Army School of the Americas (SOA). Yet, in the same vote, Congress approved the Pentagon proposal to open a “clone” immediately. The new school, called the Defense Institute for Hemispheric Security Cooperation, is a combat training school for Latin American soldiers. There was a bipartisan amendment to defeat the Pentagon proposal in the Defense Authorization Bill, which would have closed the SOA but halted the opening of the proposed institute until a congressional task force reported its recommendations. The amendment would call for an evaluation of the effect of US military training on the human rights performance of Latin American soldiers. The House rejected the amendment by only ten votes. Like the School of the Americas, the new school will be located at Ft. Benning, in the same place. Both SOA supporters and critics alike agree that this change is merely “cosmetic,” allowing the SOA to continue its actions under another name. It seems that this name change was proposed as an attempt to silence SOA critics. Col. Glenn Weidner, Commandant of the SOA, stated in a recent conference of the SOA Board of Visitors that certain congressional members would not support anything with the SOA name on it…thus, the change in the name. Knowing that the new school is based completely on the US Army School of Americas, a thorough look at the current SOA and its history is warranted.

While John Galbreath gave us some important information to consider about the School of the Americas in his guest commentary in the Asheville Citizen-Times of May 10, stating that the SOA serves a vital role, it is of vital importance to examine more of the facts than those he has chosen to present. As he is active in Amnesty International, he must be aware that AI passed a resolution to close the school.

Mr. Galbreath states that 60,000 students have attended the school and only 1 % has committed human rights abuses. The SOA has stated they track their graduates minimally if at all. So that percentage is based on the research of human rights groups with limited funding, and the 1% would be the minimum. If it were only that figure, 1% equals 600, a rather large number when one considers the small number needed to plan, coordinate, and order summary executions, assassinations, and targeted kidnappings. For example, declassified CIA documents point to high-ranking officials as being responsible for scorched earth campaigns that razed entire villages in Guatemala. Former General Hector Gramajo and former army chief Benedicto Lucas Garcia, both SOA graduates (as documented by the US Defense Intelligence Agency), have been singled out as responsible for these campaigns. Garcia is currently being sued for genocide because of massacres committed by the Guatemalan Army between December 1981 and March 1982. SOA critics state that often when a human rights report comes from Latin America, SOA graduates are “front and center.” For example, over 2/3 of the Salvadoran officers cited by the United Nations Truth Commission Report for human rights abuses are SOA graduates. Over 50% of the Colombian officers cited in a definitive human rights report on Colombia are SOA graduates, and 40% of the cabinet members under three brutal Guatemalan dictatorships were SOA graduates. It’s not just a “few bad apples.” The 1998 Pentagon “cream-of-the -crop” short list of prominent grads contains at least five graduates cited for human rights abuses.

SOA supporters say that any SOA-connected abuses, if they happened at all, are in the distant past. In fact, the February 2000 Human Rights Watch Report on Colombian military implicates seven SOA graduates in crimes committed in 1999, including kidnapping, murder, massacres, and the creation of paramilitary groups. The 1998 and 1999 US State Dept. Reports on Human Rights in Colombia provide information implicating SOA graduates in abuses including a 1997 massacre, an illegal raid on a human rights group in 1998, and involvement in kidnapping and murder in 1999. Furthermore, the Colombian 20th military brigade, which was disbanded in 1998 for human rights abuses, was commanded by an SOA graduate. An SOA graduate who was responsible for the 1998 murder of Bishop Juan Gerardi of Guatemala was also head of the infamous D-2 (G-2) Military Intelligence agency at the height of the genocide campaign in Guatemala’s civil war. In Mexico, at least 13 SOA graduates are now top military officials who have played a key role in the conflict in the Southern Mexican states. Before the signing of NAFTA and the uprising in Chiapas, Mexico in 1994, Mexico was sending one or two soldiers a year to the SOA. A few years after those events, the number rose to 288 in one year. The new school will be opened without any evaluation of the effect of US military training on the human rights performance of Latin American soldiers, in essence without an adequate evaluation of the SOA model upon which it is based.

SOA supporters claim that the SOA has a “new” focus for human rights and democratic values. In fact, of the 31 courses SOA lists as available, only five are related to human rights, democracy or humanitarian issues, and less that 18% of the students took these courses in 1999. Furthermore, although the SOA has made much of its new Human Rights “Train the Trainer” course, no student attended the course in 1997, 1998, or 1999. The new school has not stated any plans to seek input from noted outside human rights specialists and has no provision to modify the content to address specific human rights issues in particular countries. The SOA claims its instructors from outside the US must be cleared of any violations of human rights in their histories. However, since many of these countries give impunity to their military, abusers are rarely convicted and therefore, have no formal “record.”

As Mr. Galbreath has stated, the SOA claims it wants to focus on leadership development, peace support, counter-drug operations, and disaster relief. The new school wishes to focus on these elements as well, downplaying the militaristic aspects of the training offered. These courses currently exist at the SOA but have never been well attended. Although Colombia is in a drug crisis, only 5 of the 141 Colombians trained at the SOA in 1999 took the counter-narcotics course. In total, less than 5 % of the SOA soldiers took counter-narcotics training in 1999. This is down from 8% in 1998. The vast majority took the same SOA commando and combat courses that have had devastating human rights consequences in the past. At least three SOA grads in Mexico have been under investigation for drug trafficking.

Carol Richardson of SOAWatch points out that the recent SOA Certification Report to Congress shows that in 1999 a scant 14% of SOA soldiers took the peace operations, civil/military relations, and similar classes. Over 85% took the standard SOA fare: commando tactics, military intelligence, psychological operations, and combat training. A recent newspaper headline sums it up: “Bombs and Bullets Most Popular Classes at the US Army School of the Americas.” The Department of Defense proposal for the new school showed that this would not change.

Galbreath mentioned a Board of Visitors for the SOA appointed by the President, who have knowledge and commitment to human rights issues. However, it does not provide oversight to the SOA, nor critical review. In the new school, the Board of Visitors will be selected and appointed by the Secretary of Defense. There is no selection criteria, nor any mandates for the inclusion of independent human rights experts, religious leaders, and other potential critics.

The new school will have an Annual Report that does not require even the minimal tracking or monitoring of recent graduates that was called for in the SOA Certification Report. The Annual Report is not an analysis, critique, assessment, evaluation, appraisal, or examination with recommendations from an outside, independent source…it is only a report from the Board of Visitors, hand-picked by the Secretary of Defense.

The repeal of Congressional authorization for the SOA in effect closes the school. It is done with no analysis. As Richardson points out, why close a school without fault? Why open another that is, for all intents and purposes, identical, except for name? An investigation of the charges against the SOA would be a reasonable action to resolve the controversy over its existence or its replacement. Says Richardson, “Neither US tax payers, elected officials, nor, hopefully, the Department of Defense wants to duplicate or continue misguided policies or procedures that have produced results that visit death and suffering on our neighbors in Latin America and dishonor the people of the United States and its military.”

The sources of information are a compilation of research done by the SOA Watch and the Latin America Working Group, among others.

US military civil disturbance planning: The war at home

By Frank Morales

Under the heading of “civil disturbance planning,” the US military is training troops and police to suppress democratic opposition in America. The master plan, Department of Defense Civil Disturbance Plan 55-2, is code-named, “Operation Garden Plot.” Originated in 1968, the “operational plan” has been updated over the last three decades, most recently in 1991, and was activated during the Los Angeles “riots” of 1992, and more than likely during the recent anti-WTO “Battle in Seattle.”

Current US military preparations for suppressing domestic civil disturbance, including the training of National Guard troops and police, are actually part of a long history of American “internal security” measures dating back to the first American Revolution. Generally, these measures have sought to thwart the aims of social justice movements, embodying the concept that within the civilian body politic lurks an enemy that one day the military might have to fight, or at least be ordered to fight.

Equipped with flexible “military operations in urban terrain” and “operations other than war” doctrine, lethal and “less-than-lethal” high-tech weaponry, US “armed forces” and “elite” militarized police units are being trained to eradicate “disorder,” “disturbance” and “civil disobedience” in America. Further, it may very well be that police/military “civil disturbance” planning is the animating force and the overarching logic behind the incredible nationwide growth of police paramilitary units, a growth which coincidentally mirrors rising levels of police violence directed at the American people, particularly “non-white” poor and working people.

Military spokespeople, “judge advocates” (lawyers) and their congressional supporters aggressively take the position that legal obstacles to military involvement in domestic law enforcement civil disturbance operations, such as the 1878 Posse Comitatus Act, have been nullified. Legislated “exceptions” and private commercialization of various aspects of US military-law enforcement efforts have supposedly removed their activities from the legal reach of the “public domain.” Possibly illegal, ostensible “training” scenarios like the recent “Operation Urban Warrior” no-notice “urban terrain” war games, which took place in dozens of American cities, are thinly disguised “civil disturbance suppression” exercises. In addition, President Clinton recently appointed a “domestic military czar,” a sort of national chief of police. You can bet that he is well versed in Garden Plot requirements involved in “homeland defense.”

Ominously, many assume that the training of military and police forces to suppress “outlawed” behavior of citizens, along with the creation of extensive and sophisticated “emergency” social response networks set to spring into action in the event of “civil unrest,” is prudent and acceptable in a democracy. And yet, does not this assumption beg the question as to what civil unrest is? One could argue for example, that civil disturbance is nothing less than democracy in action, a message to the powers-that-be that the people want change. In this instance, “disturbing behavior” may actually be the exercising of ones’ right to resist oppression. Unfortunately, the American corporate/military directorship, which has the power to enforce its definition of “disorder,” sees democracy as a threat and permanent counter-revolution as a “national security” requirement.

The elite military/corporate sponsors of Garden Plot have their reasons for civil disturbance contingency planning. Let’s call it the paranoia of the thief. Their rationale is simple: self-preservation. Fostering severe and targeted “austerity,” massive inequality and unbridled greed, while shifting more and more billions to the generals and the rich, the de-regulated “entities of force” and their interlocking corporate directors know quite well what their policies are engendering, namely, a growing resistance. Consequently, they are systematically organizing to protect their interests, their profits, and their criminal conspiracies. To this end, they are rapidly consolidating an infrastructure of repression designed to “suppress rebellion” against their “authority.” Or more conveniently put, to suppress “rebellion against the authority of the United States.” And so, as the Pentagon Incorporated increases its’ imperialist violence around the world, the chickens have indeed come home to roost here in America in the form of a national security doctrine obsessed with domestic “insurgency” and the need to pre-emptively neutralize it. Its code-name: “Garden Plot.”

Recently, Pentagon spokesman Kenneth H. Bacon “acknowledged that the Air Force wrongfully started and financed a highly classified, still-secret project, known as a black program, without informing Congress last year.” The costs and nature of these projects “are the most classified secrets in the Pentagon.” Could it be that the current United States Air Force Civil Disturbance Plan 55-2 Garden Plot is one such program financed from this secret budget? We have a right to know. And following Seattle, we have the need to know.

As this and numerous other documents reveal, US military training in civil disturbance “suppression,” which targets the American public, is in full operation today. The formulation of legitimizing doctrine, the training in the “tactics and techniques” of “civil disturbance suppression,” and the use of “abusable,” “non-lethal” weaponry, are ongoing, financed by tax dollars. According to the Pentagon, “US forces deployed to assist federal and local authorities during times of civil disturbance…will follow use-of-force policy found in Department of Defense Civil Disturbance Plan-Garden Plot.” (Joint Chiefs of Staff, Standing Rules of Engagement, Appendix A, 1 October 1994.)

Origins: The Kerner Commission

“Knowledge makes a man unfit to be a slave.” -Frederick Douglass

Rochester, New York is the former home of Frederick Douglass’s North Star newspaper. In 1964, it erupted in one of the first large-scale urban outbursts of the decade. Precipitated by white police violence against the black community, the July uprising lasted several days, subsiding only after the arrival of 1500 National Guardsmen. In “the fall of 1964, the FBI, at the direction of President Johnson, began to make riot control training available to local police departments, and by mid-1967 such training assistance had been extended to more than 70,000 officials and civilians.”

On July 29, 1967, President Johnson issued Executive Order 11365, establishing the National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders. It is more commonly known as the Kerner Commission, named for it’s chair, former Major General, and then Governor of Illinois, Otto Kerner. The creation of the commission came hot on the heels of the violence in Detroit, a conflict which left 43 dead, several hundred wounded and over 5,000 people homeless. Johnson sent troubleshooter Cyrus Vance, later Secretary of Defense, as his personal observer to Detroit. The commission issued its final report, completed in less than a year, on March 1, 1968.

Although the Kerner Commission has over the years become associated with a somewhat benign, if not benevolent character, codifying the obvious, “we live in two increasingly separate America’s” etc., the fact is that the commission itself was but one manifestation of a massive military/police counter-insurgency effort directed against US citizens, hatched in an era of emergent post-Vietnam “syndrome” coupled with elite fears of domestic insurrection. While the movement chanted for peace and revolution, rebellious, angry and destructive urban uprisings were occurring with alarming frequency, usually the result of the usual spark, police brutality, white on black crime. The so-called urban riots of 1967-1968 were the zenith, during this period, of social and class conflict. “More than 160 disorders occurred in some 128 American cities in the first nine months of 1967.”

During the early stages of staff recruitment, commission Deputy Executive Director Victor H. Palmieri “described the process as a war strategy” and so he might be given the overwhelming presence within the commission and its’ consultants of military and police officials.

The Kerner Commission’s “study” of “civil disorder” lead directly to (civilian) recommendations regarding the role of the military in domestic affairs. The report dutifully “commends the Army for the advanced status of its training.” Further, it states that “the Department of the Army should participate fully in efforts to develop nonlethal weapons and personal protective equipment appropriate for use in civil disorders.” In addition, “the Army should investigate the possibility of utilizing psychological techniques to ventilate hostility and lessen tension in riot control, and incorporate feasible techniques in training the Army and National Guard units.”

The Army and civil disorder

Under the heading, “Army Response To Civil Disorders,” the commission report states that “the commitment of federal troops to aid state and local forces in controlling a disorder is an extraordinary act…An Army staff task group has recently examined and reviewed a wide range of topics relating to military operations to control urban disorders: command and control, logistics, training, planning, doctrine, personnel, public information, intelligence, and legal aspects.” The results of the Army brass’s study was subsequently “made known to the National Guard and to top state and local civil and law enforcement officers in order to stimulate review at the state and local level.”

In addition, “the Army Task Force that had designed this program took on a new name, the Directorate of Civil Disturbance Planning and Operations. The Army Task Force transformation into the Directorate occurred during the massive rioting that broke out in black ghettos of 19 cities after the assassination of Martin Luther King in April 1968.” At that time “seven army infantry brigades, totaling 21,000 troops were available for riot duty. And a huge, sophisticated computer center kept track of all public outbursts of political dissent, thereby furnishing the first of the Army Task Force’s prescribed remedies: intelligence.”

By June of 1968, the Directorate had become the Directorate of Military Support, setting up shop in the basement of the Pentagon. “Better known as the domestic war room, the Directorate had 150 officials to carry out around-the-clock monitoring of civil disorders, as well as to oversee federal troop deployments when necessary. At the cost of $2.7 million, this massive directorate also developed policy advice for the secretary of the Army on all disturbances and maintained intelligence packets on all major US cities.”

Even though the full extent of US military intelligence activities during this period is far from generally known, “by 1968, many Justice Department personnel knew that the military was preparing to move in massively if needed to quash urban riots, and some officials feared the development of a large national military riot force. It was well known among top officials that the Department of Defense was spending far more funds than the Justice Department on civil disorder preparations… indicative of the growing trend at the federal level toward repression and control of the urban black rioters.”

As time went on, “Garden Plot evolved into a series of annual training exercises based on contingency plans to undercut riots and demonstrations, ultimately developed for every major city in the United States. Participants in the exercises included key officials from all law enforcement agencies in the nation, as well as the National Guard, the military, and representatives of the intelligence community… According to the plan, joint teams would react to a variety of scenarios based on information gathered through political espionage and informants. The object was to quell urban unrest…”

Unrest of a different sort took place on the evening of February 27, 1973. At that time, a group of Native Americans occupied a trading post in the village of Wounded Knee on the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota. By the second of March the takeover had “triggered the army contingency plan for domestic disturbances. Emergency Plans White —now coded as Garden Plot — brought the Army into South Dakota…Three army colonels, disguised as civilians, and reconnaissance planes assisted”, while “the Justice Department used the army to conduct intelligence for civilian law enforcement around Wounded Knee.” Information on other instances in which Garden Plot was “triggered” over the intervening years is presently locked in Pentagon vaults.

In essence, the contemporary roots of militarized efforts to suppress domestic rebellion lie in the US Army’s master plan, Department of Defense Civil Disturbance Plan 55-2, Garden Plot. Since at least 1968, the military has expended billions of dollars in this effort. The plan is operative right now, most recently during and after the Los Angeles uprising of 1992. A view into details of this plan is possible by way of an examination of United States Air Force Civil Disturbance Plan 55-2, Garden Plot which is the “implementing” and “supporting plan for the Department of the Army (DA) Civil Disturbance Plan — Garden Plot — dated 1 March 1984 (which) provides for the employment of USAF forces in civil disturbances.” It is specifically drawn up “to support the Secretary of the Army, as DOD Executive Agent for civil disturbance control operations (nicknamed Garden Plot), with airlift and logistical support, in assisting civil authorities in the restoration of law and order through appropriate military commanders in the 50 States, District of Columbia, the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico and US possessions and territories, or any political subdivision thereof.” The plan “is effective for planning on receipt and for execution on order.”

US Air Force 55-2: Garden Plot

“The long title of the plan is United States Air Force Civil Disturbance Plan 55-2, Employment of USAF Forces in Civil Disturbances. The short title of this document is USAF Civil Disturbance Plan 55-2. The nickname assigned by Department of the Army is Garden Plot.” It’s dated July 11, 1984.

The plan opens with some basic “assumptions,” namely that “civil disturbances requiring intervention with military forces may occur simultaneously in any of the 50 States, District of Columbia, Commonwealth of Puerto Rico, US possessions and territories.” And like the current situation in Vieques, Puerto Rico, “civil disturbances will normally develop over a period of time.” In the event it evolves into a confrontational situation, under Garden Plot, it is a “presidential executive order” that “will authorize and direct the Secretary of Defense to use the Armed Forces of the United States to restore law and order.”

According to the Air Force plan, the military will attempt “to suppress rebellion whenever the President considers that unlawful obstructions, combinations, or assemblages, or rebellion against the authority of the United States, make it impractical to enforce the laws of the United States in any state or territory by the ordinary course of judicial proceedings…(10 USC 332).” Applying its own version of equal protection under the law, the military can intervene “when insurrection, domestic violence, unlawful combinations, or conspiracies in a state so hinder or obstruct the execution of the laws as to deprive individuals of their Constitutional rights, privileges, and immunities or when the insurrection impedes the due course of justice, and only when the constituted authorities of the state are unable, fail or refuse to protect that right, privilege, immunity, or to give that protection (10 USC 333).” In other words, the Army makes an offer of “protection” that the citizenry can’t refuse.

The Air Force also has some experience in this area. “In response to the US invasion of Cambodia, student unrest broke out. Under Operation Garden Plot, from April 30 through May 4, 1970, 9th Air Force airlift units transported civil disturbance control forces from Ft. Bragg to various locations throughout the eastern US.” In fact, two years earlier, “Air Force Reserve C-119 and C-124 units participated in Garden Plot operations set up to quell domestic strife that followed the assassination of Martin Luther King.”

Although the section on “Counterintelligence Targets and Requirements” is “omitted,” the plan does specify its targets, namely, those “disruptive elements, extremists or dissidents perpetrating civil disorder.” A “civil disturbance” is defined as a “riot, acts of violence, insurrections, unlawful obstructions or assemblages, or other disorders prejudicial to public law and order. The term civil disturbance includes all domestic conditions requiring the use of federal armed forces pursuant to the provisions of Chapter 15, Title 10, United States Code.” Conditions precipitating Garden Plot activation are “those that threaten to reach or have reached such proportions that civil authorities cannot or will not maintain public order.” As for legal authority, “the Constitution of the United States and numerous statutes provide the President with the authority to commit Federal military forces within the United States…DOD Directive 3025.12 provides guidance in committing Federal armed forces.”

Police repress social justice movement
Philadelphia: all-out security effort for GOP convention

By Thomas Ginsberg

The Secret Service is checking rooftops. The FBI is monitoring the Internet. And city police are getting ready to play cat and mouse with protesters.

Unnoticed by most Philadelphians, security preparations for the Republican National Convention are moving into high gear about 10 weeks before the July 31-Aug. 3 event. Thousands of law enforcement officers will land in the city for an operation made particularly complex by the likelihood of civil disobedience and surprise protests.

“Virtually every resource that the FBI has available will be put into play,” said Thomas J. Harrington, the assistant special agent-in-charge in the FBI’s Philadelphia office. “After the Atlanta Olympics it was bombings that were the main focus. . . . Now protesters have become more of a focus.”

At both the GOP event and the Democratic convention in Los Angeles two weeks later, the Secret Service is coordinating the work of dozens of federal, state and local agencies employing thousands of officers -- some of whom will be dressed like tourists to mix with their surroundings.

The FBI will focus on intelligence gathering, investigation, and prosecution if necessary. City police will police the city, perhaps the most complicated job.

The goal is a smooth, safe convention with minimal inconvenience to city dwellers and delegates. Subway and regional rail lines may run later into the night to handle extra passengers, streets will be closed as briefly as possible, and a caravan of tow trucks will stand ready to clear traffic jams.

“We’re not going to shut the city down. . . . We have to live here too,” said Thomas G. Spurlock, the Secret Service’s assistant special agent-in-charge in Philadelphia.

With a command center in a Pentagon-owned building near 20th and Oregon Streets, the Secret Service will have direct responsibility for security inside the First Union Center, where the convention takes place. Inside and outside the arena its agents will guard every move by two former presidents (George Bush and Gerald R. Ford) and dozens of diplomats and dignitaries, including former first lady Nancy Reagan. Not to mention the presumptive nominee, George W. Bush.

The agency also will coordinate the work of police from 35 states guarding 35 Republican governors. It will oversee members of the Capitol Police arriving with the leaders of the GOP-controlled Congress.

Spurlock said the agency would check every nook and cranny where the “protectees” will stay, visit or travel; scrutinize high-rise buildings for possible sniper’s nests; and possibly move mailboxes and weld manholes shut around hotels or meeting halls. Agents are mapping out motorcade routes and backdoor exits from hotels and meeting spots, a challenge in Philadelphia’s narrow downtown streets.

The city’s police force will have responsibility for security around the rest of the city and next to the First Union Center, including the 7,600-square-foot “free speech zone” already established in FDR Park.

Whether protesters bother with the rally site is another question. Few groups have signed up to use it; the largest rallies are planned in Center City, with some activists promising sporadic acts of protest and civil disobedience everywhere.

Several Philadelphia officers traveled to Washington, DC, in April and New York City on May 1 to observe the protests there over corporate globalization. The FBI and Justice Department are holding training sessions in Philadelphia in crowd control and tactics for police officers and commanders. They say officers must be ready to respond to varying problems, such as a surprise blockade or protest in a city street.

Capt. William Fisher, commanding officer of the civil affairs unit, said police intend to designate a special detention center for any protesters arrested.

At the same time, police will maintain full staffing at the city’s 23 precincts during the week, Fisher said. Court sessions have been canceled and new vacation schedules have been offered to free as many officers as possible.

Taking their cue from recent protests in Washington, DC, and Seattle, police intend to be ready to rush officers to potential flash points around the city in “mobile field forces,” said Deputy Commissioner Robert Mitchell. They could travel in either marked or unmarked vehicles, he said, but he gave no details.

Police said protesters in Seattle, using their own mobile-phone network, dashed from one area to another to avoid police as they blocked streets.

In Philadelphia, police may deploy officers just to keep routes open for their mobile forces, a defense Seattle failed to use, Fisher said.

The tactics mean that both sides may end up playing a game of cat and mouse.

Fisher said police would also be cordial but careful when faced with one expected protest tactic: the offering of food or drink by demonstrators hoping to sway police to their side.

With the First Union Center well-protected by a buffer zone, protesters have been discussing the idea of blockading delegates at their hotels.

Some activists have hinted at their plans on the Internet, where groups often publicize and discuss their events using e-mail systems called listservs. The FBI regularly reads the listservs, the agents said.

Source: Philadelphia Inquirer

Los Angeles: protests planned for Democratic Convention

By Lynda Gorov

To the consternation of city officials and convention planners, the sea turtles are preparing to beach.

The costumed demonstrators, along with thousands of plainclothes protesters, are expected to descend on Los Angeles for the Democratic National Convention in August. Emboldened by the so-called Battle in Seattle during last year’s World Trade Organization meeting, and this year’s attention-grabbing tactics in Washington, they intend to march, shout, and tie up traffic to make their points about economic disparity, environmental insanity, and a variety of other concerns, from gay rights to the death penalty. The protesters even have their own shorthand for the convergence of Democrats, the millennium, and LA: D2KLA.

No one knows quite what to expect. All sides say they want peace to prevail. But with newly energized protesters willing to square off against a Los Angeles Police Department whose integrity is under attack, there is also growing fear that the confrontations could turn ugly. To further complicate matters, the homeless have plans to stage a rival convention for 1,000 of their ‘own’ ‘delegates’’ just blocks from the main event at the Staples Center sports and concert arena.

Lisa Fithian, a key organizer of the protests for Direct Action Network, said "we will be there and ww will be heard. The powers that be want to marginalize us, and we're not going to let that happen."

In a city where image is everything, this is hardly the image Los Angeles had in mind when it bid to bring the Democratic convention here. After riots, earthquakes, and O.J. Simpson, the aim was to showcase Los Angeles as a world-class city, one ready for the new millennium rather than one on the rebound. The convention promised the sort of positive attention seldom seen since the 1984 Olympics, which the city hosted to great success.

Many still believe the convention will do just that. But the gathering also comes at an awkward time for Los Angeles, now embroiled in its most far-reaching police corruption scandal in recent history. The smallest misstep by authorities is likely to make the nightly news. A debacle like the one in Seattle, where police fired tear gas and rubber bullets into crowds, would probably overwhelm coverage from the convention floor and crowd out good-news stories about the city beyond the convention center’s doors.

“It’s actually a good time for LA,” said Michael Dear, director of the Southern California Studies Center at the University of Southern California. “The more exposure it gets as a serious metropolitan city, the better, because it’s been too easy for too long for people to look at LA as a flaky exception to all things American. That image is obsolete.

Police professionalism could be pushed to the limits by the broad array of protesters expected. Fithian, whose organization is helping coordinate the activities of more than 150 protest groups, said she expects relatively few of them to spend time in what has been dubbed “the protest pit” - an area near Staples Center that will be set aside for demonstrators who apply for permits.

“It will be an orderly, vocal, noisy week,” said James Lafferty, executive director of the Los Angeles office of the National Lawyers Guild, which is recruiting scores of legal observers to witness the demonstrations and dozens of lawyers to represent those arrested. “Civil disobedience can be done peacefully if the police don’t treat it as a military invasion.”

Added Colin Rajah, director of programs at the Oakland-based Youth Action for Globe Justice Network, which plans to send dozens of young protesters to the area, “It’s been a long time coming, this attention to reforming the social and economic system, and we want to take advantage of the momentum. But the idea is to get attention for the issues, not to have a direct confrontation with police.”

Recalling disruptions during meetings of the World Trade Organization in Seattle and the World Bank in Washington, law enforcement officials say they are preparing for any and all scenarios. The Los Angeles Police Department has canceled all vacations for both officers and civilian personnel. The sheriff’s department will provide backup in the event of mass arrests.

State and federal agencies have mobilized too, devising plans to cope with everything from unruly protests to urban terrorism. Few expect the worst, but everyone wants to be ready for it.

“We’re hoping the designated public demonstration area will work,” said Lieutenant Horace Frank, a spokesman for the LAPD. “We want to allow voices to be heard, but in peaceful areas. ... It’s disconcerting to hear otherwise. We have a responsibility to ensure the community is not disrupted and, if it is, we will have to respond in kind.”

Benjamin Austin, a spokesman for the LA Convention 2000 host committee, called the protest area “a phenomenal piece of real estate,” near enough the convention center for delegates to take notice and to give journalists easy access. “The location,” he said, “says a lot about our attitude toward the protesters. We want them out front. We don’t want them in Siberia.”

The LA convention has faced a host of other obstacles, including fund-raising and management snags. But, with Los Angeles Mayor Richard Riordan more personally involved, convention planners say they expect the week to go smoothly. One reason: Many of the major groups involved in the previous protests, among them the AFL-CIO and Friends of the Earth, have endorsed Al Gore, the presumptive Democratic nominee.

For their part, protest organizers insist they will not incite, encourage, or condone violence. Instead, they say they fear that, by taking to the streets, they will become targets themselves. In mid-July, the Ruckus Society will hold a training camp for 125 or so nonviolent convention protesters in Malibu, where they will learn everything from how to unfurl political banners from great heights to how to chain themselves together to avoid being dispersed. A smaller training session is planned for Philadelphia, where protesters also expect to be out in force for the Republican National Convention, which begins July 31.

In the city itself, the Los Angeles National Homeless Convention is preparing for the arrival of 1,000 delegates from around the country, among them homeless people, political activists, and others upset by the issues that exacerbate homelessness. Los Angeles has one of the largest homeless populations in the country, and the counterconvention is intended to focus attention on a group that city officials everywhere often try to downplay during local celebrations.

“We as homeless people are drawing a line in the sand on homelessness,” said Ted Hayes, a local activist who had the idea for the convention and who predicted as many as 10,000 local homeless will participate. “We’re saying, `You come to LA and we’ll lead the way. ...’ We come in decency and peace, and we hope everyone will respect that.”

Source: the Boston Globe

San Francisco rally targets toxic racism

By Bill Hackwell

San Francisco, California, May 25— Scores of protesters demonstrated in front of the San Francisco Federal Building May 25 to demand a thorough and extensive clean-up of a naval toxic dump in a predominantly African American district of this city.

For decades the Navy has dumped toxic substances in the Bayview Hunters Point area. It is the only federal superfund site in San Francisco and the most contaminated property in the city.

In February the Navy estimated that it would cost $266 million to clean up the site. Officials are now proposing allocating just $105 million to simply cover the site with asphalt — in other words, not clean it up at all, just let the community continue to be exposed to large levels of toxic poisons.

Meanwhile, on the other side of town near the rich Marina district, millions of dollars keep pouring in to clean up and upgrade the former Presidio Army area.

The May 25 protest signifies a growing opposition to the government’s handling of the clean-up in Bayview Hunters Point. It was called by the Community 1st Coalition and includes a number of environmental groups, including Communities for a Better Environment, Greenaction, and Literacy for Environmental Justice.

Source: Workers World News Service: workers.org

Leonard Peltier will be reviewed for parole

Leonard Peltier will be reviewed for parole Native American Leonard Peltier will be reviewed for parole on June 12 at Leavenworth Federal Penitentiary. Amnesty International, which considers Peltier to be a political prisoner, will attend the hearing in person to ask the Commission to set Leonard Peltier free. The National Council of Churches, the National Congress of American Indians, the Assembly of First Nations, and Peltier’s family will also be asking the Parole Commission for Leonard Peltier’s release.

On June 12, Peltier’s attorneys will tell the Commission that there is no justifiable reason to continue Peltier’s sentence, and the Commission’s original decision to deny him parole was based on error. The Leonard Peltier Defense Committee urges concerned citizens to call the White House comments line at 202-456-1111 to demand justice for Leonard Peltier.

For more information: Leonard Peltier Defense Committee, 785-842-5774 or www.freepeltier.org