Protesters confront Republicans

Compiled from staff and wire reports

Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, August 2— As approximately 2,000 delegates of the Republican Party gathered here to nominate Texas Governor George W. Bush for President of the United States, more than five times that number filled the streets to protest. Thousands of people from across the country held rallies and marches, and blocked traffic at intersections to protest a party that they say serves the rich at the expense of human services, and a candidate who has presided over more than 100 executions. Philadelphia police responded with what has become a familiar tactic: beatings and mass arrests.

The protests began on Monday, as people demonstrating against the US Army School of the Americas (SOA) lay in the street to block traffic. The SOA is a Georgia-based institution that trains Latin American soldiers, many of whom have tortured and massacred their fellow citizens. The protesters re-enacted a massacre, and then lay in the street, refusing to move. Police made eight arrests.

Later in the day, thousands of citizens demanding rights for poor people marched down Broad Street, despite having been denied permission by the city and by police. A group of 100 children led the march, which was organized by the Kensington Welfare Rights Union.

Activists took direct action on Tuesday, blocking intersections throughout the city in acts of nonviolent civil disobedience. In addition, activists of the anarchist “black bloc” destroyed police and government property. Police responded with beatings and arrests, and also raided the activists’ headquarters, seizing property and making arrests.

According to R2K Legal, the legal team representing the protesters, about 450 activists were arrested on Tuesday. All but 25 were kept in the Roundhouse Prison, which is attached to several police department buildings, including the police headquarters.

The R2K Legal team also reported that 70-80% of the activists arrested participated in jail solidarity, the tactic of refusing to identify themselves and demanding fair treatment. A hunger strike at the roundhouse is ongoing. Those on hunger strike are demanding equal treatment, all charges dropped and immediate release.

Lockdown at Broad and Spruce

Protesters were successful in blocking the intersection of Broad and Spruce, the main thoroughfare to the convention, for over three hours. In the early stages of the lockdown, police arrested ten to fifteen people, but a stalwart crew of thirty held the intersection of Broad and Spruce for the rest of the afternoon.

Demonstrators sat down, locking their arms into duct tape-covered PVC pipes. Some merely linked their hands together, hanging on to each other by will alone. Police stood close behind the line of protesters that stretched across the intersection, while a file of media flanked in front of them, interviewing and photographing them.

The reasons for the protest were varied. Some wanted to speak out against economic inequality, while others sought to draw attention to the criminal justice system. Though the cause may have been general, their action was direct. One banner called for “human need, not corporate greed,” suggesting that the protest was aimed at drawing attention to the lack of discussion about basic freedoms that the two parties neglect.

Demonstrator Mike Levien said he wasn’t representing any group, but was “here, like everyone else, to communicate to the American public about the numerous issues that are not represented in the mainstream media or addressed in our government. They’re not addressed in these media because they’re dominated by corporate interests.” He went on to say that he and the other protesters were “taking it back to the streets because it’s the only arena of uncorrupted democracy that we have left.” Levien was later arrested.

All of the protesters who locked down on Broad Street were prepared for jail solidarity, carrying no identification and estimating that they could spend as many as five days in jail. These anonymous John and Jane Does, divided into affinity groups with code names like “A-Team,” planned to remain in jail without giving their real names, even though it meant a longer stay.

Two unidentified women demonstrators explained the reasoning behind jail solidarity. “It’s a way to protect everyone who’s arrested during these protests and to make a stand that everyone is being arrested for the same causes. Therefore we deserve the same charges, which is no charges.” The other woman added that “it’s also to empower us individually, so that no one can take our power away from us. We maintain our power throughout the entire process.”

While affinity groups help protesters stay unified during incarceration, the women also felt that “everybody we meet in jail who’s doing solidarity and even the people who aren’t are our brothers and sisters who are all standing strong together.” They also wanted to remind anyone on the outside “to keep those of us who are in jail in mind, but more importantly, keep in mind the people throughout the world and in third world countries that are struggling against even more oppressive forces, like the people of Chiapas.” For these protesters, solidarity extends beyond the affinity group, to encompass the anonymous struggles of people everywhere. Both women were later arrested.

Eventually the media was driven back by bike cops who used their bicycles like riot shields, pushing against the press and any onlookers. Soon the thirty seated protestors were surrounded by over seventy police officers, some in riot gear. Legal observers wearing yellow hats made their way through the group of demonstrators, writing down each individual’s code name and affinity group so that their legal representatives could be contacted later. Some attempt was made to negotiate with the demonstrators, but most had locked in with the intention of being arrested and could not be convinced to leave the street.

After several hours of sitting in the intersection, the protestors were methodically separated, hand-cuffed with plastic restraints, and carried away from the line. Police rolled them over on their stomachs, handling them like livestock, locking their hands behind their backs. Many of the protesters lay limp on the ground, focused on resisting passively, while the crowd shouted “Non-violence” and “Shame” at the officers.

After being cuffed, protesters were dragged on the ground or carried away like dead weight to the awaiting buses. Eventually, police just let them sit in groups on the street while they continued restraining the others. Morale was high among the demonstrators despite the rough handling by the authorities. Several complained that their cuffs were too tight. One woman said she was losing feeling in her hands and asked to have her cuffs loosened. A chant went up from the crowd, “Loosen her cuffs!” but none of the officers complied.

Before being placed on the buses, protesters were searched and their bags were confiscated. Police made no effort to identify or organize personal property as they piled the bookbags up in a heap. The final ignominy was the mugshot. Cuffed protesters, carried face-down by police officers, were photographed one by one, often having their heads yanked back by the hair so that their faces were visible for the camera.

Black bloc and cops clash

Police focused much of their attention on the activities of the anarchist black bloc, a group of activists that has engaged in destruction of property and heated confrontations with police in recent protests. Reports on the black bloc differed, with one Associated Press reporter claiming that street fights between cops and anarchists were instigated by the protesters. David Graeber, a reporter for In These Times who acted as a daylong witness to the black bloc, said, “There was a strict policy of no damage to personal property.

“I don’t think there were any store windows smashed or anything like that. Since the theme chosen for Tuesday’s protests was the ‘Prison Industrial Complex,’ all the attacks were on symbols of state authority,” Graeber said.

Such symbols included the burning of the American flags and the red, white, and blue bunting which adorns the facades of buildings everywhere. Police car hoods were dented and the District Attorney’s office received a new paint job when anarchists threw rubber balloons filled with red paint at its facade.

“But everything was designed not to hurt anybody,” said Graeber, “including the smoke bombs.”

Independent Media Center (IMC) reporters videotaped an incident regarding police disguised as anarchists, beating a demonstrator while radioing uniformed officers for assistance. “There were about five or six of them amid the protesters and once the marching group started to thin out, they turned around and jumped one man and threw him to the ground. Then one officer dug his knee into the man’s eye-socket,” said IMC reporters. “At first I was very confused at why the protesters would tackle their own comrade. But it turns out that they were working with the police,” said one reporter.

According to Graeber, several similar reports of cops disguised as activists, claiming to be hurt by protesters, gave the police the excuse they needed to beat and arrest specific individuals.

This behavior escalated dramatically starting around 6 pm, after the city was emptied of its workforce. Tactics were not limited to protesters on the street. On Tuesday night, policemen entered the lobby of the Independent Media Center. At roughly the same time, a vanload of cops pulled up to the offices of the R2K Legal Team. The officers stepped out onto the street carrying plastic handcuffs. At neither location did the police actually enter the respective offices. When asked by an ACLU observer what they were doing outside the Legal offices, the officers replied they stopped and got out of the van merely to stretch their legs.

Police raid puppet factory

On Tuesday, police raided a warehouse that activists were using as a headquarters, apparently on the pretext that civil disobedience was being planned there. Seventy people were arrested in the sweep. A jailed Asheville resident, who at press time was practicing jail solidarity at Roundhouse Prison and therefore asked that her name not be used, gave this account, using a pay-phone in her holding cell:

“I was over at the puppet space yesterday — painting and finishing up puppets — and getting ready to move them out just to have puppets and do great theater. At about two o’clock the police decided to shut down the building, a large warehouse-type space, with tons and tons of cop cars and helicopters. There was a swat team and regular Philadelphia police. They started surrounding the space from all sides. We stayed in the building. We locked the door. The police didn’t have a warrant. For a very long time they were working on getting one. But they had barricaded us in while they were waiting to get a warrant to search the place. We were in constant negotiations through the ACLU — the president of the Pennsylvania branch — was negotiating with the police commissioner. There were about seventy people in the puppet space when the police surrounded it. And no one was planning to get arrested. It wasn’t a protest situation in any way. We were simply in a warehouse, painting cardboard.”

Around 4pm the trapped puppeteers were told that they had no choice but to surrender, that police had finally gotten their warrant, and that they had a chainsaw and were going to break in. The craftspeople relented and left the building after being informed that they were going to be detained.

“Their official line was that they’d been tipped off that there were weapons in the space or something. But they hadn’t searched the place and had no reason to be detaining us,” said the activist previously quoted, who went by her jail solidarity name of “Star.”

Taken into custody, each shackled in thick, plastic handcuffs, the arrestees filed onto a bus at 5pm and were taken to Holmesburg prison. Until one o’clock in the morning, the activists remained on the bus, enduring dehydration and extreme heat exhaustion because of an absence of ventilation. All the while, the people detained were kept with their handcuffs on — many of their hands becoming swollen, numb, and blue. At one point, these conditions were bad enough that one of their numbers passed out.

“He was unconscious…he was drooling…his eyes were rolling back,” said Star. “We had to scream for twenty five minutes at least, before we got any response at all from the police. We had made it clear that somebody was unconscious and that it was a medical emergency and they ignored us completely.”

Finally, police did respond. Officers abruptly came onto the bus, aggressively pushing aside people caring for the unconscious man. The arrestees were slammed back into their seats and the man who had passed out was carelessly dragged off the bus.

“Now these were people, mind you, picked up at the puppet space who were just being detained, having committed no crime whatsoever,” said Star. “Now we are among an estimated 450 protesters being held in the Roundhouse in Center City. A few people have been put in solitary confinement — people identified as ‘leaders.’ This was obviously a preemptive arrest to get the puppets and the people off the street.”

As of this writing, as mentioned before, many of those arrested are now practicing jail solidarity by passively exercising tactics of non-compliance by refusing to identify themselves. As many as eighty people are on a hunger strike. Seeming both mystified and outraged by their detainment, the jailed puppeteers and demonstrators are united as political prisoners of conscience.

Protesters said they are practicing a type of direct democracy by demonstrating in the streets. As for what is happening inside the convention center, Haley Barbour, chairman of the Republican National Committee in the 1996 convention, had this to say: “It’s all propaganda. It’s all a TV show. It’s not news, but it’s hugely important information for the American people.”