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Maryland ACLU defends right of anti-war group to hold weekly vigils in public space
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NATION BRIEFS
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Crackdown on immigrants: a ‘war at home’?
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Peaceful DC anti-war march attacked by police

By Shawn Gaynor

Washington DC, Apr 14(AGR)— Some twenty thousand anti-war protesters gathered in Washington, DC this weekend to express their belief that, despite its efficiency, the war on Iraq remains immoral and unjustified.

As protesters gathered at Freedom Plaza, as part of an International ANSWER rally, a smaller group starting at the National Sculpture Garden held an un-permitted march to Freedom Plaza. At several points police and federal marshals confronted the march, sponsored by the DC Anti-Capitalist Convergence, but the marchers refused to get onto the sidewalk, instead walking around intervening police, ignoring them. As police called in backup, the march reached the larger Freedom Plaza rally and as it circled the plaza, many people came out into the streets to join with the march. Marchers stopped on 12th St. bordering the plaza, closing traffic off on the road for the rest of the rally.

Some time later, the permitted ANSWER march began its peaceful procession through the city.

The crowd began to chant: “While you’re shopping, bombs are dropping,” as thousands of people filled several city blocks.

Police motorcycles appeared, presumably to escort the marchers through the city, but the streets and sidewalks were too packed with people for the motorcycles to maneuver. The police then tried to push their motorcycles though the crowd, reving engines, and in some instances bumping into protesters.

As the crowd passed by the FBI building, they began to chant “Shame” and “Fuck the FBI!”

Then, on H St., the lead cycle hit an older man, who became irate at the police behavior. As he was verbally berating the police, they all dismounted, drew clubs, and charged through the crowd.

One woman who witnessed the incident said, “the first person the police came to was an elderly woman. She was pushed to the ground by the lead cop, and then ten cops ran her over, stepping on her as they charged in, pushing more people and swinging batons. She was little.”

Several protesters were struck on the head and some were visibly bleeding from their wounds. Masked anarchists intervened, creating a line between police and demonstrators, and in some cases scuffling with the charging police. As police attempted to detain some of those who had been beaten to the ground, the crowd closed in and pulled those people to safety.

As the crowd became emboldened, the increasingly outnumbered police returned to their motorcycles unimpeded, and the march continued on.

Police motorcycles resumed their aggression toward the crowd, striking several people from behind.

“This is a peaceful protest; we have a permit!” screamed one man in the crowd. Insults like “Fascist Pigs!”, and “Fuck the police,” were shouted by many marchers, though the crowd remained peaceful.

As the crowd passed the heavily barricaded Lafayette Park, which has been closed to the public since the 9/11 attacks, the police presence visibly increased. More people were pushed by police and hit by motorcycles.

When the march reached 18th and I streets, the police began an unprovoked and extremely violent attack on the march. Black Bloc protesters, who where roughly a block away from the aggression, rushed in as police were viciously clubbing people. The chaos created by the police riot left marchers running in every direction with nowhere to escape. As one unit of police pushed people from the streets, demanding they get onto the sidewalk, another attacked the crowd from the sidewalk, forcing people back into the streets.

The crowd, with nowhere to move, eventually ended up surrounding a group of over a hundred officers who stood in a circle in the middle of the street still beating anyone within reach. Police eventually stopped their attack and the ANSWER march leaders told the crowd from a sound truck to ignore the police and keep marching.

This drew the crowd’s ire. “Fuck’en communists open your eyes!”, and “why aren’t you down here with the people?” were amongst the dozens of insults hurled at the speakers for ignoring the situation, as the sound truck became partly surrounded.

New speakers, reportedly from the National Lawyers Guild, climbed onto the truck. They were more responsive to the situation, asking people to raise their hands if they were standing next to somebody who was injured, and to get in touch with the National Lawyers Guild if they had witnessed the police aggression.

Scores of protesters were injured. According to DC Indymedia, several protesters were taken to the hospital, including four students from Students for Peace and Justice. One was removed from the scene with a dislocated knee after being run over by a police motorcycle; several head injuries were also reported.

According to the Washington Post, Marc Frucht, one of three protesters arrested said he was turning to leave when a group of officers tackled him. He said he was repeatedly struck by police.

“I remember vividly three hits, and I began praying, ‘I hope this stops soon,’ “ said Frucht, who added that he did nothing to provoke the officers. “I feel like it was beyond excessive force. . .It felt like an act of wilding.”

One of the officers involved was put on desk duty after the incident aired on a local DC television news show. Frucht was later hospitalized for his injuries.

DC Police Chief Charles H. Ramsey said there might be “training issues” raised by the officer’s conduct.

Other protests were reported though the week, including a brief disruption of the US Senate, where protesters chanted “no money for war.”

A 10,000 person march, and an unrelated shutdown of Chevron/Texaco headquarters where 30 people were arrested, took place in San Francisco. In Los Anglels, some 5,000 people march against the war.

Maryland ACLU defends right of anti-war group to hold weekly vigils in public space

Baltimore, Maryland, Apr. 10— Saying that laws here that govern public demonstrations may violate free speech rights, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) of Maryland today filed a lawsuit in federal district court on behalf of members of an anti-war group who assemble in the popular Inner Harbor area for weekly, silent vigils.

“The Inner Harbor is the quintessential public square,” said Rajeev Goyle, a staff attorney with the ACLU of Maryland. “It is the most visible spot in downtown Baltimore and the natural place for people exercising their free speech rights to gather and voice their ideas.”

The ACLU lawsuit challenges the city’s practice of requiring permits for small groups of demonstrators and the unnecessarily long advance notice requirements (up to eight weeks), which stifle timely demonstrations intended to respond to current events. The lawsuit also asserts that under the First Amendment, speech that does not trigger the government’s interest in crowd control cannot be burdened by government regulation.

The lawsuit, Cunningham v. Flowers, was filed on behalf of five women who are part of the Baltimore chapter of the anti-war group Women in Black. Police last week broke up a small demonstration, saying that the women were assembled illegally because they had not obtained a permit. After learning of the lawsuit, Baltimore City Solicitor Thurman W. Zollicoffer, Jr. agreed to suspend for 180 days the permit requirement for all demonstrations with 25 or fewer people.

The city’s agreement to temporarily suspend permit requirements for small groups makes it possible for Women in Black to stand in their customary spot this Friday without fear of arrest, said the ACLU. The women intend to return to the Inner Harbor for their weekly vigil in the coming weeks as well.

“The City Solicitor did the right thing under the US Constitution,” said Susan Goering, Executive Director of the ACLU of Maryland. “He affirmed that what distinguishes this country from many others is the right of free speech, even for those who may disagree with government policies.”

Before last Friday and since December 2001, Women in Black held 14 vigils on public sidewalks in the Inner Harbor area without incident, Goering noted. However, an officer at the scene told demonstrators that while the vigils had not been a problem in the past, someone had complained and he was forced to take action. Goering said Friday’s confrontation with law enforcement officials highlights both the unconstitutionality of the permit scheme and the selective enforcement of that permit plan.

The ACLU has periodically received complaints of free speech restrictions in the Inner Harbor section. Specifically, individuals have complained about the application process at the Baltimore City Department of Recreation and Parks for onerous permits required of those who seek to engage in free speech activity in the Inner Harbor.

Source: American Civil Liberties Union

Crackdown on immigrants: a ‘war at home’?

By Katherine Stapp

New York, New York, Apr. 9 (IPS)— When Abdul Jalil Tabaa, a car salesman living in Orange County, went to register with California’s immigration authorities last December he expected the process to take a day at most.

Instead, Tabaa, a Syrian who has worked in the United States for 20 years, became one of hundreds of Muslim men who were handcuffed, arrested, and shuttled from jail to jail while authorities ran exhaustive background checks.

Sabaa lacked a “green card” (a permanent resident visa) -- although he had long ago applied for one -- and was thus classed as having overstayed his visa.

“I got a little scared,” he said. “It was pretty tough. The first night, we all slept on the floor. I was lucky, I had a jacket and warm clothes. Others were wearing only T-shirts. The air conditioning was on, there were no blankets. Some groups were strip-searched. I was made to take off all my clothes, even my underwear, and put on jail clothes,” he said.

Sabaa was finally released after family members of the mostly Iranian detainees converged on the jail where he was being held. Immigration authorities decided that his story checked out, although other men were forced to pay a $1,500 bond to walk out the door.

Sabaa’s three-day ordeal was triggered by a registration program introduced by the Justice Department last November that requires all male non-citizens over age 16 who come from any of 21 countries deemed to have terrorist links, to register with the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS). The process entails being interviewed, photographed, and fingerprinted, or facing possible criminal prosecution.

The new policy has resulted in hundreds of arrests and deportations — often for minor immigration infractions — and has sown fear in Arab and Muslim communities throughout the United States.

“The whole idea of putting people in jail when they already have all our information: why?” asked Tabaa, who has two young children, ages six and ten. “Out of 20,000 people, they maybe get one person (suspected of terrorist links), and they think that’s OK. It’s racial profiling.”

Groups working to help targeted immigrant groups in east coast US cities report similar chaotic and abusive conditions during registration.

“In the last three weeks we’ve heard cases of people being beaten and harassed by guards, sending dogs into the cells in the middle of the night, intense overcrowding,” said Namita Chad, a community organizer with the New York-based group Desis Rising Up and Moving, which works with detainees and people who are supposed to comply with the registration process.

“We’ve seen hundreds of workplace and home raids,” Chad said. “Just a day after the war started, we were getting phone calls from Iraqis who were being interviewed [by federal agents]. All this is really tearing apart the fabric of immigrant communities.”

Reem Abu-Sbaih, a Palestinian activist who walks people through the registration process, says she has seen a translator at the immigration offices in New York only once.

“The process can take up to 24 hours,” she explained, even for those who have not outstayed their visas. “The whole time people are so scared. They see other people getting taken away in handcuffs. A lot of people are ‘self-deporting,’ thinking ‘why should I stay here and face this harassment’.”

Indeed, an unknown number of Arabs and Muslims here are opting to leave for other countries, activists report. “We’ve gotten calls from people who offered their homes as safe houses for people on the way to Canada,” Chad said.

And the government’s net is being cast ever wider. Earlier this month, the Department of Homeland Security unveiled a new regime of even tighter restrictions for Muslims seeking to come to the United States. Dubbed “Operation Liberty Shield,” the plan provides for the mandatory detention of asylum-seekers from more than 30 classified countries while their claims are processed, which can take months, if not years.

“The Bush administration has criticized the human rights records of abusive regimes, such as Iraq,” said Alison Parker, a refugee protection expert at Human Rights Watch. “Yet under this policy the administration will jail people simply because they have fled those same abusive regimes.”

The crackdown on Muslims and Arabs is prompting comparisons with the mass round-ups and detentions of 120,000 ethnic Japanese — most of them US citizens — on the west coast during World War II.

“These are very, very extreme developments,” said Sanhya Shukla, an anthropology and Asian American studies professor at Columbia University who is affiliated with the school’s Center for the Study of Ethnicity and Race. “It’s a kind of fascist moment. Registration could be preparing people for the worst case scenario — internment.

“We would have found it laughable five years ago if we were told that we’d have a Department of Homeland Security, a PATRIOT Act,” Shukla added. “We now have to ask ourselves whether to define this as a war at home.”

The Justice Department recently drafted new legislation, nicknamed PATRIOT II, that greatly expands the government’s domestic spying powers and, among other things, would allow people here to be stripped of their citizenship if they are found to provide “material support” to terrorists or terrorist groups.

While the first PATRIOT Act was quickly shuffled through Congress in the immediate aftermath of the Sept. 11 attacks, the new legislation is being closely scrutinized by some key Democrats such as Patrick Leahy, a ranking member of the Senate Judiciary Committee. Not surprisingly, civil liberties groups have condemned PATRIOT II as “right off the edge.”

“The biggest threat to America is not the small group of extremists who hate America but an administration that would set the constitution on fire,” said Ismail Royer, communications director for the Virginia-based Muslim American Society.

“They’re trading in fear, and in a cynical way they’re benefiting from the terrorist attacks of 9/11.”