Thousands protest presidential debate

Protesters confront a plainclothes police officer at a barricade during protests outside the first presidential debate in Boston.

Compiled by Eamon Martin

Boston, Massachusetts, Oct. 3— Thousands of protesters gathered before the presidential debate Tuesday, championing issues from campaign finance reform to the right of third-party candidates to be included in the match-up between Democrat Al Gore and Republican George W. Bush.

At least 16 of the more than 10,000 demonstrators who converged on the University of Massachusetts-Boston campus were arrested, police said. However, the day of rallies was dominated by peaceful — often theatrical — events. Pro-democracy demonstrators carried placards reading “Test market catchy slogans and call it your ‘vision for America.’” Pro-Nader demonstrators chanted “open the debate.”

At times, demonstrators confronted State Police, bursting through barricades and blocking roads as state troopers in riot gear fought back with pepper spray and billy clubs. In one instance, nearly 200 protesters rallied behind a group who had grabbed a metal barricade in an attempt to get closer to the building where the debate was held. Many reports say police used pepper spray and clubbed several demonstrators, often indiscriminately.

Before the debate, witnesses said a man wearing a Gore T-shirt turned from an argument between supporters of Gore and Green Party candidate Ralph Nader, grabbed a 3-foot wooden cross from a man holding it and broke it over the man’s head.

Witnesses screamed for police; the assailant fled into the crowd.

A chain of Gore backers stopped Nader supporters as they tried to move closer to the main building, and some talked of hostility between the two sides.

“I got the feeling they were standing there strictly to pick a fight,” said Nader supporter Thomas Leaf.

Soon after the debate ended at 10:30 pm, a large group of protesters overturned a barricade and gathered on University Drive within sight of the debate venue, hurling fences into the roadway, State Police said.

The protesters-- mostly supporters of Green Party candidate Ralph Nader, who was not allowed to participate in the debate-- sat in the road, locked arms, and chanted as mounted State Troopers rode through the group, attempting to disperse them.

Police dragged at least 10 protesters over barriers and sprayed others with pepper spray. Some officers also yanked metal barriers over protesters lying on the ground. At that point, some protesters began hurling stones, and one jumped onto a parked van and tore off the windshield wipers, flinging them toward the officers.

The scene was in stark contrast to the circus-like atmosphere that prevailed earlier in the day, as costumed demonstrators and placard-waving protesters made their way peacefully to the campus. Debate continued page 7 continued from page 1 But soon after sundown, the trouble started. Prior to the debate, some of thearrests followed fist-fights between rival political camps, State Police said.

Then, still more were arrested when groups of demonstrators tried, and occasionally succeeded, in knocking down barricades near the debate site, prompting State Police to pull out nightsticks and make arrests.

A short while later, about two dozen people stepped over the barricades and toward a squadron of State Police in riot gear, while holding their hands aloft in a peace sign.

For several minutes, it was a peaceful standoff. Then suddenly, the police rushed the protesters, swinging batons and spraying pepper spray into the crowd, forcing them behind the barricades. About 200 police nearby in riot gear mobilized and moved toward the crowd, which then backed off.

U-Mass Junior Chris Garner, one of the few students allowed to enter the debate as a journalist, but subsequently manhandled by police after attempting to photograph one of them clubbing a woman on the head said, “People have something to say and they’re being shut out. All we want is a voice.”

Nader barred from viewing debate

In a move Ralph Nader called “the beginning of the end of the Commission on Presidential Debates,” the debate commission, along with three uniformed police, refused to admit Nader to the presidential debate viewing auditorium Tuesday night, even though Nader had a ticket to the event.

Nader was given the ticket to the Lipke Auditorium by a Northeastern student. As soon as Nader got off the bus en route to the auditorium, he was met by a representative of the debate commission and three police officers.

Ralph Nader hold up a ticket to the debate
given to him by Todd Tavares, 21, a student
at Northeastern University.

“It’s already been decided that whether or not you have a ticket you are not welcome in the debate,” John Bezeris, a representative of the debate commission, told Nader. “I didn’t expect they would be so crude and so stupid,” Nader said after being turned away. “This is the kind of creeping tyranny that has turned away so many voters from the electoral process.

“Imagine that, a private company — controlled by the two major parties and funded by beer, tobacco, auto and other corporations — misused police power to exclude me from the premises, even though I had a ticket to enter issued by the debate commission themselves,” Nader said.

“On top of many other serious blunders, mistakes and demonstrations of arrogance generated by this corrupt debate commission, which is controlled by Al Gore and George W. Bush, this unlawful exclusion will be the beginning of the end of the debate commission monopoly that is obstructing millions of Americans from access to the presidential candidates in a multi-candidate debate forum,” Nader said. “I was excluded on political grounds and no other considerations were communicated.”

Just a few days earlier at Boston’s Fleet Center, on Sunday, October 1, a rally for Ralph Nader and his running mate Winona Laduke drew more than 12,000 people. Former talk show host and co-chair of the Citizens’ Committee for Nader/LaDuke, Phil Donahue emceed the events and called upon corporate organizations, such as those in his own industry, to return control to the people. “Of all the corporations that are consolidating (one of the most dramatic) is the media. Five years ago you could only own no more than 12 radio stations, now one company owns 800,” Donahue said. “Is there a reporter out there that thinks this is a good idea?”

Speakers at the rally also included teacher, activist and scholar Howard Zinn, who was greeted with a standing ovation. Zinn’s comments included a historical perspective on the consolidation of power into the hands of the economically and financially influential and a reassuring note on the result of the election. “If Gore is elected, Bush will fade away. If Bush is elected, Gore will fade. But Ralph Nader and Winona LaDuke will still be here.”

Source: Boston Globe, Associated Press, Independent Media Center: www.indymedia.org

US drug war at center stage in renewed Bolivian violence

By Jim Shultz

Cochabamba, Bolivia, Oct. 1— While Colombia and Peru have been catching more of the world’s Andean attention for the past few weeks, Bolivia suffers one of its worst political and social crises in decades. Two weeks ago an informal alliance of teachers, farmers, rural water users and others began a series of national protest actions aimed at forcing the Bolivian government to the table over a mix of issues including teacher salaries, eradication of the last remaining coca crop, and the construction of three new, US-financed military bases.

A nationwide teachers strike has left virtually the entire Bolivian public school system idle during the final weeks of the South American school year. Blockades of the major national highways have brought virtually all overland travel and commerce to a full stop. Bolivia’s President, Hugo Banzer, who ruled the nation as a dictator during much of the 1970s, has deployed more than 20,000 soldiers and police in an effort to stop the protests by force.

US backs crackdown

At least ten people have been killed by government fire, more than 100 injured, and an unknown number jailed. Eye witnesses have reported that much of the shooting is being carried out by army officers, including long-distance sharp shooters. The current crisis comes just six months after President Hugo Banzer declared a national “state of emergency” in an unsuccessful effort to stop a civic uprising over water privatization. Those protests forced the departure of a subsidiary of the US Bechtel Corporation which had raised rates as much as 300%.

On Friday in Washington, US State Department spokesman Richard Boucher declared the US’s support for Banzer’s actions, saying, “We share and fully support President Hugo Banzer’s call for communication and reconciliation.” Hours later, just before dawn on Saturday, Banzer’s government sent 1,500 troops into the small town of Vinto, in an attempt to remove a highway blockade there. Soldiers killed a 25 year old taxi driver, Benito Espinoza Saravia, and injured 29 others, including six year old Ximena Zenteno, who had her nose destroyed by an army tear gas canister.

US drug war at issue

On Saturday, Bolivian government officials sat down for negotiations with various movement leaders, convened by the Catholic Archbishop. Sources close to the talks say that the hardest issues deal with the Bolivian government’s US-financed plan to eradicate the last remaining 5% of the country’s illegal coca leaf crop. That plan involves building three new military bases in the Chapare region, the chief coca growing area. To be built with $6 million in US assistance, the bases would permanently deploy 1,500 troops in the area, a move bitterly opposed by local residents and many human rights groups.

“These bases were never debated in the Bolivian Congress or by the Bolivian people,” says Edwin Claros, Vice President of the Assembly on Human Rights in Cochabamba. “The role of the military is to protect our borders, not to wage war with our own people. The bases will definitely mean more use of the military in the region and more violations of human rights.” Late Saturday the government announced that it would back away from its hard-line insistence on the bases, but only with the alternative of expanding the military’s presence at an existing base in the area. Arguing for a permanent military presence in the region in a televised speech to the nation last Wednesday, Banzer proclaimed, “We can’t leave those areas unprotected to be retaken by the black market of narcotrafficking.”

Despite US Ambassador, V. Manuel Rocha’s public declaration last week that the bases were, “not an imposition by the US government but a decision by the Bolivian government,” many here question whether the US is voicing that same flexibility behind closed doors. An Embassy official, speaking on condition of anonymity, admitted that if Bolivia should back way from the US-financed base plan, it could create doubts about the Bolivian government’s much-touted pledge to make the country “free of illegal coca” by 2002. Said the official, “That would leave open the question: If you are committed to eradicate coca using the military, how are you going to continue it without a military presence?”

In September the Bolivian government’s coca eradication efforts were cited by President Clinton as his main reason for proposing that the US and other lenders forgive the nation’s multi-million dollar foreign debt. US officials would very much like to use Bolivia as a model of a successful eradication effort, especially with the Clinton Administration’s new $1.3 billion military-led coca eradication plan in Colombia.

Even with the apparent government concession on the bases, it is unclear how long the conflict may continue between the government and coca farmers in the Chapare region. Blockades there have cut off highway passage between the nation’s second and third largest cities, Cochabamba and Santa Cruz. Representatives of farmers are demanding that they be allowed to continue growing small plots of the plant (less than 1/2 an acre). With nearly 95% of the crop already eradicated in the region, they argue, the small crops that remain would be for traditional uses, including the wide-spread Bolivian practice of chewing coca leaves. Talking about the eradication program this week, a top Bolivian official admitted, “We’ve also wiped out the livelihoods of hundreds of thousands, maybe one million people.’’

While the coca leaf is the base ingredient for cocaine, it only takes on the drug’s effects after being substantially processed with powerful chemicals. Unprocessed coca leaves are legal, and are sold and chewed widely; they are also used for commercial production of coca tea, popular as a treatment for stomach and altitude ailments. Coca farmers also note that small plantings are allowed under the nation’s coca-eradication law approved under US pressure in 1988.

Food and patience in short supply

Meanwhile, food shortages caused by the blockades have started to take effect in some cities and many Bolivians are growing weary of the protest, lobbing criticisms and more at both sides. A collection of children’s drawings pasted to the wall of one Cochabamba school shows images of soldiers opening fire on people and trucks stopped at blockades, along with writings such as: “I want peace; Don’t throw rocks; and Don’t kill people.” A week ago, angry chicken producers dumped a pile of 1000 dead and rotting birds on the front steps of the Cochabamba state governor and of one protest group. The birds died when their food supplies were cut off by the blockades. An informal poll by a daily newspaper here of 1440 readers voiced a 51% level of support for the protesters and their demands.

Following the end of negotiations Saturday, representatives of the various groups returned home to their local bases to consult on possible accords. Over the weekend some coca farmers announced that they were prepared to take up firearms if needed to protect their land if the government did not reach an acceptable agreement. The highway blockades, public mobilizations, and military deployments continue throughout the nation, creating a palatable air of tension and with no immediate end in sight.

Source: The Democracy Center: www.democracyctr.org

cartoon by Barry Deutsch www.teleport.com/~ennead/ampersand/vanguard