Monkeyfist.com: Waging War on Political Dissent

Regular Monkeyfist readers know there is a newly dynamic, growing, and dedicated protest movement in America. It's a movement that, if it must have a single overarching theme as the simpletons of corporate media demand, consistently opposes corporate power and oppression. The Monkeyfist Collective has been taking the protest movement seriously, seeing in it a chance for authentic change. I took it seriously enough to spend two weeks participating in protests of the Republican National Convention in Philadelphia.

In what follows I discuss the strategies and ploys by which dissent is criminalized. I conclude that these strategies constitute an oppressive, unjust climate in which some kinds of political expression have become a dangerous, costly pursuit.

Timoney's Conceit

John Timoney, Philadelphia police commissioner, is a preening, conceitful man. I saw him on the streets of Philadelphia a few times during the convention, regularly surrounded by cameras, to which he played mercilessly.

On my second day in Philadelphia, I went with friends to a universal health care rally in a lovely park in Central City. The rally was authorized by the city; there was no reasonable expectation of unlawful disturbance. About 10 minutes into the rally, I was chatting near the back of the park when I caught sight of a lone bicycle cop getting out of a police van. I watched him as he biked to the park. Just outside the park I saw four police public information officers flank him. They were all women under thirty, and all armed to the teeth. Curious.

As this curious entourage came into the park, I saw that the lone bicycle cop was Timoney himself. He'd come to the peaceful, permitted health care rally in search of a photo-op. All the media immediately surrounded him like flies on a fresh dog turd. The public information officers -- acting as his bodyguards, but not obviously enough to disturb the Timoney-the-Real-Cop myth -- allowed the media to press very close to Timoney. But when activists and citizens realized that Timoney had come to spoil the rally and march, many tried to get close to listen to his remarks. His bodyguards made this very difficult, repeatedly asking us to step back. In response, we spontaneously took up a boisterous "free Mumia!" chant to drown him out.

Timoney's conceit is plain but its scope is vast and cause for concern. Compare his post-demonstration "bounce" to that of Seattle's police chief Norm Stamper. After the WTO protests last year, the ACLU, NLG, and some Seattle politicians loudly criticized the conduct of the Seattle PD, and with good reason. Stamper resigned, overshadowing what was in many ways an enlightened tenure (at least by prevailing big city standards). Unlike the mayor of Seattle, Philly's John Street has pledged to support his police department and Timoney no matter what they did to protesters.

But Timoney isn't satisfied with merely surviving. Responsible for a disgusting display of police brutality, he means to ride his status as Top Cop into a bigger, better job. He's taking the offensive against those citizens his cops have already abused, actively calling for a federal investigation of the protest movemen. These calls for federal involvement are a serious escalation in what must be seen as the criminalization of dissent.

Abraham's Maleficence

But luckily Timoney's conceit outstrips his power. To complete the Philly treatment, Timoney needed and got the cooperation of Lynne Abraham, Philadelphia's District Attorney. How is she relevant? In the first place, prosecutor's exercise discretion in choosing what to prosecute. During the Vietnam War, for example, many refused to prosecute draft resisters because they knew that civil disobedience wasn't the same as mere lawlessness, and that our criminal justice system is ill-equipped to judge acts of political conscience. Some today refuse to prosecute casual drug use cases, understanding the twisted illogic of the political drug war. In the second place, the protests in Philly -- given George W. Bush's deadly predilections -- focused on capital punishment, and in Philadelphia, that means the case of Mumia Abu-Jamal, a case in which Abraham has been and continues to be involved.

At least one march against police brutality and capital punishment in Philly focused some of its attention specifically on Lynne Abraham, calling her out by name to account for the D.A.'s rampant abuse in capital cases, among other kinds of malfeasance.

A bit of Lynne Abraham's history, courtesy of Refuse & Resist!, is instructive:

Lynne Abraham declared that African-Americans commit 80% of all the crimes in Philadelphia.
She's called the "Queen of Death" for her vigorous advocacy of the death penalty for African-Americans in Philadelphia.
She's largely responsible for the biggest police and prosecutor scandal in Philadelphia's history, with at least three hundred convictions by Philadelphia courts having been overturned because of fraudulent evidence and frame-ups by police and prosecutors.
Her office has opposed every motion to reveal the unreleased records in the case of Mumia Abu-Jamal.
In Mumia's 1995 hearing for a new trial, Lynne Abraham's office lied in claiming that the practice of peremptorily challenging African-American jurors wasn't being practiced by the time of Mumia's 1982 trial.

It should come as no surprise, then, that Abraham is Timoney's willing participant in the city-wide politically-motivated persecution of dissenting protesters by means of preventive arrests; absurd bails; inappropriate charges and prosecutions; unconstitutional stop-and-frisks; jail abuses; and inappropriate punitive acts.

Local Abuses Realized

The arrests of high-profile so-called leaders, like John Sellars and Kate Sorenson, as well as the raid of the puppet warehouse were totally preventative in nature. Abraham's office sought and received the court's permission to place under seal the affadavits which were used to obtain a search warrant for the puppet warehouse. I spent some time in the puppet warehouse making (ineptly) skeletons to symbolize the people executed in Texas under George W. Bush. I was there 20 minutes before it was raided. It's not hard for me to surmise why Abraham doesn't want the public to see the warrant's supporting documents. Perjured affadavits sworn out by infiltrating police officers (who were, ironically enough, operating the most dangerous items in the puppet warehouse: drill press, band saw, table saw) are the only way a warrant could have been secured, short of complete, unthinking judicial acquiescence to the prosecutor's request. The puppet space was benign, except, of course, at the level of political symbolism and theater, where it constituted a graphic factory of political and social dissent.

After Tuesday, August 1st, the Roundhouse (Philadelphia's main jail) held about 400 protesters, both those who'd been detained preventatively, and those who'd been detained as a result of civil disobedience. What happened in the Roundhouse, far from the prying eyes of media and citizen oversight, belongs in the pages of Kafka. The physical privations included physical assault, water, food, overcrowding, denial of medical attention. The psychological abuses included verbal humiliations, threats and harassment, inappropriate jail placements, etc.

The abuses continued as the D.A. requested and received inappropriate, punitive bail judgments. "I think these bails are meant to stifle dissent," Paul Hetznecker, a lawyer for protesters, said. "It's part of an attempt to criminalize political activism in this country."

Even the ACLU has said that it's "concerned that bail is being set at artificially high levels to keep protest leaders in detention until their date of trial, which will be after the Democratic Convention in Los Angeles. The purpose of bail is to insure that a defendant will appear at trial. It is not intended to prevent a person from expressing his or her dissenting views." The immediate reaction in Philly among protesters to the absurd bails was precisely that they were meant to prevent folks from protesting the Democrats in Los Angeles. They also have an understandable chilling effect, as do all of these strategies and ploys, making it less likely that citizens will feel safe in pushing the limits of dissenting political expression. As properly a right, rather than a privilege, citizens ought to be free in a healthy democracy to exercise the limits of political expression without undue concern that those in power will punish that expression.

Other, surreal forms of harassment are equally alarming. At least two protester vehicles, upon their return from police impound, had been completely trashed. One vehicle had been urinated in repeatedly, had been vandalized, and contained antiprotester messages like "welcome to philly" scrawled on the interior. The entire contents of a second vehicle had been systematically destroyed, including personal property, camping equipment, electronic equipment, etc. This angry pettiness, along with the destruction of all personal property in the puppet warehouse, to say nothing of nearly 1,000 lbs of puppets and supplies, reveals the depth of inappropriately punitive acts designed to punish protesters. The police in Philadelphia, as in Seattle and Washington, seem not to understand that their role is not to punish citizens, all of whom, so far as cops are normally concerned, are to be presumed innocent until proven guilty of the crimes for which they are arrested.

Federal Abuses Anticipated

As if the tactics used locally weren't bad enough, there are increasingly shrill and distortive calls for federal investigations of the protest movement. "We are the third or fourth city to suffer," Timoney claims, alluding to Seattle and Washington. He adds, "I think that there is...a cadre...of criminal conspirators who are about the business of planning a conspiracy to really cause mayhem, to cause property damage, to cause violence" in cities hosting major events. No mention that these protests are of political events. No mention that civil disobedience is different in kind from mere lawlessness. No mention that federal investigations of groups and individuals who are passionately committed to social and political change via nonviolent civil disobedience will have an unwanted, widespread chilling effect at the limits of permissible thought and expression. No mention that the vast majority of protesters have no interest in committing civil disobedience. And, finally, no mention of the kind of disgusting and brutal treatment that the police in Seattle, Washington D.C., Philadelphia, and, even as I write this, Los Angeles have visited upon citizen protesters.

Again, the ACLU puts things clearly: it's "very worried that a federal investigation, as suggested by [Timoney], could discourage many Americans from exercising their First Amendment rights. Calling for the federal government to prosecute those who engage in nonviolent civil disobedience could intimidate many people from participating in protests. Many Americans will be afraid that they will get caught up in a federal investigation." It's worth stressing that many Americans are, given the events of Seattle, D.C., Philadelphia, and Los Angeles, justifiably afraid of federal response; further, justifiable fear on the part of Americans at the risks of political expression is unjustifiable, in fact, intolerable in a healthy democracy.

Timoney's grandstanding for a federal investigation wouldn't be as troubling if they were isolated. But there are signs that calls federal investigation may become a trend. Just last week the Discovery Institute called for federal investigations into the "funding sources" of the protest movement. It's little more than a bunch of rich, technoweenie, crackpots, headed by self-styled futurist (are there any futurists who aren't complete idiots?) George "I make Bill Gates think, I must be a genius" Gilder, a racist, sexist technoposeur. Despite its reputation, it may be an important signal of things to come; these things tend to start at the edges and run inward to the center. It joined Timoney in calling into question the "funding behind the national pattern of riot-planning and accuses rioters of civil rights violations. Riots aimed at disrupting the Republican National Convention in Philadelphia are expected to be followed by still more serious disruptions in Los Angeles, but still there is no public effort to investigate." This would be intelligible if only the Discovery Institute meant to call for an investigation into the police-planned riots and the police violations of civil rights in those riots.

Drawing Conclusions

What these patterns of realized local and anticipated federal harassment and intimidation amount to is something like the oppression (by criminalization, propaganda, marginalization) of dissenting political opinion. Oppression is serious business, and it's not a word I use casually. But in this case I think it warranted.

The powers-that-be will continue to constrain and confine the options of those who would refuse and resist neocolonialism in the guise of global corporate domination, both domestically and abroad. When nonviolent civil disobedience is treated as if it were mere lawlessness, when its avowed political context is denied or distorted, when dissent from the political mainstream is criminalized, the formation of an oppressive political climate is the result.

Such a climate is, as Noam Chomsky puts it, one way to keep the rabble in line. Unlike women and people of color, oppressed because they are women and people of color, the protesters as protesters have, at least in principle, an option that no oppressive system can ever constrain: we can just stop, shut up and go away.

Or we can refuse to surrender our struggle for a more just world by embracing hope and solidarity. Despite the best efforts of the powerful few, the choice is ours.