R2K PROTESTS ROCK PHILLY

Police Spin Meisters Mask Repression

by Bill Weinberg

As the Republicans convened in Philadelphia this summer to coronate George W. Bush as their presidential candidate, the coalition that was born at the Seattle WTO protests also targeted this renowned birthplace of American democracy—successfully breaking a draconian official ban on all protest in downtown Philly. As at last November’s Seattle protests, and the April actions against the World Bank in Washington DC, hundreds were arrested. But this time, authorities refused to negotiate when arrested protesters pledged non-cooperation to get charges reduced. And despite real human rights abuses, both in the streets and behind bars, Philly police successfully played the corporate media—which lauded them for their “restraint.” Protesters, who seized claim to the moral high ground in Seattle, were this time portrayed as violence-crazed nihilists or muddle-headed dupes. MTV even brought in Johnny Lydon (ex-Sex Pistol Rotten), who danced in front of the camera teasing: “I’m protesting against the protesters!”

As the Democrats prepared to coronate Al Gore in Los Angeles, numerous protesters remained behind bars in Philadelphia.

Monday: Welfare Rights Activists Reclaim the Streets

The protests in the Philadelphia streets echoed the themes of the Shadow Convention, the activist/celebrity confab MC’d by Arianna Huffington in West Philly’s university district—the economic gap, the prison-industrial complex and the War on Drugs. Recent events in Philly placed these issues in a stark light.

On July 12, a crowd of police officers were videotaped by a TV chopper as they relentlessly beat carjacking suspect Thomas Jones after a chase, leaving him hospitalized. Less than a week later, Amtrak police at Philly’s 30th Street Station shot and killed a disturbed homeless man, Robert Brown. Both victims were black.

In this atmosphere, the city fathers were taking no chances. On the afternoon of July 21, authorities shut down the Spiral Q puppet theater in downtown Philly, where young folks were making signs and props for the upcoming protests. Police removed everything from the building, and refused to give their names or badge numbers. Members of the local Philadelphia Direct Action Group claimed they had found electronic listening devices in their house. Police admitted they had kept protest organizers under surveillance for weeks.

Mayor John Street also announced that no rallies or marches would be permitted in central Philly once the convention opened on July 31, and organizers failed to win an injunction overturning this decree. On Sunday July 30, some 10,000 came out for the Unity 2000 march along the Ben Franklin Parkway, led by the local Kensington Welfare Rights Union, Philadelphia’s ACT UP, NOW and NAACP chapters, AFSCME workers, and national groups like Global Exchange. There were no arrests—but many pledged to march the next day, in defiance of the ban.

On the morning of Monday July 31, eight were arrested at City Hall for blocking traffic and throwing fake blood to protest continued funding of the School of the Americas, the Pentagon’s Ft. Benning training center which has been linked to assassination and torture in Latin America. Said protest leader Rev. Roy Bourgeois to stalled motorists before police dragged him away: “I apologize for the inconvenience. Sometimes you’ve got to do this to call attention to the problem.”

Just then, the Kensington Welfare Rights Union (KWRU), a community group in impoverished North Philly which had months ago been denied a permit to march that day, was gathering at City Hall undaunted. Police Commissioner John F. Timoney (former NYC police department Chief), actually on the scene on a bicycle, chose to avoid a confrontation when it became clear the KWRU and their out-of-town allies would not back down. As the marchers started south on Broad Street towards the convention center, his cops first tried to make them line up single-file in one lane—then backed off as it quickly became unworkable. A racially mixed procession of 5,000 marched down Broad Street through working-class South Philly, with a big but outnumbered police escort and numerous police and media choppers above.

But when the march was within view of the First Union Center where the Republicans were meeting, in a no-man’s-land south of the sports stadium, it was the marchers’ turn to back down. Police shunted the march east into isolated Franklin Delano Roosevelt Park. The entrance to the park on Broad Street was sealed off behind specially-erected fences, so the march had to go nearly a mile to the far end of the park—under a brutal sun in a sterile and empty part of town. There the event came to an anti-climactic fizzle. As the exhausted marchers dispersed, two were arrested for trying to scale the fence to get back to Broad Street without the arduous long-way trek back through the park.

While the Seattle protesters had succeeded in sealing off the convention center where the WTO was meeting, in Philadelphia, a radius of several blocks around the First Union Center was under tight police control, strictly off limits to protesters and general public.

The KWRU held several other actions in the days before the convention opened to draw attention to Philadelphia’s stark racial and economic divisions—such as a 300-strong tent city of homeless folk called Bushville, at 6th & Jefferson in North Philly. This was one stop on the “Reality Tours” KWRU held to show reporters the Philadelphia they weren’t supposed to see.

“They’re trying to push the poverty under the rug, but there’s just too much poverty in Philadelphia,” says Willie Baptist of KWRU, which has organized numerous tent cities—one dubbed Clintonville—and take-overs of empty buildings to address the crisis of affordable housing in Philadelphia. KWRU is also part of a coalition opposing a new sports stadium slated for Philly’s Chinatown, and has protested against the recent destruction of public housing in Philadelphia, which Baptist charges was done to clean up the city’s public image in preparation for the Republican National Convention (RNC). The Martin Luther King projects in South Philly were demolished in the prelude to convention, as well as North Philly’s Diamond Projects and others. Baptist charges new housing is not available for all those displaced.

Baptist says authorities tried to intimidate the KWRU out of protesting during the convention. “We received anonymous death threats on our office phone. Police had us under surveillance for weeks with a van parked in front of our office. The fact that we persevered shows the intelligence and creativity of poor and homeless families despite all the stereotypes.”

Warned Baptist as we recovered from the march, across the park fence from a phalanx of police: “We’re witnessing a systematic dismantling of our rights and entitlements we deserve as residents of the US. I’m not just talking about welfare recipients—the dismantling of public housing, privatization of education. This country was founded on life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Eleanor Roosevelt, the wife of the man this park is named after, spearheaded the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which expanded on those principles internationally. But that legacy has been betrayed. There will never be any change until we awaken the sleeping giant of the American people.”

Tuesday: Mumia March ends in Mayhem

The afternoon of Tuesday July 1 saw the first violence as police attempted to block a downtown march for Mumia Abu Jamal, the Pennsylvania death row inmate and former journalist whose highly dubious conviction in a Philadelphia cop’s death has made him a symbol in the struggle against capital punishment. “135 STRIKES YER OUT! GEORGE BUSH GUILTY OF MURDER” read one banner at the RNC’s second illegal march. Masked “Black Block” militants (who dissent from the protests’ official nonviolence pledge) were out in force. Police pushed the marchers off Broad into the narrow side-streets west of City Hall, then tried to seal off the intersections, trapping them. “BRICK BY BRICK, WALL BY WALL, WE’RE GONNA FREE MUMIA ABU JAMAL!” echoed off the buildings. A smoke bomb—thrown by police or protesters—exploded at 15th and Walnut, filling the air with acrid fumes. Protesters scattered down alleys, some overturning dumspters to impede the pursuing cops.

The march re-converged spontaneously on the Ben Franklin Parkway, a broad thoroughfare leading northwest from the City Hall area. Some of the delegates’ hotels were in this district, and one group of young anarchists dressed as clowns weaved through the streets on bicycles, chanting “DEMOCRACY, HA! HA! HA!”

Police caught up with the marchers on Ben Franklin and again pushed them onto side-streets. In a melee off Ben Franklin and 17th, cops charged the crowd on bicycles, and one drew his gun on protesters.

Meanwhile, a police car left unattended on the Parkway was trashed, with the left front side window shattered, the tires slashed, and “EXECUTE TOM RIDGE” spray-painted on the side—a reference to Pennsylvania’s governor. Tires were also slashed on a row of at least four police vans and city parks department cars. The news would report that night that some 20 city vehicles had been damaged.

The actions reconvened again back in the City Hall area. A statue of former Mayor Frank Rizzo (an ex-cop whose regime was notoriously brutal) in front of municipal building was splattered with red paint.

That evening, hundreds halted traffic with locked arms on Broad and Market streets around City Hall for over an hour before police on horseback finally succeeded in retaking the area.

The news that night reported that some 300 had been arrested, and ten briefly hospitalized—both police and protesters. Timoney himself allegedly suffered scrapes and bruises in a 17th Street scuffle.

Wednesday: Marijuana at the Liberty Bell; Vigil at City Jail

Wednesday August 2 was VP candidate Dick Cheney’s day in the limelight at the First Union Center, and Drug War opponents’ day to make their point in the street. Edward Forchion, running for Congress in New Jersey’s 1st district with the Legalize Marijuana Party (while still facing charges on a 40-lb bust) announced his intention to openly toke at the Liberty Bell that afternoon. “I believe I’m an American dissident, I’m not a criminal,” said Forchion, a spiritual and medical user (a car accident leaves him with chronic pain), to the small crowd that gathered in Independence Park. As city and federal police looked on uneasily, Forchion explained how he was fighting the Jersey courts on 1st and 9th amendment grounds.

“The government does not have the right to regulate my body. It never did and never will. Does anyone have the time?”

The crowd roared back in unison: “4:20!” Forchion lit up a huge spliff and passed it around. The onlooking police were fuming themselves, but did not interfere.

Forchion then led a march to the Roundhouse, Philadelphia’s police HQ where the arrested were held. Protesters were already amassed in a park across street, and cheered as the march arrived.

Many gave testimony to the police tactic of refraining from aggression in high-visibility areas like Broad Street, Ben Franklin Parkway and Independence Park—then unleashing brutality once protesters were cornered on side-streets. Read one banner: “STOP POLICE BRUTALITY—WHERE IS THE BROTHERLY LOVE?”

“Bork,” a young anarchist from DC, had a badly blackened and swollen right eye, and bruises on her arms. At the previous day’s Mumia protest she’d been dragged through street and kicked as police tried to wrench away her banner reading “STOP THE TEXAS KILLING MACHINE.” Although arrested, she was taken to the hospital instead of jail by the police wagon driver, which she credits as a small act of humanity.

When asked about the media line that the cops were being “restrained,” Bork replies: “I find it very painful, just as I find my arms and legs. It’s very sad that the media is a spokesman for the government instead of truly trying to find the news.”

Anarchist Scare

As Mayor Street said the police “conducted themselves with great grace under fire,” Commissioner Timoney portrayed the demonstrators as violent extremists. At a press conference Thursday, the two unveiled a cache of items—a giant slingshot, kerosene-soaked rags, and “sleeping dragon” devices designed to lock demonstrators together—they said were recovered from a raid on a protester safe house.

Street said the city would not give in to demands that arrested protesters have their charges reduced to infractions. “I call them conspirators and criminals and cowards,” Timoney said.

Patrick Reinsborough, an activist from San Francisco, stood up in the back of the City Hall briefing room to denounce the allegations, claiming the items were intended for nonviolent protests and street theater. The chains and kerosene-soaked rags were actually a fire-juggler’s prop and the “slingshot” was for carrying a giant puppet, Reinsborough told the Philadelphia Inquirer.

The items had been uncovered in Tuesday’s 2 PM police raid on the West Philly warehouse workshop of the Philadelphia Direct Action Group’s Ministry for Puppet-ganda. Police boasted they had planned the raid with the aid of infiltrators, but Timoney initially declined to say what objects had been seized. The search warrant itself, signed that same afternoon, and the police affidavit which procured it, were under seal at the request of Phildadelphia Assistant DA Cindy Martelli, barred from public inspection. But the Philly news media, perhaps at police suggestion, speculated about PVC pipes, gas masks and even C-4 explosive. The Ministry for Puppet-ganda told the Independent Media Center (IMC, http:www.indymedia.org), the loose collective which first came together to provide an alternative perspective at the Seattle protests, that the only things which had been seized were puppets and puppet-making materials.

The raid began when an activist responded to the knock on the door by looking through the mail slot--and received a blast of mace in his face through the slot. The puppet makers held a quick meeting to decide whether to open the door. But with police revving chain saws outside, Stefan Presser of the Philadelphia ACLU showed up. He told those in the warehouse they should submit to arrest, and would be released if no weapons or contraband were found. But all 70 "puppetistas" at the warehouse were arrested on misdemeanor conspiracy charges ("to disrupt traffic"). All were lined up and searched while hand-cuffed before being hauled off to the Roundhouse.

One puppetista, Gerard Damiano of New York City, felt betrayed. "If they'd infiltrated us and had been in the warehouse, they knew there were no weapons being made there." Artist Damiano was charged with possession of implements of crime and conspiracy to commit disorderly conduct.

One local resident witnessing the raid, a black woman, complained to the IMC in a clip broadcast that night on Philly’s Public Access Cable Network: “When we call the police it takes ‘em 20 minutes to come to this neighborhood. But for this they come right away. Why? All the kids did was come to our neighborhood, clean up a vacant lot, prepare food for the homeless, without any discrimination for anybody, any color.”

Philly’s major media also sensationalized Tuesday night about a red bus police had found filled with exotic poisonous animals—scorpions, snakes, poisonous toads. Two guys from Vermont were being detained in connection with the mysterious bus, which the TV news said had also been spotted at the Seattle protests. (Days later, it was quietly reported that the bus belonged to an exotic pet dealer and had nothing to do with the protests.)

Philly’s WKYW Radio reported Tuesday that officers had been injured with a “liquid substance.” Lloyd MacDonald of the protest coalition’s R2K Legal Collective questions that any of the protesters used mace or pepper spray against police, noting that none of them were arrested on weapons charges.

He does claim, however, that “police used pepper spray after protesters were arrested to make the arrest more miserable. I witnessed people being sprayed and beaten with batons after they had already subdued with handcuffs.” MacDonald himself was “hog-tied”—cuffed hand-to-ankle—after being arrested on Tuesday.

Wednesday saw a noon bomb scare at the municipal building, with police sealing off the surrounding streets.

While the seizure of props and puppets played into the hands of those protesters who saw vandalism as the only way to be heard, many suspect that the paranoia about poisons and explosives may be the fruit of COINTELPRO-type police tactics—spreading misinformation to divide the movement and distract public attention from their own abuses.

Human Rights Abuses

The degree of official spin control was evident when Stefan Presser of the Philadelphia ACLU told the Inquirer August 3 that the police “showed enormous restraint. We avoided the most serious pitfalls of Seattle. Timony didn’t use any gas; the officers didn’t use Mace.” This last allegation is contradicted by numerous eye-witness accounts of police using either mace or pepper spray.

In contrast, the R2K Legal Collective’s Ron McGuire told the IMC, “I consider this a civil rights catastrophe of the first order.”

Some of the reports filtering out of the Roundhouse crossed the line to actual human rights abuses. The R2K Legal Collective released a statement on the Internet citing “numerous accounts of arrestees who have been isolated, verbally abused, punched, kicked, thrown against walls, bloodied, and dragged naked across floors, in one instance through a ‘trash trough’ containing refuse, spittle and urine... Seven witnesses saw one woman dragged naked and bleeding. Diabetics, epileptics, and asthmatics continue to be denied medication. Trauma and psychological stress are evident.”

Many of those being held had apparently been subject to arbitrary arrest. Philly resident Montserrat Dutton witnessed two protesters get arrested while simply standing as a counter-presence to some followers of anti-gay crusader “Rev.” Fred Phelps who had signs that said “GOD HATES FAGS” and “AIDS CURES FAGS.” “There was no provocation,” she said. “They grabbed them from behind. It could have been any one of us.”

An IMC cameraman taping an arbitrary search had his camcorder grabbed by police, and was (illegally) ordered to take out the batteries and put them in his camera case.

Joseph Rogers, a local Quaker activist and president of the Mental Health Association of Southeast Pennsylvania, was detained on Tuesday evening. After witnessing correctional officers tightening the cuffs on arrested protesters until their hands turned blue, he complained to the guards—who retorted, “This will teach them a lesson, this will teach them to come to Philly.” After further protest, Rogers was removed from his cell and “hog-tied.” He later reported to the R2K legal team: “I told them I was diabetic but they threw me to the ground so they could cuff me. I was told to hop but my damaged knee prevented me. They dragged me to my cell.”

There were also reports of protesters being cuffed to the cell bars in a crucifix position overnight, with their arms twisted in different directions.

In the aftermath of the protests on Thursday, as George W. Bush accepted the nomination at thew First Union Center, media hero Timoney announced he was giving the whole police force a $1,000 bonus and 7% raise.

Scores of arrested protesters announced an indefinite hunger strike to press demands for reduced charges and an end to the brutality. But the media weren’t paying attention.

Conspiracy Cases

Most of the bails were set at $15,000 or more—up to $50,000 just for misdemeanor charges. Four charged with assaults were held on bails of $400,000 to $500,000.

Two arrestees, Kathleen Sorensen and John Sellers, were singled out as “ringleaders” and held on a whopping $1 million bail. Sorensen’s organization, Philadelphia Direct Action Group, explicitly advocates nonviolence and discourages property destruction in its web site (http://www.thepartysover.org). So does Sellers’ group, the Berkeley-based Ruckus Society (http://www.ruckus.org), despite its suggestive name. Sellers was charged only with misdemeanors.

The outrageous bails did grab the media’s attention. Larry Krasner, the criminal defense lawyer representing Sellers, told the Inquirer: “The DA’s behavior is like nothing I’ve ever seen in my life. This is a desperate effort to systematically punish these people without a trial, to lock them up, keep them off the streets.”

Philly ADA Martelli flashed a “dossier” at a press conference where she characterized Sellers as a public menace and “immense” flight risk with a multi-state arrest record—but was unable to cite specifics. Said Martelli at Sellers’ August 3 bail hearing: “He sets the groundwork. He sets the stage. He facilitates the more radical elements to accomplish their objective of violence and mayhem.”

Sellers, who was plucked off JFK Boulevard by police on Wednesday morning, was charged with possession of an instrument of crime, obstruction of justice, obstructing a highway, failure to disperse, reckless endangerment and misdemeanor conspiracy. Authorities did not identify the “instrument of crime,” but intimated that Sellers had overturned trash cans. From his jail cell, Sellers retorted to the Inquirer:

“We are an incredibly transparent group, we even gave the police our website. We have nothing to hide. Even my parents are proud of me.”

Timoney called for a federal conspiracy investigation into Sellers and other national protest organizers.

“I intend on raising this issue with federal authorities,” he told reporters. “Somebody’s got to look into these groups. I don’t think you should have people out there who are going to...come into a different city time after time to assault police officers, engage in serious property damage and destruction. That ain’t cricket.

On August 7, following some media criticism, Philadelphia dropped Sellers’ bail down to $100,000 and he was released. Sorensen, a Philadelphia ACT UP stalwart charged with 10 felonies (including arson, riot and conspiracy), followed on August 10. Some 250 protesters (of a total 479 arrested) remained behind bars, committed to non-cooperation. The R2K Network, coordinating the various protest groups, called for public pressure on the Philadelphia authorities to negotiate. But Martelli pledged to hold the detainees until their late September arraignments if need be, and began rotating them from the overcrowded Roundhouse to county jails around the Philadelphia area. The abandoned Holmsburg Prison was even ordered open to accommodate the protesters. The R2K Network started raising bail money, and over the next weekend most of the protesters were released. They now await trial—36 on felony charges. The Network began organizing benefit parties for the legal fund as the nation turned its eyes to the Democrats and Los Angeles.