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If you want to wear your “Dump Dubya” button in Crawford, Tex., a few miles from the president‚s ranch, make
sure you get approval from the police chief. Wearing a political button
could violate Crawford’s protest ordinance that requires a $25 permit
and prior approval by police. A February 16 verdict by a six-person jury
meeting in a rented recreation center room upheld the ordinance. Five
peace activists stopped at a Crawford roadblock en route to protests
near the president’s ranch last May were convicted of violating the
city’s parade and procession law. They were fined $200 to $500 and plan
to appeal.
Increasing limits on protest aren’t limited to one-horse Texas
towns with Bush memorabilia shops. Government surveillance and the
criminalization of dissent are growing and activists and civil liberties
advocates say Americans need to be worried. Two significant recent
episodes prove their point:
* In Des Moines, the U.S. Attorney Office issued and the, under
pressure, dropped a gag order and subpoena that demanded information
about who attended and what was discussed at a peace forum. The supoenas
also required annual reports from the Drake University chapter of the
National Lawyers Guild. The campus group sponsored a forum November 15,
2003, a day before a run-of-the-mill peace rally at a National Guard
facility. Among those subpoenaed was the executive director of the
Catholic Peace Ministry. Faced with mounting criticism, the government
also withdrew subpoenas for four specific protestors.
* The Texas Civil Rights Project condemned U.S. Army intelligence
agents who wanted a roster of those who attended a conference on women
and Islamic law at the University of Texas law school in Austin.
Intelligence agents are also accused of posing as lawyers during the
February 4 event. The U.S. Army Intelligence Security Command has said
it is looking into incident. The law school’s president said it was the
first time in 30 years he had heard of the government investigating a
law school forum or seminar.
“When the government intimidates people expressing their opinions
non-violently in Iowa, the civil rights of all Americans questioned,”
said Joseph Truong, of the National Youth and Student Peace Coalition.
His group’s second annual national Books Not Bombs Day of Action is
scheduled for March 4. Last year most demonstrations went well and some
were supported by schools. But at least 300 students were suspended, 151 students arrested and two schools locked down, Truong said.
Still, Truong’s group is moving forward with its planned protest.
“These are not terrorists, these are people who are dissenting. I don’t
think people believe the Catholic Peace Ministry is a threat,” said
Caroline Palmer, a member of the National Lawyers Guild. The guild has
over 6,000 members and chapters at over 100 law schools and in nearly
every state. It is dangerous to lump peace activists, or other
dissenters, with legitimate targets for criminal investigations, she
said.
“We have been urged by the Bush administration that we have to
trade off liberty for security and that’s not true,” said Bill Dobbs of United
or Peace and Justice, a national coalition of over 600 groups opposed
to faulty U.S. foreign policy and devoted to social and racial justice.
Dobbs noted local ordinances that limit protest are growing and have
surfaced in small towns, like Crawford, Texas, and big cities like
Miami.
During a major protest against the Free Trade Area of the Americas
(FTAA) meeting last year in Miami, demonstrators found local law
governed how big puppets could be, he said. In other instances, people
were arrested for standing across the street from a protest site or for
simply wearing black, which police assumed made them anarchists, Dobbs
added. Protestors are hit with over charges, meaning what might have
been a simple arrest for civil disobedience can now mean multiple
criminal charges. “People and journalists need to be looking around the
entire landscape and asking what is going on,” said Dobbs. With the new
surveillance and police powers, it will likely to take years to know how
far the authorities have gone, he added.
“Why would government anti-terror resources be targeted at anti-war
activists?” asked Mara Verheyden-Hilliard, of the Partnership for Civil
Justice and a board member for the anti-war group International
A.N.S.W.E.R. She argues that thegovernment activity is clearly aimed
intimidation and has no legal basis. “When you have a government
carrying out criminal, immoral activity, you have a right to protest,”
she says. Verheyden-Hilliard warns against falling for the “good
protestor-bad protestor” divisions. In the 1960s, authorities wanted to
label and isolate the Black Panthers as the bad radicals to justify a
violent assault on the Black Power movement, Verheyden-Hilliard said.
Abuses within the notorious federal domestic spying and disruption
program known as Cointelpro, which targeted the civil rights and Black
Power movements as well as thousands of other activists from the 1950s
to early 1970s, led to prohibitions on some government spying activity.
However, many of those prohibitions have been lifted. The Partnership
for Civil Justice has a class action lawsuit going against the District
of Columbia and federal law enforcement authorities for hundreds of
arrests during anti-war and IMF/World Bank protests on Sept. 27, 2002. A
U.S. District Court judge certified the suit in late September. The
judge ordered release of an internal police document about the arrests
that Mayor Anthony Williams had withheld for months.
Lawsuits stemming from police misconduct during the Bush
inauguration in 2001 and the arrests of over 600 people in April 2000
are ongoing.
On February 4, the National Lawyers Guild Mass Defense Committee
filed a civil suit in Miami challenging ordinances enacted just before
the FTTA gathering. One provision made it unlawful for more than seven
people to gather for more than 30 minutes outside of a structure for a
common purpose. Though Verheyden-Hilliard calls the Bush administration
guilty of “cynical manipulation of the political climate” after Sept.
11, she said civil liberties erosions didn’t start with the
Bush-Ashcroft team. That means continued vigilance regardless of who is
in the White House, she said.
Heavy surveillance is expected and likely already underway for the
huge demonstration in New York, Chicago, San Francisco and other cities
planned by International A.N.S.W.E.R. and other groups for March 20, the
one-year anniversary of the war on Ira,. International A.N.S.W.E.R. has
already filed a Freedom of Information Act request about Justice
Department activity related to the peace movement.
A government memo, which surfaced last November and was reported in
the New York Times called for an increased focus on peace activists by
law enforcement. Yet the repeated harassment and the knowledge that it
will continue isn’t stopping activists. “Less activism is exactly what
these measures are designed to create,” said Wayne Krause, an attorney
with the Texas Civil Rights Project. For activists, the only response is
to keep organizing and getting people out in the streets and using
their civil rights.
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