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March 31,
2003
You Can Jail
the Resistors, But You Can't Jail the Resistance
A Report on New York City Protests
By LADAWN HAGLUND
Photos
by JOANNE MARINER
Because the corporate media is not doing its job
explaining why we in New York and elsewhere oppose this sick
war in Iraq, I want to describe some of what happened at the
action on March 27th and explain my choice to participate.
I have just been released by the New
York Police Department after 18 hours in custody on charges of
disorderly conduct, as a result of my participation in peaceful
protests in Mid-Town Manhattan on March 27th. Because the corporate
media is not doing its job explaining why we in New York and
elsewhere oppose this truly sick war in Iraq, I want to describe
what happened and explain my choice to participate.
The Initial Action
At 8:00 a.m. a gathering of anti-war
protesters assembled in front of the Rockefeller Center, near
the studios of CNN, NBC, and Fox. At around 8:25, a mock air-raid
siren sounded and a couple of hundred people either walked to
the street or pushed down or scaled barricades in order to lie
down in front of traffic on 5th Avenue. There was no violence
on the part of the protesters, but there was some chaos when
police pushed "die-in" non-participants back onto sidewalks
and secured barricades as supportive onlookers shouted, "the
whole world is watching!" Helicopters circled overhead as
hundreds of police formed lines around the "dead,"
many of whom had adorned their bodies with fake blood and wounds,
pictures of now-dead Iraqis, and tombstones representing US soldiers
and Iraqis alike.
Then a wave of arrests began. Most people
appeared to allow themselves to be arrested without resistance,
while a small handful "went limp," in an effort to
complicate and delay the disbandment of the action. At this point
and throughout the day, people were also arrested from sidewalks
for apparently no reason, though the bulk of the arrests were
from the die-in. From my vantage point, there seemed to be little
confrontation, though there were several people who later appeared
at the police-processing center with wounds to the head, and
to wrists damaged by plastic handcuffs that had been fastened
too tightly.
It was at some point during this first
wave of arrests that I was taken into custody. My arresting officer
was rather surly at first, due to the fact that he would be staying
with us all day until we were released, likely after a 20-hour
shift. But he said he understood that we had a right to express
ourselves politically (even though he disagreed), and turned
out to be a truly sympathetic ally for me and his three other
charges during the ordeal that was to follow.
Transport to the Processing
Center
The police van carried me and 12 others
to an initial processing site on the corner of 11th Avenue and
36th Street, across from the Jacob Javits Center. I remembered
with irony that this is where I came just after 9/11, dazed and
shaken, to volunteer for digging at the World Trade Center disaster
site. This is where I had seen the refrigerated trucks that would
bring body parts to morgues for identification, to try and give
closure to the thousands of families devastated by this horrific
attack.
And into my silent ruminations crept
two thoughts: first, that the dead in Iraq, blown to bits by
US "smart" bombs, would have no such honor for their
families or their remains; and second, that attacks like 9/11
are made more likely by the arrogance and disdain with which
this government destroys lives of people we feel to be "others."
(I put this in quotes because the "others" are not
as different as the Administration would have us believe. Its
shockingly immature arrogance regarding the treatment of "outsiders"
is an attempt to hide our own vulnerability, while dehumanizing
those we kill and insinuating or even stating outright that their
lives are not as important as "ours." Why do "they"
hate us? Because we are lovers of "freedom"? Please.)
My co-arrestees and I spent over an hour
sitting in a stuffy van, watching through headache-inducing metal
window grids as more and more buses of detainees arrived. Several
of the men had been denouncing the fact that their cuffs were
cutting into their flesh and stopping blood circulation, but
it was close to an hour before these complaints were addressed.
Finally, a "white shirt" (an officer of higher rank
than the arresting "blue shirts") came to cut off the
cuffs. I could hear him from inside the van swearing loudly at
the cruelty with which the cuffs had been attached: "This
is f***ing ridiculous! This is not necessary! Look at his wrists.
Damn it! This was not necessary!"
Because I had been allowed to keep my
cellular phone, and because my cuffs were loose, I was able to
extricate myself from them and call our legal support team. We
were able to report the arrests of everyone in the van without
being discovered by the cops. This was especially important because
we were denied legal council throughout the day. A small victory...
After some photographs and information
gathering (the first of several rounds of information gathering),
we boarded buses and headed to the main processing center at
1 Police Plaza. At this time it was around 3:00, six hours after
my initial arrest. We had not been given food or water, and seemed
no closer to being released than hours earlier. (Thanks to the
kindness of our arresting officer, I and two other women had
peanuts, but nothing more.) There seemed a willful disregard
for our requests for phone calls and lawyers, which only worsened
as the night wore on.
One Police Plaza
Many things happened in the holding cells
about which I am not directly able to report, as I was locked
in a one-bed cell at the back of a smelly, depressing cellblock
with three other people for the next 12 hours. Any untoward bodily
functions had to be performed within two feet of a co-detainee.
I realized at that point why I could never be a criminal. The
conditions are truly dehumanizing, even for a group of loving,
peaceful, passionate demonstrators. I cannot imagine how someone
is treated when they are charged with a truly serious crime.
One officer laughed at my assessment: "hell, you think this
is bad, you should see where we put the REAL criminals!"
In crept another thought regarding why our jails do not "reform"
prisoners, and our society is so harsh, so violent: dehumanization
nurtures meanness. How have we forgotten this? Where have our
spirituality and our wisdom gone?
Our cell block was all women, similarly
cramped, with the men being placed in large, open holding cells
that were probably even more nerve-wracking with their chaos
and fluorescent lighting. The women outnumbered the men almost
two-to-one, and we made sure our voices were heard... quite literally!
Our singing carried out to where the men were being held, I heard
later, and inspired most everyone to keep up their spirits. We
were not exactly versed in the lyrics of protest songs, but we
belted out our Janice ("Oh, Lord, won't ya buy me a Mercedes
Benz"), our Bob Marley ("Emancipate yourselves from
mental slavery! None but ourselves can free our mind"),
and our Edwin Starr/Bruce Springstein ("War! What is it
good for? Absolutely nothing!") But we finally threw the
desk officer--a commanding, daunting African-America woman--over
the edge with Gloria Gaynor ("I will survive!") She
came back shouting, "Ladies! Ladies! Ladies! Now I like
a good song as much as the next person, but PLEASE!" We
honored her request until the shift change.
One of the most disturbing aspects of
this experience, to me, was our treatment as dangerous criminals.
Here we were being charged with an infraction, yet we were subjected
to almost 24 hours of confinement, photographing for a national
database, and fingerprinting. That is the equivalent of being
treated like a terrorist for a parking ticket. The effect is
truly chilling, especially considering the climate of repression
of alternative views that seems to be so acceptable these days
in this country. Do we realize how seriously in jeopardy our
civil liberties are? Let me ask again, do you realize it? The
same rights and ideals, embodied in the United States Constitution
(with a lot of borrowing from Europe), that make us proud, and
that other nations have since used to design their constitutions,
are being eroded at an alarming pace. If we sit by and let it
happen, we are seriously in trouble.
What is security?
What is patriotism?
Some people would--and do--argue that
we must erode civil liberties, including the right to protest,
for national security reasons. This will make us safer, they
say, and protestors should expect to be seen as terrorists for
not supporting the government. I have a few things to say about
that. First of all, how likely do you think it is that Mohamed
Atta or any of the other 9/11 attackers would lay down in the
middle of the street in Midtown Manhattan and peacefully be arrested?
It is never gonna happen, people. None of the measures that were
taken against the peaceful protestors on March 27th made us one
whit safer.
Second, if we really want to be safer,
instead of putting resources into oppressing legitimate protest,
maybe we should think about paying our dues at the United Nations
and support the International Criminal Court so that we can truly
address the problem of terrorism in a way that does not make
us appear to be imperialist opportunists (like the language or
not, that is what we appear to be to the majority of the world's
people). Of course, we do not want to support the exact court
that would make us safer because then we would have to recognize
that the United States itself has been found guilty by that court
for the crime of mining Nicaragua's civilian harbors. Washington's
refusal to recognize its jurisdiction is another spectacular
example of, "Do as your Uncle Sam says, not as he does."
This double standard is totally transparent and obnoxious to
the rest of the world. Why do we refuse to see it? This certainly
breeds contempt for the US.
Third, and most importantly when discussing
democracy: PROTEST IS PATRIOTIC. Our country has a long tradition
of non-violent civil disobedience designed to force rulers to
address injustices. Generally the blind, greedy, and self-important
will never address those problems without such pressure. The
25% of people that outwardly oppose this war have not been given
25% of the airtime in the corporate media in order to make their
case. Instead, commentators shake their heads and lament that
we are not supporting our troops. I am sorry, but BULLSHIT. If
you want to "support" someone, do you thrown her or
him to the lions? Do you force them to enter into unjust combat?
Cut veterans benefits?
During the first Gulf War, my partner
at the time, a Marine, was put on alert for transfer to Iraq.
I remember how time stopped, how I wept in class, how a classmate
wept with me, remembering her boyfriend who was called to Vietnam
but never returned. As he, my longtime sweetheart, marched next
to me in the anti-war protests in San Francisco, I knew I was
doing the best thing I could to support and protect him: try
to stop him from going. Once the troops are already in battle,
trying to end the war before they are killed is the MOST patriotic,
loving, and supportive act possible. It is pure propaganda and/or
willful ignorance to accuse protestors of not supporting our
troops.
It is also complete nonsense to say that
if you do not agree with the President, you should move to France
or somewhere else, "love it or leave it." Excuse me,
but this is my country too, like it or not, and I am disgusted
at the direction my country has taken. We have all sat and watched
while the Supreme Court put a member of the oil elite in the
White House against the popular will. This man now tries to pass
laws and implement policies that annihilate years and even decades
of work by dedicated, passionate people: policies that destroy
our environment, wreck the tax base of our economy, eradicate
social protections for our most vulnerable citizens, smash our
unions, poison our international alliances, undermine the United
Nations, and ignore the wishes of millions of people here and
around the world. To support such a rogue is profoundly unpatriotic.
As a bumper sticker reads: "If you are not outraged, you
are not paying attention."
Back to Jail
So I found myself in jail waiting for
hours on end to be fingerprinted like a violent repeat-offender
or child molester. When they finally called me for scanning (fingerprinting
has become computerized and very high-tech) I was trying to keep
up my spirits and those of people around me, several of whom
had clearly reached the end of their patience. Suddenly, I heard
a raised voice say, "Get out then! Go stand in the hallway!"
Out came a Muslim woman, clearly distraught, clutching her hijab
(the garment worn by Muslim women to cover their hair). She had
resisted removing her hijab for the mug shot, and the officer
in charge had told her, unsympathetically, that she would be
there all night for "refusing to be photographed."
She kept saying with a quivering voice, "I am not refusing,
it is just my religion not to remove it. Can't you take a picture
with it on?"
Minutes later I saw her talking to an
imposing man in a gray suit with a cold, fascist air about him.
I thought at first he was a lawyer, as she had asked repeatedly
to talk to a lawyer, but when she re-entered the photography
area trembling and weeping, I knew he was no lawyer. She was
told to stand in front of the camera, and as she started fumbling
to unpin her hijab, tears streaming down her face, I was reminded
of a scene from a movie where a young girl is tricked into disrobing
in front of a pervert and his camera, against her will. The only
difference is that there were at least 30 people in the room.
The tension in the air was like poison gas.
One of the other detainees, who was swift
of mind and spirit, said firmly to her, "If they are coercing
you into doing this, do not do it! It is your right!" Nazi-man
retorted with, "Oh, so you went to law school?" By
then I had awakened from the sickening trance in which I had
fallen and said, "Excuse me, but since when do you need
to go to law school to know your rights?" He glared at all
of us, then turned to the Muslim woman and barked, "are
you going to take it off or not?" Shaking visibly but then
straightening, she said quietly, "no." She was escorted
out of the room, and I do not know, as of yet, what became of
her.
Despite the strong presence of disagreeable
and probably ugly, brutal police officers, there were many officers
who were responsive, gentle, and kind. Most of them, however,
were bound to follow orders by higher ups, who themselves may
or may not be kind. With so many hundreds of police milling around
all day, it was interesting to note the power plays, the posturing,
the attempts by some to treat us with respect, and the sinister
undercurrent that treated us as terrorists. I was finally released
at 2:30 a.m., and met outside by a wonderful support group that
was there for us through it all.
Epilogue
As I watched the World Trade Center collapse
on September 11, 2001, swallowing lives and reality as I knew
it, I remember fearing the jets screaming overhead. I remember
the relief when I realized they were US military planes, not
planes meant to kill me. The Iraqis will never feel such relief
because those US military planes screaming overhead ARE meant
to kill them, even though Saddam Hussein was NOT responsible
for 9/11. The lesson? We frighten, maim, and murder Iraqis; they
are not happy to see us. They do not want to live under US occupation
any more than they want to live under Hussein. This type of public
relations will never make us safe.
Pointing out this reality does not make
us terrorists. We are humanists, students, unionists, teachers,
peaceniks, parents, realists, idealists, lovers of democracy,
and passionate citizens. We believe that terror begets terror.
Dehumanizing and criminalizing us is not going to make us go
away. As the t-shirt that I wore to the protest read: "You
can jail the resistors, but you can't jail the resistance."
LaDawn Haglund
can be reached at: ljh204@nyu.edu
Today's
Features
William
S. Lind
The Pitfalls of War Planning
Jorge
Mariscal
Latinos on the Frontlines, Again
Paul
de Rooij
Arrogant Propaganda
Jo
Wilding
From Baghdad: "I Am His Mother"
Tarif
Abboushi
Operation Embedded Folly
Lee
Sustar
Labor's War at Home
Akiva Eldar
Israeli Dreams of Iraqi Oil
Bernard
Weiner
The Vietnam Connection
Robert
Fisk
The Graveyard at Baghdad's North
Gate
Steve
Perry
War Web Log 04/01
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