This arrived in my email so I don't think the typical posting rules apply. Anyway, it's a good read for RNC protesters
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Lying in Wait
by David Graeber
It is a little-known fact that no one at an anti-globalization
protest in the United States has ever thrown a Molotov cocktail. Nor
is there reason to believe global justice activists have planted
bombs, pelted cops with bags of excrement or ripped up sidewalks to
pummel them with chunks of concrete, thrown acid in policemen's faces
or shot at them with wrist-rockets or water pistols full of urine or
bleach. Certainly, none have ever been arrested for doing so. Yet
somehow, every time there is a major mobilization, police and
government officials begin warning the public that this is exactly
what they should expect. Every one of these claims was broached in
discussions of the protests against the Summit of the Americas in
Miami in November and used to justify extreme police tactics, and we
can expect to be hearing them again in the months before the
Republican convention protests in New York.
Such claims have an interesting history. They first emerged in the
months immediately following the WTO protests in Seattle in November
1999, with a series of pre-emptive police strikes against activist
threats that, much like Iraq's weapons of mass destruction, never
quite materialized:
April 2000, Washington, DC. Hours before the protests against the IMF
and World Bank are to begin, police seize the activists' Convergence
Center. Chief Charles Ramsey loudly claims to have discovered a
workshop there for manufacturing Molotov cocktails and homemade
pepper spray. DC police later admit no such workshop existed (in
reality, they'd found paint thinner used in art projects and peppers
being used for the manufacture of gazpacho); however, the center
remains closed, and much of the art, including the puppets, has been
appropriated.
July 2000, Minneapolis. Days before a scheduled protest against the
International Society of Animal Geneticists, local police claim that
activists detonated a cyanide bomb at a local McDonald's and might
have their hands on stolen explosives. The next day the Drug
Enforcement Administration raids a house used by organizers, drags
off the bloodied inhabitants and appropriates their computers and
outreach materials. Police later admit there never was a cyanide bomb
and they had no reason to believe activists were in possession of
explosives.
August 2000, Philadelphia. Hours before protests against the
Republican convention are to begin, police, claiming to be acting on
a tip, seize the warehouse where art, banners and puppets are being
prepared, arresting the seventy activists inside. Chief John Timoney
announces the discovery of C4 explosives and water balloons full of
hydrochloric acid. Police later admit that no explosives or acid were
found; those arrested are not, however, released. All of the puppets,
banners, art and literature to be used in the protest are destroyed.
While it is possible that we are dealing with a remarkable series of
honest mistakes, this looks more like a series of attacks on the
materials activists were intending to use to get their message out to
the public. Certainly that's how the activists interpreted the raids.
One of the big discussions before every new mobilization has now
become where to hide the giant puppets. In Miami the City Council
actually made the display of puppets illegal during the month of the
summit--ostensibly because they could be used to conceal weapons--and
the police strategy consisted almost entirely of pre-emptive strikes
against activists, hundreds of whom were swept up and charged with
planning, but never quite actually performing, unspeakable acts.
The press, meanwhile, has been airing increasingly outlandish
accounts of what happened at Seattle. During the WTO protests
themselves, no one, including the police, claimed that anyone had
done anything more militant than break a plate-glass window. Yet just
three months later, the Boston Herald reported that officers from
Seattle had come to brief the local police on how to deal with
"Seattle tactics," such as attacking police with "chunks of concrete,
BB guns, wrist rockets and large capacity squirt guns loaded with
bleach and urine." When a few months later New York Times reporter
Nichole Christian, apparently relying on police sources in Detroit,
claimed that Seattle demonstrators had "hurled Molotov cocktails,
rocks and excrement at delegates and police officers," the Times had
to run a retraction, admitting that Seattle authorities confirmed no
objects had been thrown at human beings. Yet somehow the exact same
claims continue to resurface. Before the Miami protests, for example,
circulars distributed to local businessmen and civic groups,
attributed to "police intelligence" sources, listed every one of
these "Seattle tactics" as what should be expected, insuring that
when the protests began, most of downtown Miami lay shuttered and
abandoned.
Some police officials have become notorious among activists for their
Gothic imaginations. Timoney, the former Philadelphia police chief
who took over Miami's department before last fall's protests, is fond
of peppering his press conferences with stories of activists caught
planning to release poisonous snakes and reptiles among the
citizenry, officers hospitalized because of acid attacks and
activists assaulting his troops with a variety of bodily fluids. Such
charges invariably make splashy headlines at the time, only to be
later exposed as false or fade away for lack of evidence. Timoney has
also become notorious for brutal tactics: In Miami his men opened
fire on activists with an array of wooden, rubber and plastic
bullets, tazer guns, concussion grenades and a variety of chemical
weapons. Despite calls from groups ranging from the United
Steelworkers to Amnesty International for an investigation, Timoney
has already been put in charge of security for this summer's
Democratic National Convention in Boston.
Probably one of the police's purposes is simply to rally the troops.
As commanders discovered in Seattle, police often feel a little
uncomfortable about orders to conduct a baton charge against a group
of unarmed 16-year-old girls. A deeper reason, though, may have been
a perceived need to address a crisis in public perception. To the
frustration of high-level officials who were finding their meetings
regularly ruined by acts of civil disobedience, the American public
largely refused to see the global justice movement as a menace to
society. True, the media tried to create hysteria over a few broken
windows, but to surprisingly little effect. The question then became,
What would it take to cast protesters in the role of the villain? The
answer appears to have been a calculated campaign of symbolic
warfare: Remove the images of colorful floats and puppets; replace
them with images of bombs and hydrochloric acid. And if it has
worked--which seems to be the case, considering the public's relative
indifference to police destruction of protest art and banners in
Philadelphia, or to the extraordinary pre-emptive violence in
Miami--it is because on matters of public security, it rarely occurs
to most Americans that so many of the officials charged with
protecting them could be intentionally, systematically lying.
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