"Abu Ghraib Protest Leads to Felony Arrest"

Camille Dodero, Boston Phoenix

You da Bomb: Boston police blew Previtera's protest out of
proportion.

It was a skinny pair of stereo wires that got 21-year-old
Joe Previtera charged with two felonies. A week ago on
Wednesday, the Boston College student poked his head through
a gauzy shawl, donned a black pointy hood, and ascended a
milk crate positioned to the right of the Armed Forces
Recruitment Center's Tremont Street entrance. He extended
his arms like a tired scarecrow; stereo wires dangled from
his fingers onto the ground below. Without those wires, the
Westwood native could have been mistaken for an eyeless
Klansman dipped in black, or maybe even the Wicked Witch of
the West swallowed by her hat shorn of its brim.

But those
snaky cords made the costume's import clear: Previtera was a
dead ringer for one of Abu Ghraib's Iraqi prisoners —
specifically, the faceless man who'd allegedly been forced
to balance on a cardboard box lest he be electrocuted."We found that street theater can be more effective in
conveying a message than a flier," Previtera says nearly a
week later, explaining why he'd dressed up like the Abu
Ghraib prisoner. "We picked the location because we wanted
to make people think about what they might be called or
forced to do if they enlist in the military."

But the demonstration didn't go as planned. Previtera —
along with four friends who'd come out to shoot photos and
protect the blinded activist in case, as fellow BC student
Nick Fuller-Googins put it, "some hyper-nationalist
character came up and punched him in the stomach" — figured
the cops would warn him before they tossed him in the clink.
But they didn't. First, Previtera's friends say, someone
came out of the recruitment office and told him to get down;
when Previtera didn't, the person went inside. (No one from
the Armed Forces Recruitment Center could be reached for
comment.) Soon after, the cops appeared and watched the
spectacle from their cruisers; shortly thereafter, the
Boston Police bomb squad rolled up. Less than 90 minutes
after the protest began, the police began taping off the
area around him, and when Previtera stepped down, they took
him into custody for "disturbing the peace." But Previtera
had remained silent the entire time. "I was really trying to
play the role as accurately as possible," he says. "So I was
not speaking with anyone, just trying to stay there as still
as possible." Any disturbance came from the crowd of gawking
spectators that, witnesses say, assembled once the policeman
showed.

At the precinct, Previtera discovered that in addition to
the initial misdemeanor, he'd been charged with two
felonies: "false report of location of explosives" and a
"hoax device."

"This was supposed to be more symbolic than anything," says
Previtera, who never imagined they'd nab him for a false
bomb threat. "I never wanted to scare anyone into thinking I
had a bomb. I just wanted to make people think about
international affairs." He adds, "I never uttered the word
bomb or explosive."

Previtera's friend Soula was surprised too. But she realizes
this kind of escalated police response has sadly become the
norm for activists. "In the world and time that we are
living right now — most people will say the post-9/11 world
— when you go out to some demonstration or in any way
display your dissent for anything related to the government
or the status quo, you're putting yourself at risk," she
says. And the same day of Previtera's protest, a report in
the Boston Globe warning of possible terrorist threats read:
"Officials were urged to take note of people dressed in
bulky jackets in warm weather ... or trailing electrical wires."

So if Previtera didn't mention a bomb, what exactly
constitutes a bomb threat? "It can be implied, with fingers
and wires — especially in a heightened state of alert, as we
are," says Officer Michael McCarthy, Boston Police
Department spokesman. And McCarthy thinks this is common
knowledge, even if the wires are accessories to a costume.
"Mr. Previtera should know better. He's a young adult
educated at Boston College from a wealthy suburb. I'm sure
he knows wires attached to his fingers, running to a milk
crate, would arouse suspicion outside a military recruiters'
office [when he's] dressed in prisoner's garb. If he has any
questions as to why people think he may've had a bomb, then
he needs to maybe go back to Boston College to brush up on
his public policy. Or at least common sense, but they can't
really teach that there."