Anonymous comrade writes:

"Anarchists Object:
We Are No Excuse for Terror-Baiting"

Recent statements by New York Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly,
reported in the New York Daily News ("Anarchy Threat to City: Cops fear
hard-core lunatics plotting convention chaos", July 12), give us a
taste of the kind of hysteria New Yorkers can expect in the weeks
leading up to the Republican Convention in August. Time after time,
before summits and conventions, police make bizarre, hysterical
predictions about anarchists plotting terror and mass destruction —
predictions which have never, once come true. But the fact that they
invariably prove false never stops the police from doing it again, or
the local media from taking them seriously.

Therefore, some of us feel it might be helpful to issue a small
reality check.1) Who are anarchists?

Anarchists are people who believe that rather than being controlled by
governments, it would be better for human beings to manage their own
affairs on the basis of self-organization, voluntary association and
mutual aid. We look forward to a society in which people are brought up
to be reasonable and respectful of one another and therefore, in which
police will not have to exist. This might be one reason police have
never liked us very much.

In America, anarchists have long campaigned for greater freedom and
democracy. Anarchists were crucial, for instance, in the creation of
groups like Planned Parenthood and the American Civil Liberties Union;
anarchist labor unions were the main force pushing for the 8-hour-day.

2) What are New York anarchists really doing about the Republican
National Convention?

There are hundreds of anarchists in New York who, like so many New
Yorkers, feel that the Republicans' decision to hold their convention
in our city is a cynical ploy to exploit the memory of our suffering on
September 11th that should not go unanswered. There will, certainly, be
protests, and probably very large protests. Anarchists are involved in
every aspect of the planning and preparations, from United for Peace
and Justice, which is planning a mass march and rallies, the Still We
Rise coalition of community-based groups, the RNC Clearinghouse, which
is trying to coordinate housing, transportation, artistic and
theatrical events, among many other things, the People's Law
Collective, that will be providing legal support to protesters or other
New Yorkers arrested during the protests, teams of medics to provide
care and assistance for protesters or other New Yorkers injured during
the protests, and so on. So far, one of the main concerns of the
anarchists involved in planning the protests has been to insist that
everything is done openly and democratically; that in our organizing,
we should provide an example of real democracy to contrast to the
phony, sham "democracy" the Republican Convention represents.

3) But what about all those police claims of violent or terroristic
behavior?

Time after time police have made similar claims. Time after time they
have been proven to be lying.

Just look at the hard facts, compare police predictions before and
during protests with what actually ends up happening. Again and again,
police spokesmen predict terrible violence. They predict goons with
molotov cocktails, anarchists setting off bombs, protesters throwing
acid or slabs of concrete at policemen, or even more bizarre fantasies
— during the last Republican Convention, for instance, Philadelphia
police claimed anarchists were preparing to release poisonous snakes
and reptiles all over the city. During the protests, they often claim
such things are actually happening. But every time, when it's all over,
police are either forced to grudgingly admit they were "mistaken" (the
molotovs turned out to be paint thinner used in making puppets, the van
full of reptiles turned out to be owned by a pet store), or they just
stop talking about it and hope nobody notices that none of these things
ever actually occurred.

Real terrorists try to create terror. They threaten to do terrible
things, to kill and maim innocent people, if governments do not agree
to their demands. Then they go out and do it. Afterwards, they boast
about it and threaten more. Here we have the exact opposite. The
anarchists who help organize protests in America have never threatened
to hurt anyone, never claimed to have hurt anyone, and in fact, in four
years of protests, never have harmed members of the public in any way.
Despite that, every time there's a major protest, the police keep
trying to terrify the public by predicting mayhem, and the anarchists
keep desperately trying to reassure the public that there's nothing to
be frightened of, that the last thing we'd ever want to do is to harm
them.

In other words, it's the police spokesmen who keep trying to create a
climate of terror. We keep trying to diffuse it.

So who's the terrorist?

4) But why would the police want to terrify the public?

Allow us to suggest one very simple reason.

Rich people don't like it if you try to ruin their parties.

If you think about it, this is pretty obvious. There was once a time
when the richest and most powerful men on earth?bankers, politicians,
Enron-style executives?could meet wherever they wanted, sip their
martinis, go to their lavish balls, and hold fancy summits where they
discuss what economic policies to impose on the rest of the world. Ever
since Seattle, almost every time they try to meet, they find themselves
faced with thousands of indignant citizens determined to practice
non-violent civil disobedience to try to spoil the party. Protesters
blockade streets. They chain themselves to doorways. They lie down in
front of traffic. Some of them even place trash cans and dumpsters in
the middle of the street or sing rude songs outside posh hotels. How
could the people attending these summits not find this annoying?

Obviously, the party-goers feel it is the job of the police to do
whatever it takes to make the protesters cut it out.

The police, in turn, have to do what they're told. After all, even
when the party-goers do not actually include heads of government like
George Bush, we are talking about the richest and most powerful men on
earth. During several protests in Washington, for example, it was
publicly announced that units of the DC police had been put under the
direct command of the IMF (an international banking organization).

The problem is, as the police discovered in Selma Alabama and other
places many years ago, you can't stop such forms of civil disobedience
without being very violent towards a large number of American citizens.
Especially if you're trying to so traumatize them that they will be
reluctant to come out and try it again. You have to hit people, beat
them with sticks, teargas them, shoot them with tazers and plastic
bullets, sweep up hundreds in mass arrests (where they can then be
treated in a style not unreminiscent of some of what we've recently
seen at Abu Ghraib). All this is now regularly done, but it puts the
police in a delicate situation. After all, they are being asked to
attack some of the very American citizens they are supposed to be
protecting. What's more, when you start using teargas and mass arrests
and opening fire on crowds of people with tazers and rubber bullets,
it's impossible to ensure that you only hurt the protesters.
Inevitably, you will be injuring ordinary citizens who just happen to
be standing around.

So the question becomes: how can you possibly justify police tactics
that you know endanger the public against a group which does not
endanger the public in any way?

If you want the answer, just look at what people like Commissioner
Raymond Kelly say and do.

5) Could the police really be intentionally endangering the public?

Well, that depends on what you mean by "intentionally". Most police
officers are decent human beings doing their jobs like anybody else,
trying their best to serve and protect a public that doesn't pay them
very well or fully appreciate the risks they have to take. Certainly
they are not going to intentionally try to hurt innocent bystanders.

The people who run the police however are basically politicians and
like most politicians, they tend to lie. Probably, one of the main
targets for all these tall tales about protester violence are their own
subordinates, street cops who might otherwise feel uncomfortable about
attacking the very citizens they are sworn to protect.

Once again, if you don't believe us, check the facts. Look at what
really happens. Count the numbers of people who end up injured after a
major protest. Usually, there are hundreds of injuries among the
protesters. Sometimes there are a handful of injured policemen, too,
though it usually turns out they were mainly injured by things that
other policemen did. We are not aware of a single report of an innocent
bystander having been injured by a protester at a big summit or
convention. But every time there is a major protest, there are dozens,
often hundreds, of reports of bystanders shackled, hogtied and thrown
in jail, clubbed, kicked, hit by "non-lethal" weapons like rubber or
plastic or wooden bullets. There have been endless horror stories:
pregnant women who abort because of CS gas, American citizens losing
teeth, eyes, ending up with permanent disabilities, dying prematurely
of conditions caused by police use of force. If foreigners did this to
American citizens the press would certainly be calling them terrorists.
And they'd be right.

So, to Commissioner Kelly and all the other politicians who control
our nation's police, we say this. Stop trying to terrify the public
about non-existent threats. There are plenty of real threats to spend
your time worrying about. Stop attacking American citizens who are
trying to exercise their constitutional rights. Stop using tactics that
endanger the public. And if that means some rich people or foreign
bankers or Republican delegates have a hard time getting to their party
sometimes: is this really such a big deal? They're rich. They can
handle it. Maybe it will encourage them to think a little bit about
what they're doing. Anyway, it's not like anybody's clubbing them or
dragging them off in shackles or shooting them with poison gas, like
you're doing to prevent them from being inconvenienced.

Maybe you should think about what side you're really on.