OPINION & EDITORIAL
Government watchmen
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Also by Rob Hunter:
- Patient Abandonment Bill targets women's rights (April 21, 2005)
- Read ID Act goes too far infringing upon civil liberties (April 28, 2005)
- Gay rights needed to protect equality (May 5, 2005)
- Evolution not about free speech (March 17, 2005)
Related Stories:
- Republican National Convention: Nothing More Than a Ghost Story (September 3, 2004)
- U.S. must set the standard in the treatment of prisoners of war (November 20, 2003)
- GOP makes it after all (September 7, 2004)
- Billionaire Bloomberg should stay out of politics (July 26, 2001)
- Bush policy pays no heed to polls (October 9, 2007)
by Rob Hunter
Wednesday, September 22, 2004
The Republican National Convention (RNC) in New York may be long gone, and President Bush’s post-convention poll “bounce” may no longer be at its zenith, but one effect of the convention still lingers. The NYPD, New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg and the administration worked together to try and keep anti-Bush protesters quiet, and now they’re having a lot of trouble keeping the noise down.
Before the convention even started, U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft gave the nod to FBI agents to conduct intimidating home interviews with political activists who were considered likely to protest at the convention. As early as 2002, Ashcroft had abandoned the rules governing the FBI’s intelligence-gathering that had been established after the ravages of the McCarthy hearings and the FBI’s own COINTELPRO (COunter-INTELligence PROgram) investigations in the ’60s that violated numerous suspects’ Constitutional rights. But before the RNC, the Department of Justice’s Office of Legal Council (which has produced the memos defending the torture of illegally detained “enemy combatants” in Guantanamo Bay and Abu Ghraib) actually released a memo justifying such FBI visits, arguing that they would not have a chilling effect (that is, intimidation that prevents someone from speaking) on protected speech.
During the convention, New York police officers videotaped protesters engaging in peaceful demonstrations, an act that the NYPD claimed did not have a chilling effect because it was done simply to collect evidence in case the law was broken. But many protesters themselves felt harassed, and it’s not hard to understand why they felt intimidated, or that they believed the tapings were meant to build files on protesters and groups rather than simply aid law enforcement. The NYPD also conducted mass arrests — which it later admitted ensnared non-protesting bystanders as well as protesters — by sealing off entire groups of people at a time and taking every individual inside into custody.
After the numerous arrests — 1,781 in all — were made, the city held hundreds of “prisoners” for days at a time before either releasing them or informing them of any charges. Despite the intercession of two different judges, the city was extremely sluggish in releasing all of the prisoners and in fact ignored an order by State Supreme Court Justice Emily Jane Goodman to allow lawyers to meet with their clients.
Does any of this seem wrong to you? It should.
Although ostensibly designed to minimize the potential for violence and disruptive behavior, this coordinated effort between Bloomberg’s NYPD and Ashcroft’s Justice Department had a much more dramatic effect on the rights of American citizens to free speech than it did on criminal behavior, of which there was virtually none during the RNC. Even the riot and assault charges against protesters who interrupted a White House aide’s speech in Madison Square Garden were eventually dropped.
In a damning article on www.findlaw.com, an online journal of legal issues, former Republican Congressman Bob Barr recently castigated the FBI for harassing potential protesters, pointing to FBI director Robert Mueller’s attitude that “any ‘chilling’ effect [from the interviews] would be ‘quite minimal’ and would be far outweighed by the overriding public interest in maintaining ‘order.’” An FBI spokesman recently claimed that since “no one was dragged from their homes and put under bright lights,” there was no intimidation. For Barr, this means that the new Ashcroft-Mueller free speech standard is that “[s]o long as the government agents don’t ‘drag you from your home’ and interrogate you ‘under bright lights,’ you have nothing to complain or worry about … such tactics usher in an era of intolerance and fear that has no place in American politics.”
In this new era of intolerance and fear, Americans are increasingly viewed as legitimate targets for profiling, monitoring, and investigation simply because they exercise their First Amendment rights to speech and assembly, as the RNC protesters did despite the best efforts of the FBI and the NYPD. We are now a nation of suspects rather than citizens.
The only remedy is to exercise our First Amendment rights to the fullest and refuse to be cowed by those who fear and hate dissent or disagreement, and to refuse to be frightened by officials who should be serving the public rather than intimidating it. Let’s hope that the FBI doesn’t make it a point to start knocking on our doors before we vote as well.
Rob Hunter (jrhunter@gmail.com) is a senior majoring in political science and philosophy.
Anonymous (September 22, 2004 @ 10:37am):
Hey Rob, if you want to be an extremist asshole and cause trouble at an event where terrorists are surely contemplating something worse, then you ought to know they're going to come and get you. Violent civil unrest is the only way liberal morons like you can get you message across.
Don't you think it's a little harder for the security on hand to watch for suicide bombers in the crowds when the crowds are much bigger and denser? It would be the simplest way for a suicide bomber to get in close: just weave his/her way through the crowd as far as they can get and...BOOM!!
Honestly, Rob, would you really to be in that crowd? And if you got hurt, wouldn't it change the way you feel about terrorists? Would it also change the way you feel about participating in civil disturbances?
One last thing: I'm really glad that the police are so rough on protesters these days. I'm sick and tired of they're pushing and shoving their way down the street, doing everything they can to provoke the police just so they cry "Police brutality! Fascists!".
Anonymous (September 22, 2004 @ 11:46am):
Wow, Anonymous, this is Rob Deters, who for some reason isn't registered to add comments, and doesn't feel the need to register right now.
The whole point of a free society is a balancing test between rights and restraints. Obviously you have no conception of that balancing test and would favor the government every time because we know, those damn terrorists are right around the....wait, where are they?
I'm not a pie in the sky idealist who thinks terrorists can't strike, but chilling political speech because they could is exactly the problem here.
Potentially, a terrorist could strike in your home RIGHT NOW, so why dont' I send a cop down there to stand in your doorway? Or next to your bed? Or in bed with you!
Come on! This terrorist fear mongering is the first and last argument of the empty right.
Get a clue, get an argument, get with reality.
Anonymous (September 22, 2004 @ 1:23pm):
Why didn't those protestors simply state their case in Boston a month earlier? Everyone has the right to free speech - I'm not going to argue that point - but protesting at the convention in NYC seems a bit inflammatory. If there were conservatives using fake credentials at the Democratic Convention to get in and cause a stir, we'd still be hearing about it. Conservatives allowed the DNC to do their thing - although I must admit I chuckled when Kerry got booed at Fenway when he threw out the first pitch in his home state - why could liberals not afford the RNC the same luxury?
I'm done babbling - for now...
Livin' life in the WB
Anonymous (September 22, 2004 @ 3:18pm):
The DNC kept protestors out of site in a nice cage with a razor wire top, to keep them safe from the police no doubt.
