You wouldn't know it from watching the news, but right now New York
City is delivering a powerful NO to Bush and all he represents. There is
broad support from the citizens of New York who are pouring out of their
apartments and workplaces, witnessing the protests, denouncing the
arrests of protesters, grabbing up progressive and revolutionary literature
faster than it can be distributed, telling the RNC delegates to go
home, monitoring the police practice maneuvers and brutality and shouting
"No Police State!" All the RNC protest benefit shows and progressive art
events are sold out.
ALTHOUGH BUSH PLANNED TO BE IN NYC FOR FOUR DAYS,
HE IS NOW ONLY GOING TO BE FLYING IN TO GIVE HIS SPEECH AND FLYING OUT
RIGHT AFTERWARDS. HE WILL BE IN NYC FOR A TOTAL OF ONLY TWO HOURS!As you may have heard,
August 29 saw at least half a million people
take the streets in the mass march, followed by thousands of people
occupying Central Park, Union Square, and other areas of the city.
These are
the biggest protests against a political convention in the history of
the U.S. and the size is over double that of the largest anti-war
protests in this country on Feb 15.Today, Tues, Aug 31, was a day of nonviolent civil disobedience and
direct action.
At least 1,000 people have been arrested since August 29,
the majority of them on Tuesday. We don't know the details of what
happened at every action, but there were various actions throughout the day
at different locations spread all across the city. To see a listing of
events and groups that participated, go to
www.a31.orgWhen hundreds of protesters with the War Resisters League and the
School of the Americas Watch, including clergy, attempted to from the World
Trade Center site to the convention center, they were stopped by police
before getting too close to the Center. At that point a few hundred of
the protesters decided to do a die-in. They were quickly surrounded and
arrested. In this, and other direct actions,
police have been using a
tactic of surrounding groups of people, park spaces, and even whole city
blocks, with orange netting. Then they arrest everyone inside.
Witnesses have reported that sometimes they are told to disperse, but then
blocked from dispersing, or allowed to disperse single file. Then the
police arrest them regardless. The police are blindfolding some people upon
arrest. A group of Seattle medics report that some arrestees are being
pepper sprayed in the face while handcuffed. The police also attacked
at least three groups by spraying the crowds with pepper spray. Some
protesters are also being chased down and beaten with clubs and
flashlights when they try to leave the orange nets. There have also been reports
of police purposefully riding scooters as a way to attack and disperse
groups of protesters. People training to be police are being deputized
and sent out into the streets with nothing but t-shirts that say POLICE
and flashlights.
Let us take a moment to say that the lack of media coverage of this
historic event is shameful.
The protests, the mass arrests, police
marching in formation--all this is happening right outside the windows of this
country's major media outlets. Yet all we see on the television is the
Republican Convention on every channel. Protesters report that
mainstream media cameras are filming much of the action. Where is this footage
going if it is not being broadcast? At least 5 protesters in affinity with Seattle Not In Our Name have
been arrested, two of them street medics who were there to administer
basic care to protesters who were overheated or injured.
The protesters are
being held at a pier that was formerly used as a parking lot. The pier
is reportedly a large open space, but cordoned off into caged sections
with fencing and barbed wire. As you can imagine, the place is being
called "Guantanamo on the Hudson. ...
An interview from the streets of New York with one of the protesters
who was arrested, along with other participants and local organizers will
be aired on WED AT 8:30 PM ON SOCIAL JUSTICE TELEVISION, a program that
airs on your local cable access station, which is channel 77 or 29,
depending on where you live within Seattle.In spite of the police-state climate, people's spirits are high. People
who phoned us from New York City described the scene as "electric" with
everyone in the city talking to each other on the subways and street
corners, milling about the streets talking to their neighbors, wanting to
know what's next and how they can be a part of it, and what all this
means for the future!!!
Такая лажа, что слов нет..
