"Guantanamo on the Hudson" - yeah right

xpost - BOTH!

xpost

washingtonpost.com
New York Judge Orders Demonstrators Freed
Jurist Holds City in Contempt of Court, Saying Dozens of People Were Held Without Charges

By Michael Powell and Dale Russakoff
Washington Post Staff Writers
Friday, September 3, 2004; Page A21

NEW YORK, Sept. 2 -- A criminal court judge ordered the release of hundreds of Bush protesters Thursday, ruling that police held them illegally without charges for more than 40 hours. As the protesters began trickling out of jail, they spoke of being held without access to lawyers, initially in a holding cell that had oil and grease spread across the floor.

Several dozen of those detained said that they had not taken part in protests. Police apparently swept up the CEO of a puppet theater as he and a friend walked out of the subway to celebrate his birthday. Two middle-age women who had been shopping at the Gap were handcuffed, and a young woman was arrested as she returned from her job at a New York publishing house.

Hours before President Bush made his speech to the Republican National Convention, Manhattan Criminal Court Judge John Cataldo held city officials in contempt of court for failing to release more than 500 detained demonstrators by 5 p.m. The judge said that the detentions violated state law, and he threatened to impose a fine of $1,000 per day for each person kept in custody longer than 24 hours without being arraigned.

As of Thursday evening, about 168 people still in detention had been held for more than 24 hours.

Outside the hulking criminal court building in Lower Manhattan, the mood was a mix of festive and angry as the released protesters walked down the jailhouse stairs to cheers from families and friends. Dirty and tired, and with matted hair, many fell into the arms of those who waited. But others -- who had been handcuffed and said they had not been given medicines for asthma and epilepsy -- sat on blankets in a park across the street and sought attention from medics who had been organized by a collective of activist groups.

"I was held for 44 hours without being able to call my family or talk to a lawyer," said Griffin Epstein, 20, one of 14 college students who was arrested while standing with antiwar picket signs at 34th Street and Sixth Avenue. "We were taken to a big metal cage, and the ground was covered with a black, cakey motor oil. We were given one apple each after nine hours."

Epstein was released after being charged with an administrative violation, a lesser offense than a misdemeanor.

Throughout this week, Deputy Police Commissioner Paul Browne had insisted that just a few dozen protesters had spent more than six hours behind bars without being charged or released. On Thursday, Browne acknowledged for the first time that large numbers of demonstrators endured long detentions. But he blamed them for overwhelming the police department.

"It's a new entitled, pampered class of demonstrators who want to engage in civil disobedience but don't want to be inconvenienced by arrest processing," Browne said. "There's a lot of reasons for a holdup. If you were in a group this morning, you are going to go through the process very quickly; if you were arrested with 200 people, it's going to take longer."

In all, police arrested more than 1,700 people, or nearly three times as many as were arrested in Chicago at the 1968 Democratic National Convention, which had far more violence. Police have used large orange nets and riot and motorbike squads to sweep up dozens of alleged protesters.

Michael Sladek, who owns a film production company in Brooklyn, was arrested in Midtown two evenings ago as he photographed the police and demonstrators. He spent 48 hours in custody without access to a phone before he was charged with obstructing a pedestrian -- an administrative violation -- and released.

"For us, it was very clear this was a detention to keep people off the street," Sladek said outside the jail. "And the saddest thing was that so many people had nothing to with protesting the convention."

Those coming out of the jail in southern Manhattan said that police never advised them of their right to talk to an attorney. And several people, independent of one another, said police told them that if they signed a document admitting guilt and waiving the right to sue for false arrest, they would be released early.

Civil liberties lawyers noted that Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg (R) courted the Republican National Convention knowing that massive demonstrations were likely, and that city officials had more than a year to prepare. "It's hard to imagine it's just incompetence, as our city officials do a pretty good job," said Donna Lieberman, chief of the New York Civil Liberties Union. "It seems that we have gotten a kinder, gentler form of preventative detention."

Detainees said that after being arrested, they were crowded into makeshift holding cells at a bus cleaning station on the Hudson River piers, where many spent the night awaiting transfer to jail. In some cells, they said, teenage girls and women were kept overnight amid dozens of men. Many protesters spoke of seeing signs at the piers warning of hazardous chemicals.

Once in the city jail, detainees said, they were shifted among as many as 10 cells in 48 hours without explanation, unable to sleep.

Bloomberg defended conditions in the detention cells. "It's not supposed to be Club Med," he said Thursday.

At the same time, however, medics said the New York City Department of Health had asked them to gather samples of the detainees' clothing to test for exposure to toxic chemicals from the holding cell. Medics found numerous cases of rashes and skin infections, apparently as a result of cuts from overly tight handcuffs that were exposed to chemicals.

Then there were the many relatives who flooded police stations and courts with phone calls, trying to find their loved ones.

Tobi Starin, a teacher in Rockville, heard from a friend that her daughter, Liz, had been arrested while coming home from her job at a publishing house.

"It's very disturbing. I kept thinking: 'Oh, she'll get out any hour now,' " said Starin, who called The Washington Post on Thursday. "But it's 44 hours now, and she's still in there."

Special correspondent Michelle Garcia contributed to this report.

xposts galore, I'm sure

"And for the most part, I respect the protesters who did get arrested. And no doubt many were arrested unfairly."

which led me to believe that you thought no one but protesters were arrested. So I'm sorry if I misattributed you, but that's what you wrote.

Also, I've seen plenty of national coverage of protests that has been more than just than "Gitmo on the Hudson" signs.

>, I've seen plenty of national coverage of protests that has been more than just than "Gitmo on the Hudson" signs<

Well, I hope you're right. I'm sure it depends what TV station you watch, and when, and where you live. (There's been PLENTY of coverage all week in New York -- way more than, say, about the anti-war march last winter -- but living in New York doesn't give me much to go on.) Anyway, I just hope people who *don't* know about Gitmo, but who see those signs, don't get the wrong idea about what *happens* at Gitmo. That was part of my point.

Overstating your case gives your opponents an opening to accuse you of distorting the facts. IMO.

"Remember Guantanamo?"

I mean really the only people doing any overstating in this are all of us! We don't know what the intentions of the protesters who made these signs were. I think it's reasonable that they were merely comparing, some people think they were equating, and that's ripe for discussion.

Did you think this was an insiginificant statement that had no bearing on what you were saying? Was it unclear that this is how I am reading your posts?

I've said it about a million times before and I'll say it again, if you don't want school janitors with low self-esteem patrolling your city streets, the easy solution is to pay your police more than your school janitors. Gee, carry a gun and act tough, or install cable for Time Warner for twice as much pay (or more)? What the fuck kind of people pick the first answer?

I like duke selfish's answer.

It probably is. So another part of me kind of wishes protestors were out there throwing bricks and overturning police cars and setting fires to things other than paper dragons this week, for that very reason -- if you're gonna lose (as in have anything you do used against you), you might as well lose BIGTIME, y'know? And part of me is glad they weren't. I have lots of mixed feelings about this stuff.

I dunno, I am just asking. There's been a lot of distortions in this campaign, but I thought a lot of people would be aware of those separate things concerning Gitmo (then again people still equate Saddam with 9/11, so...).

No.

xpost - that is true Dan, but again those are the sort of people who will use anything against the protesters, and Kerry and whomever get in their way.

Since you've taken it upon yourself to speak for them, I'm asking you. (IOW, Don't make a stink and then run away.)

Oddly, there *have* been a lot of comparisons of Bush to Hitler - but mainly old people and often Europeans. When I was last home, my 90 year old neighbour, a prizewinning research scientist, said that on his grand tour after Cambridge (he went in Brideshead days) he happened to go to Berlin and he saw AH do some rally or another. It chilled him to the bone. He is a US citizen and a political independent who I know voted for Bush 1, and he started feeling that chilling vibe again when the Bush camp's fuck-you doublespeak met the whole 9/11 thing head-on. The slogan and flag graphics to underscore speeches designed to appeal to the nation's lowest common denominator, the attempt at ownership of the Amurrcan thing, you name it.

But this is an Ownership Society, Suzy!! (Has there been a thread on THAT yet? Not sure if anybody here has mentioned it, but there's a really good piece by John Cassidy in this week's *New Yorker* on what exactly the so-called Ownership Society entails - tax-code-wise, at least. Pretty scary.)

(x-post)