An occasional column
by David McReynolds.

Los Angeles saw, this week, a police riot, being covered a bit slowly by the media, but being covered (hard not to cover it when among those slugged by the cops were TV journalists). Meanwhile on the East Coast, the May 5th edition of the New York Times had an excellent and funny column by Jim Dwyer, on the front page of the Metro Section, dealing with Mayor Bloomberg's secret police.

What happened in Los Angeles was not an accident - I saw very much the same thing in Portland, Oregon, several years ago when I took part in a gentle demonstration (it might have been in May - I've forgotten) and was stunned to see the Portland police charge the demonstrators with special motorized vehicles, and clubs, when there had been no provocation

(I was on the spot and there simply wasn't - someone in charge of the police seemed to think it would be a good occasion to try out the newly acquired "military tactics" which municipal police across the nation have been learning).

Dwyer's column reported on the Police Department's Intelligence Division tracking down an open letter by Jerry Goralnick, self-described as a "pacifist anarchist", as the police prepared for the GOP 2004 convention. Goralnick's letter had been a compelling appeal for nonviolence, In the text of his open letter were suggestions urging activists not to see the police as adversaries, to "make contact with individual police officers for the purpose of establishing a meaningful human relationship". And the demonstrations were peaceful. I was present when the first group, organized by Ed Hedemann and others of the War Resisters League, stepped off from the site of the World Trade Center for a walk to mid-town. True, some of those who had gathered did plan, when they got close to the convention site, to stage a sit-down. I repeat - some of those gathered. Most of those gathered for that march had no intention of sitting down. I was baffled to see the marchers delayed by the police. I went over to talk to Carmen Trotta, one of the organizers, to ask why the march hadn't started. He said he didn't know - the police had asked them to stop for a bit.

...the police seemed to think it would be a good occasion to try out the newly acquired "military tactics" which municipal police across the nation have been learning.

But soon we had our answer - the police arrested the entire group for "refusing to move"!! (I should add that while I took photos of the event, showing the group peacefully awaiting for permission to march, I hadn't joined that part of the demo because I didn't feel like walking from the WTC site to Madison Square Garden and planned to join the demo later, by subway, which I did).

The whole problem of the illegal mass arrests is now before the courts, but it was an example, though a less violent one, of the new "pre-emptive defense" being adopted from Portland to Los Angeles to New York.

Back in my youthful days on the staff of War Resisters League, the New York "red squad" was called "BOSSI" - the Bureau of Special Services. I got to know some of the BOSSI officers as we worked with them explaining the demonstrations then being organized. Later the city announced that BOSSI had been dissolved, though everyone in the radical movement knew this was not true - every police department in a major city has some kind of intelligence agency and as we learned, under Mayor Bloomberg, the name has changed, the tactics have become laughable, but the reality is the same.

Our tax money being waste on monitoring an open letter by a nonviolent anarchist urging demonstrators to treat the police in a gentle manner!

It is a delicate matter, since there are real threats (I?m not even thinking of our current concern with terrorists) that involve groups on the political margin. Some have been racist groups, some have been groups such as the Jewish Defense League which used to organize "direct action" against Soviet officials. (I remember the famous pledge by Meir Kahane of the JDL that Yasir Arafat, who was then visiting the UN, would not leave New York City alive. Wehn I went to the Arafat reception at the UN I saw a couple of the old faces from BOSSI standing guard to protect Arafat. Ironically, Kahane himself was assassinated later by a gunman while at a Zionist conference in NYC). It is almost certainly true that if the Socialist Party was elected to run New York City, it would assign some officers to keep an eye on extremists oriented to violence.

In the case of the Los Angeles police earlier this week, the occasion was a peaceful immigrant rally. It is possible there were some "black bloc" folks who may have been involved - but the footage I saw on CNN showed no provocation, just stunned, angry people being hit with clubs and fleeing rubber bullets, several of which found their targets, leaving badly bruised flesh.

A continent apart, the same evidence of police out of control. The New York example would have been funny if it hadn't been serious. Our tax money being waste on monitoring an open letter by a nonviolent anarchist urging demonstrators to treat the police in a gentle manner!

First, there needs to be some kind of control over the police (one thinks at once of the long over-due civilian review board) which can monitor all police actions. Whether we like it or not, we need police. We have the routine problems of traffic, we have the problems of legitimate crowd control at large events, and we have, regrettably, the reality of crimes of various kinds. To make the matter concrete, what are we supposed to do if a strange man is wandering the halls of our building knocking on doors? Or if we hear loud and agonized screams coming from down the hall?

Clearly, however, as Mayor Bloomberg's handling of the New York Police Department shows, we need some agency that has an independent status and real clout.

Second, the more serious problem, and the one demonstrated this week in Los Angeles, is the very deliberate militarization of our police departments, both in tactics and in weapons. This trend began prior to 9.11 and certainly has increased since then, and the objective is not simply to contain some terrorist act, but much more disturbing, to curb the legitimate right of the people to assemble and to petition. The direction the police are taking - with not nearly enough public concern - is toward eliminating public demonstrations. (In New York, a year or so ago, the police tried to basically close down a mass demonstration against the war - a demonstration that was entirely peaceful, posed no threat of disorder, but the handling of which did show that Mayor Bloomberg has no deep understanding of, or interest in, the Bill of Rights).

These trends can only be reversed by a broad public concern. And these trends will inevitably repeat over time. We had the same problems during the Vietnam War, during the Civil Rights movement, the anti-nuclear movement - it has always been necessary to fight the various branches of government every ten years or so to restore some kind of balance. Los Angeles and New York both suggest that it is past time for a wide range of groups, conservative as well as liberal, to move to demilitarize the police and remind them that their job is to maintain public order, not to suppress peaceful dissent.

David McReynolds was on the staff of War Resisters League for nearly forty years and was the Socialist Party's candidate for President in 1980 and 2000. He is retired and living with two cats on the Lower East Side. This column may be reprinted and circulated without permission.

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