Sunday, August 31, 2008

Civil liberties violated at both conventions

Despite myself, there were times I found myself being inspired by the recent Democratic National Convention--particularly by the speeches of Michelle Obama and Hillary Clinton. Yet, troubling reports of the violations of civil liberties emerged. The Feminist Peace Network reported a brutal arrest of a Code Pink protester. And the ACLU issued a press release criticizing police abuses including the arrest of an ABC reporter who was standing on public property.

According to Mark Silverstein, Legal Director of the ACLU of Colorado,

The arrest of Asa Eslocker is the latest of several troubling incidents in which law enforcement has mistreated dissenters or others exercising their right to free speech dissent during the Democratic National Convention. On Monday hundreds of people were rounded up by police, detained without access to attorneys and denied the most basic due process protections. Arrestees were flexi-cuffed together so that they couldn't even use the bathroom alone, and in at least one case a woman was forced to walk barefoot and in leg shackles into a courtroom. The First Amendment is supposed to be the cornerstone of democracy, but some law enforcement agents in Denver have shown a complete disregard for the right to free speech.
Not to be outdone, police in St. Paul, Minnesota have also staged pre-emptive arrests of activists planning to protest at the upcoming Republican National Convention. According to the San Francisco Chronicle, by way of truthout:

Activists planning protests around the Republican National Convention say they are being targeted in a heavy-handed attempt to chill dissent after police arrested five people, detained dozens of others, and seized computers and protest guides in raids Friday night and Saturday on private homes and the major meeting center.
Theoretically, responsibility for the alleged abuses in Denver and Minnesota rests solely with the police departments involved. But it seems obvious that the police were acting in order to protect the political parties from embarrassment. Thus the Democrats and Republicans both should have to answer for their lack of respect for the First Amendment.

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