From: iacenter@iacenter.org

An account of the April 15 anti-Prison-Industrial Complex demonstration and the illegal detention and arrest of 678 people By Brian Becker

Becker is Co-Director of the International Action Center (IAC) and was arrested with 678 others on April 15 in Washington DC. The IAC is exploring a legal action against the Washington DC police on behalf of those arrested. If you were among the arrested or if you want more information on the action contact www.iacenter.org or call (212) 633-6646.

Hours after the Washington Police carried out a raid on Saturday morning April 15 closing down the anti-IMF protest headquarters known as the "Convergence" Center, the same police illegally arrested more than 600 people following a demonstration demanding "Shut Down the Prison-Industrial Complex, Free Mumia Abu-Jamal." The demonstration was called by the NY-based International Action Center.

Shoppers, passers-by and even some members of the press were among the 678 who were swept up and detained for as long as twenty-four hours. The mass arrests were part of a policy that DC Mayor Anthony Williams described as a "proactive, precautionary and preventive" police strategy. Put differently, this strategy amounts to an unconstitutional "preventive detention" policy. Opponents of the U.S. government are arrested not for what they've done but for who they are. The 678 arrested people had planned to join protests against the pro-capitalist and anti-people International Monetary Fund (IMF) and World Bank. Those protests were scheduled to take place the next day on April 16.

The April 15 sweep was one of the largest political mass arrests in recent U.S. history.

The arrests took place following a spirited and lawful march from the Justice Department at 9th St. and Pennsylvania Ave., NW to 20th and K St. NW. The police chief later justified the mass arrests when he told the media that the marchers were "parading without a permit and refused a police order to disperse." This explanation is simply false propaganda. Hundreds of eyewitnesses dispute the police account. The New York Times, Washington Post, and National Public Radio did major stories that conflict with the police account.

What are the facts? The International Action Center (IAC) had obtained a permit to hold a rally at the Justice Department. It is not necessary to obtain a permit to have a sidewalk march in the District of Columbia. The IAC organizers, including this reporter, negotiated an agreement with the police to conduct a march to the area where the IMF headquarters is located and ending with a follow-up rally at Dupont Circle.

That the police agreed to the march was obvious because a large number of police cruisers and foot cops were in the front of the march and stopped vehicular traffic at the intersections so that the demonstration could proceed on a route between the Justice Department and the area around the IMF

When the march reached 20th St. and K St., NW, just a few blocks before arriving at the final destination of Dupont Circle, it was halted by a line of riot-gear clad police who blocked the forward march. The police line stretched from corner to corner. No one was allowed to leave the block. At the rear of the demonstration another full-block length line of police started advancing on the back of the demonstration.

The IAC organizers explained over a loud speaker system that the police were setting a trap for large-scale arrests and asked people whether it wasn't the better part of wisdom to end the demonstration so that everyone could be available the next day for the April 16 mass actions to shut down the IMF. The demonstrators acted with great discipline and agreed to immediately end the protest and disperse in small groups as protection against police harassment. Hundred actually made it out of the block to the south of the police line located at 20th and K St. The police command, realizing that the organizers had ended the activity, quickly assembled a solid wall of cops stretching the length of the southern end of the block. Within minutes they had sealed the whole block and refused to let anyone else leave.

The police never ordered people to disperse. Just the opposite. Without explanation they refused to allow anyone, except credentialed media, to leave. IAC organizers explained to the trapped crowd, all of which was assembled peacefully on the sidewalk, "We are insisting on the right to leave. The police are fundamentally violating our rights. This was a legal demonstration; it was entirely within the law. There has been no property damage. The only people possessing weapons are the police. Yet, we are illegally detained here and the police are bringing in buses to transport us to jail. This a gross violation of peoples rights to free speech. The police are acting as agents of the IMF and the capitalist establishment. We will remain calm and strong and determined never to be intimidated by these illegal tactics." The highly spirited crowd of mostly young people responded with the chart "There ain't no power like the power of the people because the power of the people won't stop!"

An hour after they sealed the block at 20th St. and K. St., a police commander bellowed "platoon." Without warning, the police at both ends of the block started marching on the trapped protestors, pushing them with their riot clubs together into a tighter and tighter pack. Then the arrests began, three at a time were led away into the waiting school buses.

The 678 demonstrators were taken to various jails, remote police academy stations, and many were kept handcuffed tightly behind their backs and confined on the buses for more than 12 hours.

The mass arrest was illegal and the police of course knew this. So throughout the next 24 hours the prisoners were encouraged to immediately pay a "post and forfeit" $50 fine to the charge of parading without a permit. This would not be an admission of guilt and close the case. The advantage for the arrested, the majority of whom lived outside of Washington DC, would be that they could get released and not have to come back to Washington DC for a trial. The advantage for the police was that they would not have to answer in court for their illegal actions. The police maintained the prisoners in conditions of maximum discomfort so that they would "post and forfeit."

I was among those who refused to "post and forfeit" for "parading without a permit." Enraged by our refusal to pay the $50 fine the police subjected this group to on the spot punishment carried out by the DC police and the thugs who make up the US Marshals headquarters. Those of us who insisted on a trial were separated from the others at 3:00am, shackled firmly right hand to left foot for three hours and then placed on bus and driven to an underground garage. There the police refastened the handcuffs to the tightest level and let us sit again on the school bus until 7:00am when the demonstrators were turned over to the custody of the US Marshals. The US Marshals slapped prisoners, pushed them into walls and put them in heavier leg and ankle chains if they protested their treatment. Although there were many vacant cells, thirteen of us were confined together in a 6` by 13' cell.

When we appeared before an arraignment court on Sunday afternoon our charges, interestingly, were changed from "parading without a permit" to that amorphous catchall called "disorderly conduct." The parading without a permit charge was for public consumption, dished out to the media as a seemingly "legal" explanation for what appeared to any eyewitness of the arrests to be a brazen political act aimed at removing political dissidents from the streets of Washington DC. The media reported on Saturday, April 15, "demonstrators were arrested for marching without a permit." This was simply a smokescreen for one of the largest "preventive detentions" in recent years.

Everyone who was arrested discussed these and other political issues all night long while they were in custody. This was a case study that democratic rights to free speech and expression only really exist until the capitalist state apparatus feels threatened by the exercise of these rights. Then those rights are revoked by the real power in society, the apparatus of repression dominated by the police, the prisons and jails, the courts and the military in the background.

The institutions of police and military repression constitute the "real" system. The "democracy" is a thin faŤade. Democracy exists for the rich, the capitalists. They are neither in prison nor on death row. The police do not brutalize them. Their free speech comes through loud and clear because they own the TV networks, the daily newspapers, cable station and major movie studios.

Why were the demonstrators on April 15 illegally suppressed? "We were protesting the ever-expanding Prison-Industrial Complex and police brutality," stated Larry Holmes, one of the protest organizers. "The demonstration grew from several hundred to more than a thousand people, mostly youth, with its spirited opposition to the prisons, police terror, racism and capitalism. The police hated the message of the demonstration and they wanted to start the weekend by publicly displaying that they would use aggressive, even brazenly illegal, tactics."

The mass media is now putting a positive spin on the police conduct in Washington DC. They are giving the police "high marks" for "good tactics." They are even spreading the lie that "many of the protestors" thought the police treated them well. This is a fabrication.

In summary, the police role included: the illegal raid and shutting down of the Convergence Center protest headquarters on Saturday morning April 15; the preventive detention arrest of 678 peaceful protestors in the afternoon demonstration of April 15 against the Prison-Industrial Complex; severe mistreatment of these demonstrators in an attempt to force them to "post and forfeit" for a crime that they never committed; the beating and abusive conduct, including pepper spraying, of hundreds of protestors on April 16th and 17th.

In addition to mass arrests and beatings, the homes of political activists in Washington DC were raided and ransacked by the police in the days leading up to the April 15-17 protests. The vehicles of organizers were stopped and searched without cause by the Secret Service agents. When one of the leaders of the IAC, who managed to avoid arrest at the Prison-Industrial Complex demonstration, stopped to pick up food at a restaurant a few hours after the demonstration his car was "stolen" in the few minutes that he was inside.

The repressive apparatus consisting of the police, prison, courts and army revealed itself for what it is really: not an impartial arbiter maintaining public order and safety in society, but a tool of class violence and coercion. This apparatus is employed every day in a virtual war against the youth of the African American and Latino communities. What the battle in Washington revealed is that the capitalist political establishment utilizes this instrument of force against any who seriously challenge the "smooth operations" of the profit- system. The new movement for social change that is still in its infancy must draw all the political, theoretical and organizational implications of the reality presented by the state apparatus.

International Action Center
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