Revolutionary Worker #1195, April 20, 2003, posted at rwor.org
An RW stringer who was arrested in New York filed this report:
April 7--As police in Oakland shot rubber bullets at anti-war demonstrators, the NYPD made mass arrests of antiwar protesters in New York City.
Demonstrators were gathered at the offices of the Carlyle Group--a high-powered investment firm with close ties to the ruling class that stands to make huge profits from the war in Iraq. Shortly after the protest began, cops in riot gear moved in and arrested everyone in front of the building, where there were plans for civil disobedience.
The police then moved across the street to what was supposed to be a "legal" protest--not part of the civil disobedience action. The cops surrounded people and arrested everyone, in spite of protests from legal observers. People who told the cops they wanted to leave were brutalized and arrested. Some were clubbed. Plastic handcuffs were used as a torture device--put on so tightly many lost feeling in their hands. Over 100 people were arrested. Cops refused to let lawyers into the holding cells to see those arrested even after the National Lawyers Guild got an order from a judge ordering them to do so. Many demonstrators were charged with failing to obey a legal order to disperse--after the cops had boxed them in and wouldn't let them leave.
Another episode in the "with us or against us" climate in the war at home that goes hand in hand with the war abroad.
This article is posted in English and Spanish on Revolutionary Worker Online
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