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Media Coverage: Corporate Media | Independent Media | Letters to the Editor | Media Sign-up

Police State Targets the Left

by Jim Redden - Excerpt from the book: Snitch Culture

The sound of breaking glass signalled a dramatic change in the focus of the government's political surveillance programs in late 1999. After spending most of the decade spying on the right wing neo-Patriot movement, law enforcement agencies abruptly shifted gears and declared brick-throwing anarchists to be the newest threat to the American way of life. By the dawn of the new Millennium, the government was running COINTELPRO-style operations against a coalition of radical labor, environmental, and human rights organizations opposed to corporate control of the global economy. Police were photographing suspected activists and entering license plate numbers in their computer databanks. Undercover operatives were infiltrating meetings and disrupting protests. Even the Pentagon was involved, dispatching its Delta Force anti-terrorism commandos to identify and secretly videotape suspected leaders. By early August, calls were underway for a full-blown federal investigation into the movement, raising the specter of an government-orchestrated Green Scare along the lines of anti-Communist witch hunts of the 1950s.

The shift was the direct result of the massive protests which disrupted the World Trade Organization conference in Seattle. Over 50,000 demonstrators jammed the streets, snarling traffic and preventing WTO delegates from reaching their meetings. When the authorities tried to break up the protests, a small group of the most militant activists struck back, vandalizing businesses in the downtown core and clashing with police throughout the city. Much like the urban riots of the early 1960s, the intensity of the confrontations caught political leaders and law enforcement officials off guard, prompting the most significant change in the direction of the government's domestic surveillance operations in the past 20 years.

Throughout the 1980s and 1990s, the FBI and other domestic law enforcement agencies focused their political intelligence-gathering programs on militias and other Far Right organizations. But, by the summer of 1999, federal authorities were beginning to look at the emerging anti-globablization movement. Tipped off that large numbers of protesters were preparing to travel to Seattle for the December WTO meeting, the FBI began spying on environmental, labor and anti-corporate activists. As the Seattle Weekly reported on December 23, 1999, "Sources say... that police and 30 other local, state, and federal agencies have been aggressively gathering intelligence on violent and nonviolent protest groups since early summer (FBI agents even paid personal visits to some activists' homes to inquire about their plans)."

Even the military got involved. According to the Weekly, the Pentagon sent members of the top-secret Delta Force to Seattle to prepare for President Bill Clinton's arrival. As the paper put it, "the elite Army special force, operating under its cover name of Combat Applications Group (CAG), was in Seattle a week in advance of the Clinton visit to scope out possible terrorist acts. Under the control of the Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC) at Fort Bragg, North Carolina, the contingent took up residence in a Regrade motel and fanned out downtown dressed as demonstrators, some wearing their jungle greens."

The preparations didn't work. Thousands of protesters overwhelmed the police on the opening day of the conference, shutting down the center where the main meetings were scheduled to be held. The police overreacted and began macing and tear-gassing the protesters who were preventing the WTO delegates from entering the center. A small group of the most militant protesters retaliated by attacking such corporate icons as McDonalds, Nike Town, the Gap and Starbucks, smashing windows, toppling shelves, spraying graffiti and provoking a massive police crackdown.

The mayor of Seattle declared a state of "civil emergency," essentially a local version of martial law. Washington's governor called out 300 state troopers and two divisions of the National Guard to secure the blocks around the downtown convention site. A "Protest-Free Zone" was declared around the conference headquarters, allowing the police to exclude anyone merely wishing to express their First Amendment rights. Police dressed up in military-style riot gear chased protesters through the streets for the next few days. Thousands of people were sprayed with pepper gas, clubbed with ballistic batons, and shot with rubber-coated bullets and steel pellet-filled "beanbag" shotgun rounds. Many of the victims were innocent bystanders and business owners who simply didn't get out of the way fast enough.

The chaos was broadcast around the world. TV viewers saw police firing at protesters at point blank range. One cop went out of his way to kick an empty-handed protester in the groin. Another cop ripped a gas mask off a pregnant foreign reporter and struck her.

Delta Force troops were in the middle of the confrontations, working to identify protest leaders. "Some Deltas wore lapel cameras, continuously transmitting pictures of rioters and other demonstrators to a master video unit in the motel command center, which could be used by law enforcement agencies to identify and track suspects," the Weekly reported.

The WTO conference ended in disarray, a victory for the protesters and a major embarrassment for the Clinton Administration. Four days later, Seattle Police Chief Norm Stamper resigned in disgrace.

The corporate media immediately fell into line behind the government, portraying all anti-corporate protesters as violent thugs to justify the coming crackdown. Although the police shot demonstrators with tear gas canisters at point blank range, images of black-clad anarchists smashing windows dominated the post-riot news reports. The December 13 issue of Newsweek linked the anarchists to Ted Kaczynski, the Unabomber. 60 Minutes traveled Eugene for a story on the new domestic terrorists. "They came to Seattle with violence in their hearts and destruction on their minds," the CBS News show warned viewers sternly.

The government's abrupt shift from right to left wing activists was accompanied by a wave of false alarms and bogus reports. A rumor spread that the Eugene anarchists were planning to drive up the freeway to Portland and disrupt that city's downtown New Year's Eve party. The local police went on high alert, fencing off the site and installing security gates to detain and search party-goers. The U.S. Marshals Office opened a number of temporary holding cells in an old downtown federal building. The FBI set up a command center in the basement of the nearby Mark O. Hatfield Federal Courthouse. Heavily-armed federal agents gathered in the basement on New Year's Eve. Police in full riot gear patrolled the perimeter. None of the anarchists showed up. The informant was wrong.

Another bogus tip sparked a similar panic in Tacoma, Washington a few months later. The local steelworkers union had called for a March 25 rally at the Kaiser aluminum plant. Labor and environmental activists from throughout the Pacific Northwest were planning to attend. Then Eugene authorities contacted the Tacoma police and reported that some of the anarchists were allegedly heading their way with a bomb. The police contacted union organizer Jon Youngdahl, who called off the protest. No bomb-carrying anarchist was ever found.

Anarchy fever gripped the Portland police again in late April. A few hundred local activists were planning a May Day march and demonstration. An unnamed informant told the police that the Eugene anarchists were coming up to cause trouble. According to one police report, they "have little regard for the laws of society" and were expected to engage in civil disobedience. Police Chief Mark Kroeker, a former deputy chief from the Los Angeles Police Department who had only been on the job a few months, dispatched over 150 officers in full riot gear, including black body armor and helmets with plastic face shields. Police spent hours chasing demonstrators through the streets, spraying them with mace, clubbing them with ballistic batons and shooting them with "beanbag" rounds. Nineteen people were arrested, mostly on minor charges. None were anarchists from Eugene. Kroeker later apologized to the city council for the actions of his officers.

These incidents occurred as federal authorities were bracing for the next major anti-globalization protests, set for the World Bank and International Monetary Fund meetings scheduled to begin on April 16 in Washington DC. As the activists began planning their demonstrations, they were targeted by federal, state and local law enforcement officials. Their meetings were infiltrated, their public gatherings disrupted, their phones tapped, and police were posted outside their homes and offices. Even the corporate media took note of the harassment. "Some protesters think they are being watched. They are correct." the Washington Post reported on April 1O, quoting Executive Assistant Washington Police Chief Terrance W. Gainer as saying, "If it's an open meeting and it says, 'Come on over,' then anybody's welcome."

Three days later, USA Today reported government agents were going undercover online to thwart the protesters. "[T]hey have been monitoring 73 internet sites where the groups have been exchanging messages to learn more about their plans. Sometimes, officers have even gone online posing as protesters," the paper said, adding that police were physically following suspected anarchists throughout the capitol city. "They have been monitoring the movements of nearly two dozen self-proclaimed anarchists who have arrived in Washington."

As a result of this surveillance, all 3,500 DC police officers were put on alert, along with unknown number of law enforcement agents from at least 12 federal and state agencies, including the FBI and Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms. The authorities spent over $1 million on new body armor and bullet-proof shields. They set up three mass detention centers where arrested protesters would be taken. They removed 69 mailboxes where bombs could be hidden.

"They ain't burning our city like they did in Seattle," Police Chief Charles Ramsey told USA Today. "I'm not going to let it happen. I guarantee it."

The authorities started cracking down on the activists the week before the IMF/World Bank meetings were scheduled to begin. On April 13, seven activists driving to a planning meeting were pulled over and arrested. Police seized 256 PCV pipes, 45 smaller pipes, 2 rolls of chicken wire, 50 rolls of duct tape, gas masks, bolt cutters, chains, an electrical saw, and lock boxes. According to a Washington Post account of the incident, a Secret Service agent frisked one passenger, showing him a photo that had been taken of him earlier.

The police justified the arrests by saying the materials and tools found in the van were "implements of crime." The accusation struck NLG President Karen Jo Koonan as absurd. "These activists construct signs, puppets, sound stages, and other tools for expressing their political views," she wrote in a letter to U.S. Attorney General Janet Reno. "They were in fact arrested for possession of implements of First Amendment activity. We have been told by an MPD officer that the FBI directed them to make this arrest."

But the police claim was made a specific purpose a purpose which would soon become clear. It is illegal for the police to spy on anyone simply because of their political beliefs. But political activists can be monitored if the police believe they are planning to commit crimes, no matter how petty. The police claimed the items seized from the van were "instruments of crime" to justify their surveillance. It was a claim that would be heard repeatedly in the days, weeks and months to come.

On the morning of April 15, law enforcement authorities unexpectedly raided a warehouse that served as the demonstrators' headquarters. According to eyewitness accounts, the agencies involved in the raid included the BATF, the Washington Metropolitan Police Department and the Washington Fire Department. Saying the warehouse violated fire codes, the authorities threw all the activists out and closed the building. Then the authorities claimed they found weapons in the warehouse, physical proof that violent crimes were being planned. According to the police, the evidence included a Molotov cocktail, balloons filled with acid, and a lab for producing explosives and pepper spray. In a later retraction, the police admitted they'd only found oily rags and a kitchen, but not until after the warehouse was shut down. Police also kept all the signs, banners and giant satiric posters under construction inside, depriving the demonstrators of their most effective means of communicating their causes.

By the morning of Saturday the 16th, the police had cordoned off 50 blocks around the headquarters of the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund. The first mass arrests happened that afternoon when thousands of protesters marched toward the headquarters of the two financial institutions. The police blocked their way, then isolated and arrested approximately 635 activists, far more than the total arrested during several days of rioting in Seattle. "What makes the situation all the more maddening is that such actions are apparently being taken based on the ridiculous view that every protester or activist is an anarchist time bomb waiting to go off a view apparently buttressed by unspecified police 'intelligence' that may or may not be true," reporter Jason Vest wrote in the online SpeakOut.com website.

The authorities quickly revealed that they were obsessed with identifying the protesters. Those who provided identification were fined $50. Those who didn't were fined $300.

Demonstrators clashed with police during the next few days. The federal government gave all non-essential employees in Washington DC the day off on Monday, resulting in a partial government shut-down, which is far more than the neo-Patriot movement was able to achieve at any point in the 1990s. By the time it was over, even the IMF had released a communique acknowledged the protesters had made its policies a matter "of growing public debate." As the ABC Evening News reported on Monday, "The demonstrators outside the building did their best to be heard. The delegates inside the building said they got the message."

The full extent of the government's surveillance operation was not revealed until May 4, when the Paris-based Intelligence Newsletter carried a story titled "Watching the Anti-WTO Crowd" which reported that U.S. Army intelligence units were monitoring the anti-corporate protesters. Among other things, the newsletter discovered that "reserve units from the US Army Intelligence and Security Command helped Washington police keep an eye on demonstrations staged at the World Bank/IMF meetings... [T]he Pentagon sent around 700 men from the Intelligence and Security Command at Fort Belvoir to assist the Washington police on April 17, including specialists in human and signals intelligence. One unit was even strategically located on the fourth floor balcony in a building at 1919 Pennsylvania Avenue with a birds-eye view of most demonstrators."

The newsletter also charged that much information being collected about the protesters was being fed into the Regional Information Sharing System computers used by law enforcement agencies across the country. According to the report, the government is rationalizing this surveillance by claiming the protesters are terrorists. As the report put it, "to justify their interest in anti-globalization groups from a legal standpoint, the authorities lump them into a category of terrorist organizations. Among those considered as such at present are Global Justice (the group that organized the April 17 demonstration), Earth First, Greenpeace, American Indian Movement, Zapatista National Liberation Front and Act-Up."

In early May, In These Times confirmed the government government spy operation. The progressive newspaper quoted Robert Scully, executive director of the National Association of Police Organizations, as saying that federal, state and local law enforcement agencies were "successful in infiltrating some of the groups... and had firsthand, inside information of who, when, why, and where things were going to happen."

Even before the Washington DC protests began, organizers began planning to bring their message to the Republican and Democratic Presidential conventions, scheduled for July and August in Philadelphia and Los Angeles. Police representatives from both cities travelled to the nation's capitol for the April demonstrations, consulting with federal authorities on how to identify and handle the demonstrators. Federal officials also travelled to the convention cities, setting up surveillance operations in advance of the arriving demonstrators.

By late May, the corporate media was openly writing about the intelligence-gathering operations. Previewing the Republican convention, the Philadelphia Inquirer said, "The Secret Service is checking rooftops. The FBI is monitoring the Internet. And city police are getting ready to play cat and mouse with protesters... 'Virtually every resource that the FBI has available will be put into play,' said Thomas J. Harrington, the assistant special agent-in-charge in the FBI's Philadelphia office."

The Reuters news agency confirmed the FBI's role in June 2, saying, "The U.S. Secret Service is running security inside the convention and at main hotels, the FBI is handling intelligence and state police are providing escorts for dignitaries. That leaves Philadelphia's 6,800-strong police department to keep the streets of the 5th-largest U.S. city safe for delegates and clear of unruly crowds."

Throughout June, activists from several groups reported at least five instances in which unidentified men were seen photographing people entering and leaving protest planning meetings. On June 29, a reporter with the Philadelphia Inquirer observed two men dressed in casual clothes watching activists arrive for a meeting at the offices of the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom. The pair sat on the hood of a maroon Plymouth, taking pictures of the activists as they came and went. Both men refused to answer any questions from the reporter. Police spokeswoman Lt. Susan Slawson flatly denied her agency was doing anything that would violate its policy against political intelligence-gathering, saying, "[W]e are in no way violating it." But then the reporter traced the license plates on the Plymouth to the police department. Confronted with proof of his agency's role in the surveillance operation, department spokesman David Yarnell reluctantly admitted the activists were right. "We were watching. We were making surveillance efforts. It's just prudent preparations for anything," he confessed. "This is just outrageous," responded organizer Michael Morrill "If this is in fact going on, and city officials are lying about it, I wonder what else they're doing."

Philadelphia police officials openly talked about having the protesters under surveillance when the Republican National Convention began on July 31, with Police Commissioner John Timoney specifically saying his troops were watching "the anarchists." The first serious confrontation occurred on August 1, after police unexpectedly raided a warehouse where activists were painting posters and building puppets. Before the raid, police claimed the activists were storing weapons in the building, in this case C4 explosives and acid-filled balloon. No explosives, acid or other weapons were found. But 70 activists were arrested, and all their signs and puppets were seized.

The raid set off street protests, during which 15 police officers were injured in scuffles, and more than 25 police cruisers and other city vehicles were vandalized by protesters who also overturned dumpsters, smashed windows, and sprayed graffiti on downtown buildings. Before the end of the day, more than 350 people were arrested, including 19 who were charged with such felony offenses as assaults. Most were jailed and kept imprisoned on high bails. Hundreds were still behind bars days after the convention ended, complaining of deplorable conditions and brutal treatment.

The day after the delegates went home, Timoney called a press conference and announced that he and his intelligence officers had uncovered a vast left wing conspiracy. In language reflecting the anti-Communist hysteria of the Red Scare, the Philadelphia police commissioner claimed outside agitators had conspired to cause violence and property damage at the convention. He called on the federal government to investigate this subversive plot, saying, "There is a cadre, if you will, of criminal conspirators who are about the business of planning conspiracies to go in and cause mayhem and cause property damage in major cities in America that have large conventions or large numbers of people coming in for one reason or another."

One of the alleged conspirators was John Sellers, director of Ruckus Society, a Berkeley-based organization which trains political protesters in civil disobedience tactics. He was arrested while walking down the street and talking into a cell phone outside the Police Administration building. Although all of the charges filed against Sellers were misdemeanors, one of them was carrying an "instrument of a crime," the police excuse for spying on him. His bail was set at $1 million, far more than all but the most dangerous felons are required to post.

In seeking the high bail, District Attorney, Cindy Mertelli produced a 27 page "dossier" on Sellers. She called him "a real risk of danger to the community," noting he had been "involved in Seattle, a situation with almost dead bodies." Although none of the charges levied at Sellers involved violence or even vandalism, Mertelli said he "sets the stage to facilitate the more radical elements and intends to do the same in L.A.," where the Democrats were set to meet in early August.

Shortly after bail was set, CBS News was reporting that Philadelphia police had pinpointed the "ringleaders" of the most violent protests against the Republicans and had been stalking them throughout the day. Sellers was identified as one of the ringleaders that were stalked.

"We know they had a list of things they were going to do, and they set about doing it," Timoney said at an August 2 news conference, signalling that at least some of his information came from infiltrators. "I intend on raising this issue with federal authorities. Somebody's got to look into these groups."

Although a judge soon lowered the bail, the local news media immediately embraced the police version of events. The day after Timoney's press conference, the Philadelphia Inquirer congratulated the police for their restraint, crediting their excellent intelligence-gathering work. The paper also said that what appeared to be a spontaneous melee on August 1 was in fact a carefully choreographed assault, the result of a conspiracy.

Timoney's conspiracy theory got a boost when it was embraced by Bruce Chapman, president of the Discovery Institute and a former U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Organizations in Vienna. Writing in the Washington Times, Chapman claimed several left wing political organizations had conspired to cause violence in Seattle, Washington DC, Philadelphia and Los Angeles, including the Direct Action Network, Global Exchange, the Rainforest Action Network, the Foundation for Deep Ecology, and the International Forum on Globalization, which he described as "an umbrella group for 55 organizations opposed to globalization and high technology." Chapman said several of the most prominent organizations were funded by Douglas Tompkins, who he described as "a businessman who nurses an intense anger at modern technology and international trade." Chapman ended his piece by calling for a federal investigation of Tompkins, the organizations, and "the rioters."

Although the most serious charges against Sellers were eventually dropped, protesters faced a similar surveillance and harassment campaign in Los Angeles. On July 13, the Los Angeles Times printed a guest editorial by Mayor Richard Riordan which warned of violence by "international anarchists." In the piece titled "A Fair Warning to All: Don't Disrupt Our City," Riordan said the protesters coming to town had attended "training camps where they have learned strategies of destruction and guerrilla tactics." Before too long, the authorities and media were talking about the protesters in terms which had previously been reserved for domestic terrorists. On July 23, the Los Angeles Times reported the Secret Service and other government agencies were warning that a biological agent might be released in or around the Staples Center, where the convention was scheduled to be held. "We have purchased a lot of equipment, specialized masks and gowns," said Dr. Robert Splawn, medical director of the California Hospital Medical Center, the closest hospital to the center.

The police also began visiting businesses near the center, showing them videos from the Seattle protests and advising them to consider boarding up glass walls and windows, hiring additional security guards, and stocking up on emergency provisions like flashlights, food and water. "It's almost like a tornado," said LAPD Detective Darryl. "You can see it coming, but you don't know where it's going to go."

On August 7, the Southern California chapter of the ACLU wrote a letter to Police Chief Bernard Parks and Deputy City Attorney Debra Gonzales on behalf of several groups coordinating the upcoming demonstrations, including the D2K Convention Planning Coalition, the Rise Up/Direct Action Network, and the Community Action Network. In the letter, ACLU attorney Dan Tokaji complained that police were watching the the four-story protest headquarters building around the clock, constantly videotaped the building and recorded license plate numbers of cars used by protesters. The letter also alleged police were selectively enforcing traffic laws near the building, and had repeatedly entered it with producing search warrants. "They've crossed the line separating legitimate security preparations from unlawful harassment that violates protesters' First and Fourth amendment rights. The mere potential for a disturbance does not justify the suspension of our constitutional rights," the letter said.

When the city didn't respond, the ACLU went to federal court on August 11 and obtained a temporary restraining order prevent the police from raiding the building without a warrant. In its complaint, ACLU lawyers cited 22 separate incidents of surveillance and harassment, including random police visits without warrants, low helicopter overflights, and people being followed and searched after leaving the building. Although U.S. District Court Judge Dean Pregerson granted the injunction, he did not bar police from keeping the protest headquarters under surveillance if they had "probable cause."

But the injunction didn't stop the police from infiltrating the protest organizations. On August 12, a group called The Youth Are the Future! We Demand a Better World! held a meeting Luna Sol Cafe. They were planning to participate in the next day's Mumia Abu-Jamal protest march. Shortly after the meeting broke up, uniformed police officers rushed through the cafe's door and through three of the main speakers up against a wall. Several of the meeting's participates also jumped up and helped with the arrests, revealing themselves to be undercover officers. After checking the identifies of the three activists, the officers let two go and hauled the third one away in handcuffs.

By the time the Democratic National Convention began on August 18, federal, state and local law enforcement agencies were running an untold number of undercover officers and other infiltrators among the protesters. The infiltrators included members of the LAPD's Anti-Terrorism Division who were already spying on political dissidents in the Los Angeles area. As reported by the Los Angeles Times, "[S]ome of these undercover officers met before going out on the streets in their work clothes: T-shirts and shorts, bandannas, thong shoes and sneakers. They even are allowed to break department policy by wearing beards and keeping their hair long. One wore a 'Free Mumia' bandanna, a reference to a Pennsylvania inmate on death row for killing a police officer. His face was unshaven, his hair tousled."

Among other things, these "scouts" mingled with protesters at the various demonstrations, using cell phones to file continuous reports and allowing commanders to make "real time" decisions on deploying riot-gear equipped squads around town. Intelligence officers working in several downtown command posts took information from the undercover officers, then immediately shared it with commanders and lieutenants. Police used tip provided by these infiltrators to justify arresting 42 animal rights protesters on August 15. Authorities claimed the protesters had materials which could be used in "homemade flamethrowers," a charge strongly denied by the activists. A Superior Court judge released 40 of them after a hearing two days later.

"It's standard operating procedure: infiltrate and disrupt," protest organizer Lisa Fithian told the Times. "They are potentially trying to incite problems in the midst of our demonstrations. We're not doing anything illegal; we're not doing anything wrong."

The undercover agents helped police arrest hundreds of demonstrators during the convention. By the time the Democrats went home, even the protesters were beginning to concede the snitch-fueled tactics were beginning to hurt the anti-globalization. "Anyone who has been involved in the mass protest movement through a major event of the last six months has friends who have been brutalized at the hands of the system," activist/journalist Tim Ream wrote in an August 10 dispatch from Los Angeles, noting that nearly 2,500 protesters had been arrested since November 30, 1999.

But the repression wasn't merely happening in America. In recent years, the FBI has opened more than 40 satellite offices around the world. In August 2000, the Central and Eastern European Review reported that FBI Director Louis Freeh and Czech Interior Minister Stanislav Gross met to discuss launching a joint operation in advance of the annual meeting of the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund, set for September 26 in Prague. At the time, thousands of anarchist, socialists, communists and other left wing European activists were planning to protest the gathering, and Czech Prime Minister Milos Zeman had declared "largest threat to stability in the country is the extreme left."

As Freezerbox political writer Ezekial Ford put it, "The Battle of Seattle followed by Mayday demonstrations around the world and the IMF protests in Washington was a wake up call to those interested in seeing popular struggle against the reign of capital stunted or reversed. We must remember that the 1960s were viewed by elites not as a flowering of consciousness or a period of liberation for subjected groups, but constituted a 'crisis of democracy,' according to the Trilateral Commission, the collective voice for elites in the US, Europe and Japan. Networks of activists involved in the struggle against the investor-centric model of globalization may become future targets of state repression, just as they were in the 60s and 70s. And the FBI is apparently doing the preparatory fieldwork."

Indeed, some American protesters reported that they were prevented from entering the Czech Republic. The FBI had apparently provided their names to border guards, who used the information to turn them away.

And now law enforcement agencies are gearing up for the large demonstration expected when George Bush is sworn in as President. Activists from all over the country are travelling to Washington DC to protest the inaguration, including many minorities who believe their votes were intentionally rejected by Florida officials. Law enforcement authorities are promising even more repression, as L.A. Kauffman wrote in the January 5 issue of her Internet newsletter, FreeRadical: "The D.C. police have been making menacing pronouncements about their preparations. If the recent past is a guide, there will be a huge law enforcement presence, and the real possibility of police violence against protesters. Be aware that you run some risk of arrest if you attend any of these protests, except perhaps the permitted Voter March. There's also a chance that you will encounter pepper spray or other chemical weapons; prepare yourself by reading an excellent guide on the subject from the current Earth First! Journal."

The New Millennium is suddenly looking a lot like the 1960s.

Jim Redden's email is pdxs@teleport.com.

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