SternSkipper
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Menino's disgraceful attack on peaceful protesters
By Adam Price October 11, 2011 05:23 PM The eerie silhouette of riot police in the middle of the night as a peaceful demonstration is about to be forcibly disrupted is not something I had expected when I first came to America. Still less an honor guard of veterans man-handled, and the American flag tossed like a rag to the ground. As many of us appealed to the conscience of individual members of the Boston Police Department — as surely members of the bottom 99 percent as anyone — many averted their gaze, clearly troubled by what were they being asked to do. Mass arrests of peaceful protesters are always a bad idea, in any public place, from Tahrir Square to Dewey. A protester speaking through the people’s mic — the tradition of repeating the words of fellow protesters that first began in New York as a practical measure to overcome the ban on bullhorns but now symbolizes both the sense of solidarity and the respect for each individual perspective that has come to characterize this movement — reminded us in the early hours of Tuesday morning how ingrained the right to assemble and protest is in the very spirit of America: “Congress shall make no law… prohibiting… the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.”
Mayor Menino’s justification for the police action — that civil disobedience cannot be tolerated — flies in the face of America’s rich history of non-violent protest, from the abolitionists and women’s suffrage movement through to the Vietnam War and the civil rights struggle. It jars particularly with Boston’s own gilded heritage as the birthplace of the American Revolution, which, in other contexts, the city proudly promotes. Was it only me — hardly an expert in American history by any means — who saw the irony of a peaceful assembly being threatened with arrest allegedly because they were illegally trespassing on a piece of turf to which they didn’t own the title? “Disperse! Get off the King’s Green!” was, as I recall, the prelude to the shot that rang round the world. Except this time the battle is with, in the language of FDR, the “economic royalists” of the top one percent.
Police Commissioner Edward F. Davis’ claim that the park had to be cleared because it had been taken over by “anarchists” was even more risible. In a quarter of a century of attending political protests this was among the most courteous collection of subversives that I have ever seen. So much so that even as police officers with batons were dragging people away before our very eyes, we were urged by organizers not to shout “shame” in case we antagonized the police and escalated the aggression. They were not the enemy, we were told repeatedly. They were our friends. It is not these brave young people that have plunged a great nation into lawlessness and anarchy. It’s those on Wall Street who wield unaccountable power and for too long in this country, as in mine, have perpetuated injustice. As Mayor Menino’s garbage trucks trashed the property of these latter-day patriots — an outrageously spiteful gesture — the resolve of these, mostly young, people, I suspect, will not so easily be crushed. Cuffing people’s hands is one thing, but chaining people’s spirits, attempting to place their very minds in manacles, is an altogether more foolhardy proposition, particularly, as my compatriots discovered, here in Massachusetts. The prospect of another attack on Dewey Square in the coming weeks would not just be an affront to democracy, it would, to my mind, be an assault on the very essence of the American dream.
Adam Price was a member of the British Parliament from 2001 to 2010, representing Carmarthen East and Dinefwr in Wales. He is currently a fellow at the John F. Kennedy School of Government, and was present at the Occupy Boston protest in the early hours of Tuesday morning. Globe photo/Matthew J. Lee: An Occupy Boston protester is dragged away and arrested by the Boston Police early Tuesday morning.
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Boston Mayor Menino Is getting Road Rash From The Actio... - 
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