Recent events in my home, the Twin Cities, have shocked me.
The following is entirely quoted from two sources. One is an account of being arrested and sent to prison in China for planning a peaceful protest at the 2008 Summer Olympics, and the other is an account of being intimidated for planning a peaceful protest at the 2008 Republican National Convention. Again, everything is quoted, but since this is kind of a “mash up,” I ask you to follow the above links to read the entire stories for yourself.
We did the most foolish thing, which is all six of us on this mission were gonna meet at the bar. It was gonna be all eight of us, but one of my other collaborators was out scouting another location with two of the other witnesses, these citizen bloggers willing to document the act and get the footage out…
…25-30 officers in riot gear, with semi-automatic weapons drawn, entering homes of those suspected of planning protests, handcuffing and forcing them to lay on the floor, while law enforcement officers searched the homes, seizing computers, journals, and political pamphlets.
It was too late. There were 50 [state] secret police, public security officers, some in uniform, some in plain clothes… We were arrested and picked up, thrown into the back of an SUV, but never charged with a crime…That’s why it’s called extrajudicial detention.
…a team of roughly 25 officers had barged into their homes with masks and black swat gear, holding large semi-automatic rifles, and ordered them to lie on the floor, where they were handcuffed and ordered not to move. The officers refused to state why they were there…
It also turns out…”V for Vendetta” style, everyone else who had walked out of the place was busted in their beds later that night, or taken in the cab they got into, or taken in the lobby of their hotels. They got all six of us. They later picked up four other protesters…
…the raids were purely anticipatory in nature, and clearly designed to frighten people contemplating taking part in any unauthorized protests.
[Fortunately, all parallels break down at this point.]
others described how the officers were deliberately making intimidating statements such as “Do you have Terminator ready?” as they lay on the floor in handcuffs.
They did some classic torture interrogation techniques. They said they would kill us, that we were gonna spend the rest of our lives in Chinese prison…they kept us up all night and gave us water, wouldn’t let us use the bathroom, wouldn’t let us eat food.
Courts have long held that speech must be protected unless there is “incitement,” or “imminent lawless action.” Here’s the quote from Brandenburg v. Ohio (Wikipedia summary or full text at Findlaw):
…the constitutional guarantees of free speech and free press do not permit a State to forbid or proscribe advocacy of the use of force or of law violation except where such advocacy is directed to inciting or producing imminent lawless action and is likely to incite or produce such action.
The protester in China thought his phone was being tapped. My two lingering question are: What tipped the police off to the protesters in the Twin Cities; were there so many of them that they should have applied for a permit?