The discussion on protests has seemed a bit theoretical, or when real,
somewhat dated. Here's a report from Rebecca Hill, an  academic who was
arrested in Philadelphia.
>
>From: Rebecca Hill <[log in to unmask]>

>Subject: re: my statement on philly protests - pass along
>
>Free Speech in Franklin's City?
>Rebecca Hill
>
>      When I made my fourth visit this year to Philadelphia it was three
>days
>before the opening of protests against the Republican National Convention.
>The excitement and warmth of a diverse crowd of people hanging around in the
>neighborhoods was my first experience of Philly as an epicenter of brotherly
>and sisterly love.  There were kids who'd gotten radicalized by the huge
>demonstrations in Seattle and DC, people like me who'd been active for some
>ten years or so, as well as older folks who'd been protesting U.S.
>imperialism with Christian non-violence since the 1950s. There were street
>punks, students, ravers, and, Moms. They were people of Latino, Asian, and
>African-American descent, and whites, working together  - in every place I
>went from the streets to the jail.
>      "When I'm scared by the cops," said one man at a non-violence training
>I went to before the protests started, "I invoke an image of
>Gandhi -- sometimes Jesus." I'm different from this man in many ways; I'm
>likely to think of an image of George Jackson at a protest, and I sang
>"we're not gonna take it!" more often than any other song. Nonetheless, he
>and I, and all the others had much to learn from each other as we discussed
>our philosophies of democracy and equity and how to achieve them whether
>among ourselves or in society at large.   Even at large meetings, I was
>impressed with the successful democratic process, and with the energy and
>commitment of everyone I met.
>      The first protest I went to was on Monday with the Kensington Welfare
>Rights Union. At City Hall, the Million Billionaires entertained us with
>their chants "Gore or Bush, Bush or Gore, we don't care who you vote for -
>we already bought 'em!" and those zany, rag tag pro-lifers amused us even
>more with their sign "Drunkards and Fornicaters will Rot in Hell with
>Tupac." Guess who has more influence on our political system?
>      We marched from City Hall toward what we've christened the "FU center,"
>where the Republicans would soon be holding a pageant costing tax payers
>several million dollars. Along the way, people lining the streets, or just
>walking by greeted us with thumbs up, cheers, claps, and sometimes just a
>looks of curiosity. A few malcontents shouted "get a job!" It wasn't too
>hard to think of a response.  I could tell my experience was similar to
>others when many picked up the chant: "got three jobs, Can't pay rent? Who's
>gonna be your president?" with knowing jollity.
>   REPUBLICANS DEFACE NEIGHBORHOODS!
>      Only one thing I saw that day really upset me. Whoever was in charge
>of
>the convention was clearly catering to Republicans and ignoring the actual
>people who lived in the neighborhoods near the convention center. They had
>already defaced the streets of Philly long before the delegates' arrival.
>They didn't use spray paint to make their point. Instead, Convention
>decorators had hung flags of each state - including all the flags featuring
>the Confederate Stars and Bars - from lampposts all along the street in what
>was clearly a predominantly Black neighborhood. On Monday night, I actually
>met some of those people who had come to attend the Republican convention.
>While I was sitting in a bar in the train station, I met two young men in
>rumpled suits who were clearly already drunk when they reeled laughing into
>the bar. They told me that they'd just had a blast, gotten into the
>Republican convention in order to enjoy the free caviar and champagne and
>didn't care at all about the issues, and didn't even know what most of the
>issues were. Where were the media to interview these guys and show them on
>camera?
>        On Tuesday, I participated in an action on Broad and Spruce, where
>we
>drummed and danced, played soccer, played with stuffed animals and sang
>songs. Many in our group were there to protest the effect of current
>economic "reforms" on children and teenagers, who have no say in the
>political process but are affected severely by welfare reform, parental
>notification laws for abortions, and increasing use of criminal sanctions
>against juveniles. After we blockaded the intersection, I went to support
>the group of protesters who looked the most vulnerable, the police
>immediately communicated that they were ready for our non-violent protest.
>As I stood between the wall of bicycle cops and seated protesters, one
>officer pushed his bike into me and said "don't touch the bike! Don't touch
>the bike! If you touch my bike you're gonna bite it!" I asked him if he
>meant he'd shoot me and he said, "figure it out."
>       The police couldn't have been happier when the moment for the arrests
>finally came. They grabbed us and cinched our plastic hand-cuffs on tightly
>enough to cut off circulation and cause pain.
>THIS IS ILLEGAL FOR DOGS
>    After they arrested us, they put us on buses. On the bus, it was
>stifling
>hot, as the windows barely opened. We sat, worrying over our hand-cuffs -
>whose hands were blue?  "was I bleeding at my wrist?" We then stayed on the
>bus from around 5:20 or so until sometime around 9:00 or 9:30pm. At some
>point, a woman realized that hot air coming into the bus through what looked
>like heaters.  We begged for water, but when we called out and asked for it,
>the guard in the front of the bus refused us, and simply tossed a splash of
>her own water against the window in front of us so that we could watch it
>trickle down. One of the women noted that keeping a dog in such conditions
>was illegal and we began chanting "bow wow wow yippie yo yippie-yay." When a
>public defender arrived on the bus, she breathed in the heat and said
>something like "Oh my God."
>      We weren't let off the bus until one protester in another bus actually
>passed out from dehydration.
>    At this point, they brought us into the "roundhouse" to be processed.
>However, instead of following the normal booking procedure, after taking our
>pictures they sent us to 5' by 7' holding cells where we sat six to a cell.
>They told us they would fingerprint and arraign us  - but it would take a
>while, and they left us there. At around 1am or so, gave us each a
>"sandwich" made of wonder bread with a piece of American cheese, clearly in
>honor of the convention itself.  When a small number of us were finally
>permitted our first phone calls, at one am on Thursday morning, I managed to
>get word out to my parents so that they would know where I was.  Since it
>was one in the morning when we got our calls, many of the detainees didn't
>feel able to call their families.
>         The majority of the women were practicing "jail solidarity" while
>others had decided, for personal reasons, that they would need to sign
>bonds
>and give their names to the police. However, it did not matter whether
>people were willing to cooperate. One woman had identified herself early on,
>because she had a five year old child, but the police left her (and all of
>us), taking out a few people at a time to arraign them, and leaving the rest
>of us wondering when if ever we would be allowed to leave - whether to go on
>to the actual jail or to get out.  There were moments of panic and hysteria.
>At some point, (I'm not sure on what day or hour because I was unable to
>sleep for more than an hour at a time during the three days that I spent in
>the tiny cell,) the police announced that they would be placing more people
>in our already packed holding cells. Shortly afterwards, one woman a few
>cells down from me started screaming and wailing "I HAVE TO GET OUT OF
>HERE!!! I HAVE TO GET OUT OF HERE!!!!" and punched her hand into the wall.
>Several hours later, she was taken somewhere else and we all wondered
>"where?" Was she going to get medical attention? Was she going to be sent to
>a hospital for x-rays? Nobody could tell. At another moment, we heard the
>men on the other side of the wall indicating that someone was being beaten.
>We heard a guard say "stand up and walk like a man, bitch" and then heard
>what was clearly a beating. To be witnesses we sat silently, holding hands,
>and listened, many of us crying quietly.
>         Despite all these pressures, because the people who are protesting
>here are concerned with building community and see their lives as being
>connected with others, we survived the craziness. We sang songs, held
>meetings, told jokes, shared our food, and worked to get each person what
>she needed.
>         By the time I was arraigned, I was completely disoriented and
>exhausted, and was eventually let out the door of the jail, with no phone
>call onto the street at around 1:30 in the morning, still wondering "what
>happened to that one who gave her name the first day and wasn't
>fingerprinted until two days later? What will happen to all those women who
>are going to the PIC? What will happen to the men? Now that I'm out, I'm
>most worried about what will happen to those people with bails set at one
>million dollars, and what this means for protest in our country.
>         Protesters were the only people who took care of us. When I finally
>got out, greeted by the mother of one of the other detainees, and by
>another person who was - because he just felt he had to and wanted to -
>driving
>protesters to wherever they needed to go. Protesters fed us and gave us a
>place to relax and regroup and make phone calls that had been denied us in
>jail. It is this spirit that I have met the entire time that I have been
>here among "rag tag youth" who are protesting because they don't like the
>fact that corporations are in control of our political system and our lives.
>That this group of kindly people, hungry people who were sharing their only
>food with each other, are now  lambasted as a bunch of "criminal
>conspirators" and "cowards" is simply ridiculous.
>       The truth is that the police are so afraid of non-violent protesters
>that they locked up several hundred people for three and more days without
>charging them, and assigned million dollar bails to activists who tried to
>bring attention to issues that weren't addressed in the Republican gala this
>week. The corporate owned media is so afraid of us that they won't print
>much of the truth about what's going on here. When I tried to identify
>myself to a cameraman as a faculty member at  a major university, he turned
>his camera off and walked away. I guess that doesn't fit the story they're
>trying to tell.
>I'm worried about how this affects average Americans. I met a man on the
>street who said to me, "guess that should teach you not to protest." I think
>Ben Franklin would turn in his grave, to hear Philadelphia defended with
>sentiments like these and other statements I've read in the papers in the
>last few days. Those are the only demonstrations of cowardice that I have
>seen in Philadelphia this summer.
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