I just came back from a legal support meeting, where I heard that the Chiacgo cops, or a Chicago police commander, anyway stated that people arrested again would face felony charges. The papers today, having wrongly stated that therew ere "dozens" of arrests on Thurs., now admit that therew ere over 500 that night. We are not talking about civil disobediencve type arrests, but busts of people who did not march to be arrested, and ins om,e cases, were mistkenly in the wrong place at the wrong time, got off the bus, did not protest at all. Most did. of course. It is not hard to escalate a disturbing the peace or mob action charge to something that is a felony. It is harder to get a conviction, especially in a mass arrest situationw here they mau not even have the real arresting officer's name. Things are very scary here in Chicago. Last night the cops surrounded about 3-5,000 demonstrators; the cops were in full armor with no nameplates, two to four ranls deep; I'd estimate that there were over 1,000 of them; we negotiated a march route (past Boeing, which donated their cool-looking body arnor to the city), but they wouldn't let anyone leaver the route or even leave the march, and were busting people to tried, including a man in a wheelchair. The march was backed up by cops with shiels and batons who used physical force -- pushing, not beating -- to keep the marchers moving. They turned off the lights on several streets on the route.
Marta Russell <ap888 at lafn.org> wrote:>I've just heard that some war protesters around the country have been
>charged with felonies. Has anyone else heard this?
>
>Of course, this would be a critical mistake, as a felony conviction can
>take away the right to vote in many states.
Is a 409C - failure to disperse - a felony? That is how my ticket was written up. Don't think they can change it once it has been written. Marta --
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