>>.... Obviously, it's annoying when protesters over-
>>dramatize their victimization by police, deliberately provoke cops,
>>or claim that we live in a "police state." (We don't.)
>
>
> Is there some reason I don't know about for this sentence? AFAIK, not even
> the NY police (nor even Fox News!) have raised a charge/defense of
> "deliberate provocation". Not one single time. A striking hallmark of the
> RNC protests was that these were VERY disciplined, "mature"
> protesters. Likewise, AFAIK, none of the lawyers, nor protest
> spokespersons have ever been quoted as saying we live in "police
> state". These are very serious plaintiffs. The City's lawyers DID claim
> that the protesters "overdramatized" their victimization by police -- so
> far, in every major case the judges have ruled that to be an outright lie.
>
> As the list knows from my posts during the RNC I was in close contact with
> a large number of the on-scene legal observers at that time and I have seen
> several of the videos to be released. Is Liza on to something I have missed?
Well, we DO live in a police state and you don't have to be an American person of color to point that out. The U.S. incarcerates more people than any other nation on the planet. The U.S. has huge police forces which are well-funded, brutal and violent.
One of my friends was doing a housing occupation in New Orleans, which some of you heard about on Democracy Now. The city and the housing authority used a SWAT team of 30 officers to remove her and one other activist from their protest. This happened at roughly the same time as a murder was taking place several blocks away.
We've seen at protest after protest a police presence that is way overboard.
I attended many of the protests during the 2004 RNC convention in NYC. The city had so many police policing the protests that one couldn't even step off a sidewalk without some pig getting in your face. I was almost detained at one point when some NYPD officers decided they didn't like that some young activist was sitting on a curb when a protest was marching past. Ridiculous.
Then there was the police "motorcycle club," a un-uniformed gang that was riding around trying to provoke confrontations.
Paul is right that the RNC protests were very "disciplined". That mostly had to do with the police. Liza has a point about protesters over-dramatizing their experiences at ohter protests, but I look at this as part of the protest against the police. You have to play this stuff up because the police are engaged in their own PR operations.
Chuck