choppedliver
10-08-2009, 07:46 PM
From the youngest in my study group:
Hey All,
You all need to be informed as to what is happening in Rochester right now.
So yesterday, to mark the 7th anniversary of the invasion of Afghanistan there was a protest organized by the local SDS chapter, but with the participation of activists from many other organizations as well. It was about 60 people, largely young, with bucket drums and hula hoops (I don't understand the hula hoops, but whatever). They started in a park with a rally and speeches and then set off on a march to several local locations around downtown that are significant in their relation to the war. These included the main military recruiting station, the city school board building (they support military recruiting in the schools), Bausch & Lomb's HQ (spy satellite optics work) etc. On the way to the school board building, the march took over an empty lane of the street (downtown Rochester is pretty dead after rush hour).
While they were crossing the bridge over the Genesee River, over 30 cop cars swooped in and surrounded the march on the bridge.
Cops jumped out of their cars and started ordering the marchers back on to the sidewalk, which they tried to comply with. Being on the bridge, there wasn't a lot of room for them to move to. Several cops lept into the crowd and yanked the only African-American youth in the march out of the crowd and arrested him. When activists started questioning this seemingly biased action, any protester within earshot of the police was targeted. The Rochester IndyMedia folks were on hand videotaping the demonstration, but were quickly targeted by the police, who wanted to confiscate the footage. Through some brave actions, the videographers were each able to hand off their cameras with football style lateral passes to other marchers before the cops could get the footage. Many of the cops had their batons out and began striking people, trying to push the crowd away from the arrests. With the railing of the bridge and a 15 foot fall to the swift moving Genesee below, activists were reluctant to back up much further. Several protesters were violently taken to the ground by police, leading to obvious injuries, for which several had to seek medical attention. 12 people in total were arrested, most on charges of unlawful assembly, but some also had charges of resisting arrest added to their list.
The march beat a hasty retreat back to the rally site, where local media had been alerted to meet them. Thanks to the presence of the local media, the police who came to the park held off further arrests. The marchers then went to the city's Public Safety Building to seek the immediate release of all those detained. There, the police commander made a statement that the police had held off intervening in the march until after, in their words, the march failed to make way for a fire engine on the way to a call. The IndyMedia footage of the march clearly shows the people at the front of the march recognizing the approach of the fire truck and halting the march at the edge of an intersection to let the fire truck pass without delay. The police also claim that they issued an order to disperse, but the footage clearly shows that this was never done, certainly not using a single one of the over 30 patrol car's PA system.
All 12 who were arrested were released, though some required further medical attention, including stitches.
Today, a meeting was called at the soon to be opened "Flying Squirrel Community Space" which will be home to IndyMedia, Rochester Against War, SDS and several other organizations. As the space does not currently have it's certificate of occupancy, the venue organizers suggested we take chairs outside into the parking lot, to avoid complications with the building inspection, scheduled in the next few days (learning from the Sanctuary's past troubles with Troy). While we were outside, enjoying one of the last sunny days before winter, a police car drove by very slowly, did a u-turn and drove past slowly again. Activists were quick to pull out their cameras and start filming this activity. Over the course of the next half hour, nearly a dozen other cops showed up and started surrounding the venue's parking lot on the block's corner. They began videotaping the meeting, using long distance parabolic microphones and writing down the plate numbers of cars parked in the lot. After a while, a senior officer got out of his car, backed up by nearly a dozen officers and approached the meeting. Leaders were delegated to discuss the police's intimidation and harrassment. While they were talking to the police, other activists called the offices of the mayor and city council members to report the harassment. The police claimed they were afraid we were going to attempt to march again. Having no intention of marching anywhere today, we tried to convince the police of this, to little avail. So we halted our meeting (someone broke out the hula hoops again) and waited for the police's shift change to see how serious they were to stake us out. The police present included officers from the traffic unit, west side division, HQ and tactical force. As one meeting attendee, arrested the previous night, tried to drive off from the meeting to go to his job, he was pulled over, apparently for a minor traffic infraction. Not long after the shift change when it was pretty clear we weren't going to talk about anything important in range of their mics or march anywhere, most of the police left.
We resumed the meeting, quickly ran through what we needed to get done to prepare for Friday's press conference. While we were finishing our meeting, more cops, this time from the evening shift started to arrive. We got a cellphone call informing us that the city council members had been outraged by what they saw on the videos and were putting the issue of a formal investigation on the agenda for tonight's meeting at 5PM. As the police were arriving in greater numbers, we ended our meeting, with most of those in attendance planning on driving over to city hall to address the council. As we were leaving, a neighbor informed us that the police were massing forces at a school parking lot around the corner, probably in case we tried to march anywhere. These forces included a paddy wagon and tactical force officers.
Thankfully, our meeting broke up without incident. 2 people stayed behind to watch over the community space until the cops left, while most went to city hall.
This is obvious police harassment of movement activists because the police are scared, because they know their story is full of holes. They were attempting to intimidate our meeting, listen in on our meeting and identify "potential trouble makers" for future prosecutions. Hopefully at tonight's city council meeting, the testimony of activists will get a full, formal investigation opened into the brutality the police used yesterday, but also maybe, the brutality that they use every day in the poor working class neighborhoods all over the city. When there are wars abroad, they are invariably followed by police repression of dissent at home. Instead of spending money to fix the crumbling infrastructure in the city, the ruling class's solution is to hire more cops, buy more police cars and installing police remote video cameras on important street corners.
You can see the IndyMedia footage and photos from the march here:
http://blip.tv/file/2695340
http://picasaweb.google.com/RochesterAgainstWar/FunkTheWar2#
http://rochester.indymedia.org/feature/display/19958/index.php
Local Media Coverage:
http://www.13wham.com/mostpopular/story/Protesters-Arrested-Downtown-Clash-with-Police/s5N-lqEkvkm7rnW3kML7zQ.cspx
http://www.democratandchronicle.com/article/20091008/NEWS01/910080334/
1002/NEWS
http://www.whec.com/news/stories/S1180924.shtml?cat=565
Hey All,
You all need to be informed as to what is happening in Rochester right now.
So yesterday, to mark the 7th anniversary of the invasion of Afghanistan there was a protest organized by the local SDS chapter, but with the participation of activists from many other organizations as well. It was about 60 people, largely young, with bucket drums and hula hoops (I don't understand the hula hoops, but whatever). They started in a park with a rally and speeches and then set off on a march to several local locations around downtown that are significant in their relation to the war. These included the main military recruiting station, the city school board building (they support military recruiting in the schools), Bausch & Lomb's HQ (spy satellite optics work) etc. On the way to the school board building, the march took over an empty lane of the street (downtown Rochester is pretty dead after rush hour).
While they were crossing the bridge over the Genesee River, over 30 cop cars swooped in and surrounded the march on the bridge.
Cops jumped out of their cars and started ordering the marchers back on to the sidewalk, which they tried to comply with. Being on the bridge, there wasn't a lot of room for them to move to. Several cops lept into the crowd and yanked the only African-American youth in the march out of the crowd and arrested him. When activists started questioning this seemingly biased action, any protester within earshot of the police was targeted. The Rochester IndyMedia folks were on hand videotaping the demonstration, but were quickly targeted by the police, who wanted to confiscate the footage. Through some brave actions, the videographers were each able to hand off their cameras with football style lateral passes to other marchers before the cops could get the footage. Many of the cops had their batons out and began striking people, trying to push the crowd away from the arrests. With the railing of the bridge and a 15 foot fall to the swift moving Genesee below, activists were reluctant to back up much further. Several protesters were violently taken to the ground by police, leading to obvious injuries, for which several had to seek medical attention. 12 people in total were arrested, most on charges of unlawful assembly, but some also had charges of resisting arrest added to their list.
The march beat a hasty retreat back to the rally site, where local media had been alerted to meet them. Thanks to the presence of the local media, the police who came to the park held off further arrests. The marchers then went to the city's Public Safety Building to seek the immediate release of all those detained. There, the police commander made a statement that the police had held off intervening in the march until after, in their words, the march failed to make way for a fire engine on the way to a call. The IndyMedia footage of the march clearly shows the people at the front of the march recognizing the approach of the fire truck and halting the march at the edge of an intersection to let the fire truck pass without delay. The police also claim that they issued an order to disperse, but the footage clearly shows that this was never done, certainly not using a single one of the over 30 patrol car's PA system.
All 12 who were arrested were released, though some required further medical attention, including stitches.
Today, a meeting was called at the soon to be opened "Flying Squirrel Community Space" which will be home to IndyMedia, Rochester Against War, SDS and several other organizations. As the space does not currently have it's certificate of occupancy, the venue organizers suggested we take chairs outside into the parking lot, to avoid complications with the building inspection, scheduled in the next few days (learning from the Sanctuary's past troubles with Troy). While we were outside, enjoying one of the last sunny days before winter, a police car drove by very slowly, did a u-turn and drove past slowly again. Activists were quick to pull out their cameras and start filming this activity. Over the course of the next half hour, nearly a dozen other cops showed up and started surrounding the venue's parking lot on the block's corner. They began videotaping the meeting, using long distance parabolic microphones and writing down the plate numbers of cars parked in the lot. After a while, a senior officer got out of his car, backed up by nearly a dozen officers and approached the meeting. Leaders were delegated to discuss the police's intimidation and harrassment. While they were talking to the police, other activists called the offices of the mayor and city council members to report the harassment. The police claimed they were afraid we were going to attempt to march again. Having no intention of marching anywhere today, we tried to convince the police of this, to little avail. So we halted our meeting (someone broke out the hula hoops again) and waited for the police's shift change to see how serious they were to stake us out. The police present included officers from the traffic unit, west side division, HQ and tactical force. As one meeting attendee, arrested the previous night, tried to drive off from the meeting to go to his job, he was pulled over, apparently for a minor traffic infraction. Not long after the shift change when it was pretty clear we weren't going to talk about anything important in range of their mics or march anywhere, most of the police left.
We resumed the meeting, quickly ran through what we needed to get done to prepare for Friday's press conference. While we were finishing our meeting, more cops, this time from the evening shift started to arrive. We got a cellphone call informing us that the city council members had been outraged by what they saw on the videos and were putting the issue of a formal investigation on the agenda for tonight's meeting at 5PM. As the police were arriving in greater numbers, we ended our meeting, with most of those in attendance planning on driving over to city hall to address the council. As we were leaving, a neighbor informed us that the police were massing forces at a school parking lot around the corner, probably in case we tried to march anywhere. These forces included a paddy wagon and tactical force officers.
Thankfully, our meeting broke up without incident. 2 people stayed behind to watch over the community space until the cops left, while most went to city hall.
This is obvious police harassment of movement activists because the police are scared, because they know their story is full of holes. They were attempting to intimidate our meeting, listen in on our meeting and identify "potential trouble makers" for future prosecutions. Hopefully at tonight's city council meeting, the testimony of activists will get a full, formal investigation opened into the brutality the police used yesterday, but also maybe, the brutality that they use every day in the poor working class neighborhoods all over the city. When there are wars abroad, they are invariably followed by police repression of dissent at home. Instead of spending money to fix the crumbling infrastructure in the city, the ruling class's solution is to hire more cops, buy more police cars and installing police remote video cameras on important street corners.
You can see the IndyMedia footage and photos from the march here:
http://blip.tv/file/2695340
http://picasaweb.google.com/RochesterAgainstWar/FunkTheWar2#
http://rochester.indymedia.org/feature/display/19958/index.php
Local Media Coverage:
http://www.13wham.com/mostpopular/story/Protesters-Arrested-Downtown-Clash-with-Police/s5N-lqEkvkm7rnW3kML7zQ.cspx
http://www.democratandchronicle.com/article/20091008/NEWS01/910080334/
1002/NEWS
http://www.whec.com/news/stories/S1180924.shtml?cat=565