[891] in peace2
text of solidarity for G8 protesters
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Aimee L Smith)
Thu Jul 26 01:47:36 2001
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Date: Thu, 26 Jul 2001 01:47:05 -0400
From: Aimee L Smith <alsmith@MIT.EDU>
Check out http://boston.indymedia.org/front.php3?article_id=2916&group=
It is a call for solidarity letters from organizations around the world for
the right to protest and against police brutality. I wrote the following
response. Please feel free to edit and respond on peace-makers@mit.edu
If you are not on peace-makers and would like to be, email me.
In hope,
Aimee
The statement I propose is as follows:
Members of the MIT Social Justice Cooperative condemn police and Caribinieri
tactics used in Genoa, Italy to crack down on peaceful protesters. These
unacceptable tactics include the summary execution of at least one protester,
committing acts of violence and property destruction while masquerading as
"Black Block" protesters in order to create a pretext for gassing and beating
of peaceful protesters both in marches and in the convergence space of the
Genoa Social Forum, savagely beating protesters for alleged affiliations,
using force to storm the Independent Media Center and legal convergence space
to illegally seize evidence of police criminal activity such as audio
recordings, video footage, and eye-witness testimonies, arresting people for
being beaten by police and holding arestees without giving them access to
legal council. These practices are tantamount to state sponsored terrorism
against citizens and foreigners who seek to assemble and voice their various
grievances against the leaders of the G8. Many people from all over the
planet feel alienated and shut out of decisions that affect every aspect of
our lives. We seek to express this concern at forums associated with the
bodies and groupings that are superseding the autonomy of our national
governments. Some of us are horrified that we have been forced to eat
genetically modified food without even being notified, let alone asked. Some
of us are outraged at the way the IMF has transformed its role from the buoyer
and regulator of currencies to lender and loan-shark of last resort with its
associated detrimental Structural Adjustment Policies. Some of us are
concerned that corporations are drafting and railroading through agreements
that put corporate rights ahead of human and citizen rights as seen in NAFTA
where corporations can sue governments for loss of future profits if
environmental laws are put into place, while countries are not allowed to sue
or seek the death penalty for malevolent corporations. Some of us are
concerned by encroachments on civil liberties in arenas such as so-called
intellectual property rights on living organisms and on drugs whose
development was publicly funded. Other encroachments on civil liberties are
the ones now routinely experienced at large demonstrations where cities are
barricaded, militarized and, the latest trend, police given live ammunition.
Police, whose salaries we all pay with our tax dollars, lie to, harass and
threaten us when we have no weapons and we threaten no one. We respect the
fact that it is nerve-wracking to have large gatherings of people, but that is
no justification for suspending democracy and violating our basic human rights
to speech, communication, assembly and security in our person. The statement
of the Minister of the Interior not only lacked contrition, but attempted to
rationalize the summary execution of Carlo Guiliani as self-defense from a
"lynching." As a group based in the United States with a terrible history of
lynching African Americans and Jews who were *unarmed* and vastly outnumbered,
we find this choice of language, "lynching," to be highly insensitive and
trivializing the terror experienced by those many souls who have been lynched.
The young officer responsible for the summary execution was armed with a
deadly weapon and in a vehicle that did have space to escape into if the
occupants had legitimately feared for their lives. Those scuffling with the
police (whether in self-defense, due to police provocateurs dressed as
protesters, or due to their own individual choice to use violence against the
most accessible tools of state repression we can't say) were not armed with
deadly weapons and the Police had significant riot police back-up in the area.
Non-lethal weapons or a non-lethal shot could have been used instead,
particularly judging from how clear the view the assassin had as seen in the
photographic evidence that the whole world has seen. In short, the actions of
the Government in Genoa this past week were not what a democracy looks like
and the whole world is watching.
We will continue to demand our rights to assemble, protest and shape our world
in a democratic manner. We will fight global corporatization every step of
the way by exposing the anti-democratic nature and goals of those championing
this profit over people model of world economic integration. We can thank the
Italian police for making the brutal reality of who runs this planet and for
whose interests vastly more transparent. No justice, no peace.
