[894] in peace2
Re: text of solidarity for G8 protesters
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Rhett Creighton)
Sat Jul 28 06:15:41 2001
Date: Sat, 28 Jul 2001 06:18:11 -0400 (EDT)
From: Rhett Creighton <rhett@MIT.EDU>
To: Aimee L Smith <alsmith@mit.edu>
cc: peace-list@mit.edu
In-Reply-To: <200107260547.BAA06915@emat1.mit.edu>
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From what I saw, the violence at this protest was not completely the fault
of the police, as I have usually seen it before. Most protesters did not
have a mindset of a peacefull protest. While there were only 600 or so
"black block" members, there were at least 40,000 "disobedient" protesters
who attempted to break through the red zone in a very dangerous and
disorganized way. they were throwing rocks at the barracades and the
police. The boy who was killed had jumped onto a police truck and was
banging on it.
My impression is that this was not the same kind of peacful protest that I
see people strive for in the US. At the least, Id say that the police had
good reason to feel threatened. Though, they also went powercrazy. They
taunted people bringing up Mousilini, and a police ruled state, and beat a
lot of unarmed people unnescesarrily. Not to meantion, they gassed the
crap out of everything.
Anyway, in this case, I think that the call for peace needs to be toward
both sides.
On Thu, 26 Jul 2001, Aimee L Smith wrote:
>
> 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.
>
