This is a collection of a few stories i have collected from around the web starting today. Posted on Fri, Apr. 11, 2003

Anti-war protest planned Monday at ChevronTexaco
Apr. 11, 2003
Associated Press

San Ramon - -- The next big anti-war protest in the San Francisco Bay area is scheduled for Monday morning at the gates of ChevronTexaco headquarters in San Ramon.

A group known as Direct Action to Stop the War said yesterday that oil companies share responsibility for the war with Iraq and are just waiting for the fight to end to take over Iraq's oil bounty.

Iraq has the world's second largest known reserves of oil.

Protesters also point out that National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice used to be a member of ChevronTexaco's board of directors.

Company spokesman Stan Luckoski rejected the idea that the war is about oil.

He pointed out that the Bush administration has repeatedly said the war is over Iraq's possession of weapons of mass destruction.

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Police Try to Defend Practice of Debriefing Demonstrators
By WILLIAM K. RASHBAUM

Police Commissioner Raymond W. Kelly yesterday defended the department's questioning of hundreds of arrested antiwar protesters about their involvement in political groups and demonstrations — a practice he ordered halted after it came to light on Tuesday — saying it was neither illegal nor unconstitutional.

Mr. Kelly, speaking after a news conference about a series of drug arrests, said he had ordered an end to the initiative, and the destruction of a database created from the information it collected, because it raised "questions and concerns" and because that information was not needed. The database was put together using what was called a "demonstration debriefing form," which had been created for that purpose, and Mr. Kelly also said he had ordered that no such forms be created in the future without the approval of his senior intelligence aide, the deputy commissioner of intelligence.

Mr. Kelly ordered on Tuesday that the practice be largely discontinued after the New York Civil Liberties Union wrote to him to complain about it. The group said that questioning demonstrators about speech and protest protected by the First Amendment could have a chilling effect.

Yesterday, he played down the significance of the questioning and said that he and department lawyers, along with lawyers for the city's Law Department, did not believe it was unconstitutional. "I don't believe there are constitutional issues here," he said.

But Donna Lieberman, the executive director of the Civil Liberties Union, said the practice was an indication of how willing the government was to abandon First Amendment values at a time of heightened concerns about possible terrorist attacks. "Though we are pleased that the department has agreed to halt these troubling interrogations," she said, "they should never have started in the first place and they raise troubling questions about the Police Department's respect for lawful political activity."

Detectives had used the debriefing forms to record where arrested demonstrators attended school, what membership they had in any organizations and their involvement in past protests. While Mr. Kelly said the department believed the questions were legitimate, the Civil Liberties Union said the demonstrators were denied access to lawyers during the questioning and told that requesting a lawyer would delay their release.

Mr. Kelly said that neither he nor the deputy commissioner for intelligence, David Cohen, a former senior Central Intelligence Agency official, knew about the practice. But he defended the motives of those who created the form, saying it was a "good faith effort" to develop information that would help police officials determine how to deploy officers at future demonstrations.

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In addition, she said, the protesters had been denied the right to counsel after they had been arrested.

Joel Kupferman, a lawyer representing the National Lawyers Guild, said that demonstrators have told him that while in custody at One Police Plaza they were asked the following questions by detectives:

"What is your view of Israel? What is your view of Palestine? What do you think of 9/11? And where were you during 9/11?"

Lieberman said, referring to such questioning: "We don't know who in the Police Department is responsible. The Police Department has to find out who is responsible.
It is incompatible with democratic rights."

Kelly said the practice of questioning protesters about their political activity while in custody had begun at the massive Feb. 15 anti-war demonstration in midtown. Before that rally, police denied marchers a parade permit to march past the United Nations, citing national security safety concerns. The decision was upheld by a federal judge.

Kelly described the start of this practice as "a good-faith effort on the part of some people in the department to help us determine what resources are needed to police certain demonstrations in the future."

He said the initiators were lower-ranking members of the department and that neither he nor David Cohen, deputy commissioner for intelligence, had known about it.

"These types of things can happen in a big organization," Kelly said.

He said he ordered the practice abandoned because "we didn't think it was particularly necessary."

Protesters did not have their constitutional rights violated because they were questioned during the arrest process, added the commissioner.

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http://www.commondreams.org/headlines03/0410-07.htm
Published on Thursday, April 10, 2003 by Reuters
NY Police Admit Keeping Anti-War Protest Database
by Grant McCool

NEW YORK - New York police admitted on Thursday to compiling and then destroying a database of people arrested during anti-war protests, but rights groups decried the practice as an erosion of civil liberties in the name of the U.S. war on terrorism.

A "debriefing form" was used by detectives to record information on hundreds of people arrested in a series of protests since mid-February against the U.S.-led war on Iraq.

"After a review, the department has decided to eliminate the use of the Demonstration Debriefing Form," NYPD chief spokesman Michael O'Looney said in a statement that was first reported in Thursday's New York Times.

"Arrestees will no longer be asked questions pertaining to prior demonstration history, or school name. All information gathered since the form's inception on Feb. 15 has been destroyed."

The practice ended after pressure from the New York Civil Liberties Union, which received complaints from demonstrators that they felt coerced and that their constitutional rights of free speech and free association were being violated.

Thursday's disclosure came just weeks after a judge cited "fundamental changes in the threats to public security" in lifting decades-long restrictions on the New York Police Department's ability to spy on political groups.

Law enforcement authorities, free speech advocates, media commentators and courts have all acknowledged that the hijacked plane attacks on New York and Washington on Sept. 11, 2001 and the U.S. war on Iraq have created a different atmosphere for policing in America for possible terrorism.

The collection of personal information of demonstrators, however, has not gone down well in New York, a city with a tradition and history of protest and dissent.

"We've had numerous demonstrations in New York in the past 18 months, but is their any evidence or connection whatsoever that people exercising their first amendment rights have anything to do with terrorism?" asked Jeffrey Fogel, legal director of New York-based Center for Constitutional Rights.

Police said they would continue to tally the names of organizations, but not individuals, to help in deciding how many officers to assign to future demonstrations.

But Fogel charged that still amounted to "intelligence gathering" by police that should be stopped.

New York Civil Liberties Union head Donna Lieberman said the United States was at "a crossroads" on the issue. "The country has to decide whether to preserve our democratic values or sacrifice them needlessly as the Bush administration would have us do on the altar of some inaccurate notion of national security. Safety is critical of course, but it's not necessary to give up our liberties," Lieberman said.

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Police Stop Collecting Data on Protesters' Politics
By WILLIAM K. RASHBAUM

When a series of large antiwar protests began nearly eight weeks ago, the New York Police Department started questioning hundreds of people arrested at the demonstrations about their prior political activity and recording the information in a database.

But yesterday, after the practice came to light, the Police Department said it would destroy the database, created with a debriefing form, and largely abandon the initiative, which civil libertarians and constitutional law experts said was deeply troubling.

"After a review, the department has decided to eliminate the use of the Demonstration Debriefing Form," Michael O'Looney, the department's chief spokesman, said in a statement. "Arrestees will no longer be asked questions pertaining to prior demonstration history, or school name. All information gathered since the form's inception on Feb. 15 has been destroyed."

Several constitutional scholars and civil libertarians said that the practice raised grave questions about whether asking people about their political affiliations or activity would have a severe chilling effect on protest and speech that are protected by the First Amendment.

Central to the practice was the debriefing form, which detectives used to record where the arrested protesters went to school, their membership in any organizations and their involvement in past protests.

Mr. O'Looney said Police Commissioner Raymond W. Kelly and his deputy commissioner for intelligence, David Cohen, a former top Central Intelligence Agency official, did not know the debriefing form was in use. Mr. Cohen oversees the Intelligence Division detectives who conducted the questioning sessions at 1 Police Plaza as the protesters waited for their arrests to be processed.

"When it was brought to their attention," Mr. O'Looney said, "they took a look at it, decided some of those questions were not critical to our needs and decided to end its use."

He would not comment on the constitutional issues raised by the questions or say who had developed the form. Mr. O'Looney said that no disciplinary action was being contemplated against those responsible for developing the practice.

The police practice came to light after the New York Civil Liberties Union, which had notified protest organizers that it was seeking reports of possible police abuse or interference at the city's first large antiwar protest on Feb. 15, received hundreds of e-mail messages, said Christopher Dunn, the group's associate legal director. More than a dozen of the messages included accounts of arrested demonstrators' being questioned about their political activity, Mr. Dunn said.

The group later obtained a copy of the debriefing form from lawyers who had sought to represent some of the demonstrators taken to 1 Police Plaza for questioning after protests on Feb. 15 and March 22, Mr. Dunn said. Those lawyers were in most cases denied access to the arrested protesters, raising additional concerns about the protesters' right to counsel, Mr. Dunn said.

The Civil Liberties Union sent a letter to Mr. Kelly on Tuesday complaining that the information sought during the questioning was constitutionally protected, and called on him to halt the practice. The letter cited the group's concern that the department had "embarked upon a concerted campaign to collect information about lawful First Amendment activity" and was "using the coercive environment of an arrest interrogation to obtain that information outside the presence of counsel."

Yesterday, after a reporter inquired about the questioning and the commissioner's response to the letter, Mr. O'Looney said Mr. Kelly had halted the practice, but would not elaborate on how it had begun.
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Mr. O'Looney said that the department would continue to ask arrested protesters what groups they were affiliated with and would retain the information in the form of a tally, but not with individuals' names. He said that knowing how many people had been arrested from particular groups would help the department assign the right number of officers to future protests by the same groups.
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Police Stop Collecting Data on Protesters' Politics
(Page 2 of 2)

He also said that because the department viewed the questioning of the arrested demonstrators as "debriefings" rather than "interrogations," they were not entitled to a lawyer, a position with which Mr. Dunn and other civil liberties lawyers vehemently disagreed.

Donna Lieberman, the Civil Liberties Union's executive director, said the group was pleased that the department had reversed what she called an ill-conceived policy. "This is a practice that never should have happened and raised serious First Amendment concerns," she said. "But the good news is that the city had second thoughts about it in response to our objections."
The disclosure of the practice and the department's decision to halt it came just two weeks after a federal judge relaxed guidelines that for nearly 20 years had limited police surveillance and investigation of political groups. The guidelines, which are known as the Handschu Agreement, were put in place as a result of a class action lawsuit brought in 1971 on behalf of people who felt threatened by police surveillance of political activities in the late 1960's and early 1970's. They required the department to seek approval of a special panel to investigate political groups or activities.

The judge, Charles S. Haight of Federal District Court in Manhattan, eased the limits after the police sought greater latitude to conduct terrorism investigations. The lawsuit stemmed from the activities of the Intelligence Division, the same unit responsible for the questioning.

Jethro M. Eisenstein, one of the lawyers who handled the case that led to the limits and recently argued before Judge Haight against their loosening, contended yesterday that the questioning — some of which occurred before the guidelines were changed on March 25 — violated the earlier limits and might also have violated the new guidelines. Mr. O'Looney said the department took the position that questioning violated neither set of guidelines.

Intelligence gathering in all its forms, whether surveillance of mosques or keeping track of homeless people, has become more widespread in American policing since Sept. 11, 2001. But the practice has raised new questions for a society founded on the principles of individual freedoms.

While such practices seem threatening to some people, others are more willing to cede some rights in the pursuit of greater security. But one of the protesters who was arrested on Feb. 15 and questioned about his political affiliations and past protesting felt otherwise.

"I was very concerned," said Brendan Knowlton, 26, a computer programmer who was arrested as he was trying to reach the protest that day on First Avenue. "I felt that the cops were on a fishing expedition," he said. "The whole thing felt sketchy. It felt inappropriate and irrelevant for why we were actually there."

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Berkeley Voice

Posted on Fri, Apr. 11, 2003

All eyes on Oakland after reaction to protest
By Matthew Leising
STAFF WRITER

A public hearing about the confrontation between police and anti-war protesters earlier this week in Oakland that injured dozens of protesters will be held Tuesday, April 29 at the City Council's public safety committee meeting.

Almost immediately after the incidents, politicians and residents called for an investigation to determine if police were justified in firing wooden and rubber bullets, tear gas and concussion grenades at hundreds of protesters at the Port of Oakland on Monday.

The public hearing will not be the start of such a review, but rather an opportunity for the police and demonstrators to tell their side of the story. The council is expected to discuss what sort of investigation will be conducted in its closed session Tuesday.

Police said they welcomed an independent investigation, as long as it included community members, police officials and those who were familiar with crowd-control tactics.

"The idea of an independent review would be great and we welcome it," said Officer Danielle Ashford, the department's spokesperson. She said the department is currently reviewing its videotape of the protest but had drawn no conclusions yet as to what set off the skirmishes.

Police have maintained that some protesters threw rocks and metal bolts at them. Protesters have denied throwing anything.

Police Chief Richard Word said Tuesday that police feared the arrival of more protesters throughout the day and that, if the crowd was not dispersed early, police would have lost control of the situation.

The department is also asking anyone with footage of the protest to bring it forward, Ashford said.

The desire to get to the bottom of what happened Monday appears to be the one desire police and protesters have in common.

"One of the things we want is an independent investigation of what happened. An internal investigation by the police department is not sufficient," said Judy Haney, a member of Direct Action to Stop the War, the Bay Area group that organized the protest.

Asked why a police investigation would not satisfy protesters, Haney said, "I don't think we can trust them."

She said the protest Monday was one in a long line of peaceful pickets. "The police really violated that long-standing tradition." Direct Action to Stop the War has received letters of support from around the world condemning the police tactics, Haney said.

Thursday's decision follows a raucous City Council meeting Tuesday evening in which hundreds of residents and labor officials called for an investigation into police tactics.

Thunderous chants of "Shame! Shame! Shame!" filled the chamber after council president Ignacio De La Fuente called for police to clear the meeting after his repeated requests to have order were ignored.

After some tense moments and what appeared to be a heated conversation with City Councilwoman Jane Brunner (District 1), De La Fuente left the meeting.

The meeting eventually continued, after Brunner briefly took over, telling those in the crowd "We are all committed to getting to the bottom of this."

Speakers were allowed one minute each to speak in the time known as open forum. About 100 speakers signed up to address the council; only 15 were allowed under the council's normal rules which limit open forum time to 15 minutes. The rest of the speakers were allowed to speak after the council finished its regular business.

Council members took no action Tuesday on the complaints of excessive police force, because no agenda item was scheduled for the meeting.

The crowd often broke into enthusiastic applause as speakers unanimously excoriated the police.

"I would just like to say this is a very sad time for the city of Oakland. "What I experienced yesterday was a pre-emptive attack," said Berkeley resident James Harris. "The actions of the police brought shame to the people of Oakland."

"The only acts of violence I saw ere committed by the police," said Oakland resident Kathleen Parsons.

Jeffrey Crowbolt, who said he was hit nine times by police "non-lethal projectiles" raised his shirt to show the council a red welt under his right arm the size of a dinner plate.

Before the meeting, Oakland resident Scott Fleming said he was there to ensure that the council looked into the matter.

"They need to exert the authority they have over the police to make sure this kind of brutality never happens again," he said. Fleming was shot five times, four of which struck his back. "I was running away," he said.

U.S. Rep. Barbara Lee has asked Mayor Jerry Brown to look into the police reaction. Brown initially supported the police but has since said he would back an independent review of the confrontation.

The Monday protest targeted two shipping companies at the port with business ties to Iraq, Stevedoring Services of America and APL. SSA recently won a year-long contract from the federal government to assess the condition of the Iraqi port of Umm Qasr and to deliver humanitarian aide to the country. APL ships war supplies to Iraq for the Department of Defense.

The Oakland protest was part of a larger "national day of action." Other demonstrations took place in New York, Washington, D.C. and Austin, Texas.

While thousands of protesters marched peacefully through Oakland on Saturday, Monday's protest marked the first "direct action" in the city. Direct action differs from traditional protests in that participants do not set out to break the law, but they are willing to risk arrest to make their point, said Patrick Reinsborough, an organizer with Direct Action.

Thousands of people in San Francisco were arrested last month for protests organized by Direct Action to Stop the War, which included sitting in the middle of the street and blocking access to federal buildings.

San Francisco resident Sri Louise, who was struck in the face at the protest by a wooden bullet, as captured in a picture widely seen in newspapers across the country, told the council Tuesday they had a responsibility to investigate police conduct.

"I for one will not settle for anything less than an absolutely through investigation in what happened," she said. Referring to the large welt on her cheek, she said, "You might have seen it, it's been all over the world. The entire world is watching what Oakland will do."

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Yale protest draws angry response

NEW HAVEN -- One Yale student's silent protest against the war has drawn an angry response. Now students are concerned for their safety.

Katherine Lo: "It never even crossed my mind that someone expressing peaceful dissent could be confronted in a violent and intimidating way."

When Katherine Lo hung an American flag upside down from her room window in protest of the Iraq war she did not expect the response.

Katherine Lo: "And they said, 'This is the room.' Immediately, I jumped up and lock the door, within minutes they attempt to come inside my room univited which led me to believe they were not there to just have a peaceful dialogue."

Katherine says eyewitnesses saw a group of white males at her door, one of the males holding a wooden two by four. When she didn't answer the door, they left her a note: A message laced with anti-Muslim remarks which puzzled Katherine, who is not Muslim.

James Soza/sophomore: "There's a lot of emotional responses. It's genuine concern for our safety."

Other students say they've also been threatened for their beliefs.

Karintha Holifield: "We're staging dissent, they're staging terror."

Jay Kidd: "You're seen as un-American. You're seen as someone who deserves to be threatened with violence and we're here to say we're not going to stand for it anymore."

Many are concerned over the way the school has handled these incidents.

Shagran Hassan: "That's what's really been concerning us, the fact that the university has been so unresponsive to our own security concerns."

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Purple ribbons were worn across America after the September 11, 2001 attack on the World Trade Centre in New York and in Australia last January, purple ribbons were worn by politicians, actors, unionists and religious leaders in an anti-war protest in Sydney.
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Police defend tactics, expense for protests

Rachel Gordon, Chronicle Staff Writer Friday, April 11, 2003

San Francisco's top cops said Thursday that the more than $2 million spent to police the war protests and the decision to make mass arrests were warranted, despite criticism from demonstrators that officers at times overreacted and moved too quickly at times.

"Our tactics did change from our traditional response," said Deputy Chief Rick Bruce, who oversaw the Police Department's response to the demonstrations against the war.

The norm, he testified Thursday at a City Hall hearing, is for police to "facilitate" protesters -- that is, to help them move through the streets safely and generally let them do their thing. But the mass protests on March 20 and 21 when thousands took to the streets after the start of the Iraq war "was a whole new ballgame," he said.

During the first week of demonstrations, police made more than 2,300 arrests.

"There really are a number of people who were upset about the way police responded," said Board of Supervisors President Matt Gonzalez, a former public defender who called for the hearing. His chief concern was that a number of people were arrested who shouldn't have been because they weren't breaking the law -- "schoolteachers, law-abiding folks with no criminal histories."

Andrew Resignato puts himself into that category. He said he was standing on a sidewalk downtown filming the protests on March 21 at about 1 p.m. when more than a dozen officers encircled a crowd of about 10, leaving no exit.

"There was no order to disperse. There was no warning that there would be arrests, and most of the people that I was arrested with were peaceful, they were not destroying property and they were on the sidewalk," he said. "I was peacefully protesting . . . and I don't feel I deserved to be arrested."

Acting Chief Alex Fagan said that some mistakes may have been made, but that his officers were overwhelmingly "very, very subdued, restrained and professional."

The protests, he said, were scattered, forcing police to respond to 15 or 20 actions at one time. While a very small percentage of demonstrators, were bent on violence and vandalizing property, he said -- noting that everything from metal pipes to knives were confiscated from a handful of arrestees -- the stated goal of some protest organizers was to shut down the city. "We had to take appropriate action," Fagan said.

He pointed to the disruptive demonstrations in Seattle four years ago during the World Trade Organization meetings in which the police were overwhelmed and the mayor ended up enacting a dusk-to-dawn curfew. Fagan said he didn't want San Francisco police to get into the same situation.

Supervisor Tony Hall commended police for helping keep violence to a minimum.

However, Riva Enteen of the National Lawyers Guild said it was the vast majority of protesters who made the decision to act peacefully. She also faulted police, saying that in some instances, officers did not follow department policy to give people proper arrest warnings and a chance to disperse. She said her group is prepared to take the cases to court, "and we expect to win."

Gonzalez called for the hearing, in part, to determine whether police costs were justified, and whether changes in staffing size and tactics should be made in the future.

Since the war began, the Police Department spent $2.6 million on overtime to staff the demonstrations. Another $600,000 was spent on protests leading up to the war.

Other city departments tallied their costs, too: $700,000 for the Sheriff's Department; $124,000 for Muni in overtime costs, fuel and lost fare box revenue; $281,000 for the Department of Parking and Traffic in overtime costs and lost revenue for diverting workers from ticket-writing duties to traffic control; $160,000 for the emergency communications department; and $32,000 for Fire Department overtime costs. The total: around $4 million.

City Controller Ed Harrington also reported that the war is taking a toll on the local economy, hurting an already shaken tourist trade. The early estimate on the hit on City Hall coffers, which are fueled by sales tax, hotel tax and other tourist-related revenue, is $10 million.

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Friday, April 11, 2003, 7:11 a.m.

Protesters who were arrested last month during an anti-war march have filed a civil rights lawsuit against the Chicago Police Department.

WBBM's Steve Grzanich reports from federal court.

The protesters claim they were unlawfully detained and subjected to excessive and unnecessary force. They claim police also violated their rights to peaceful assembly and free speech.

Daniel Romero is one of the 500 plus people arrested the night of March 20 when thousands of protesters took to the streets to protest the war with Iraq.

543 people were arrested. 190 were released. The rest were charged with reckless conduct. All of those people could eventually join this suit if class action status is granted.

Anti war protester Andy Thayer says police wanted revenge for being caught off guard by the thousands of people who took to the streets in opposition to the war with Iraq.

Police maintain the protesters were arrested because they failed to heed warnings to disperse.