16th Street Tactical -- mikehallvideo.com

	Sections:
	00:00 Internal Activation: "What's going on, you can't always change that. You can influence, maybe affect, but you can't ever change. But one thing you can change, we should change, is our internal activation."
	04:20 The Culprits: "Everybody wants to be on the media's good side, why? We should ignore them. We should turn off our TVs, our radios, and turn to independent news sources online."
	07:17 Alternative Points of View: "I supported them, I thought that they were doing the right thing. But at the same time I was running my camera, and I fully intended to create a documentary about this protest, without being jailed."
	12:12 The Trap: "Nobody was allowed to move at this end of the street. And, I heard some complants about that, people were getting frustrated, and were talking about how there were so many police."
	16:59 Violence on 16th Street: "It was remarkable because I believe, from my impression of the scene, it was so unnecessary. As could be seen in earlier parts of this video, the crowd was peaceful."
	22:21 Well Prepared: "They had the busses lined up, to take us to the detention facility. They had enough numbers that they could overcome some three or four hundred people who were on the street at the time."
	25:55 Panic: "This woman says it quite clearly, she wants to disperse, and go home. And you could see, almost the fear in her eyes, the panic that was developing in this audience."
	30:19 Breach of Rights: "We did not get to see a judge, and we did not even get to make a phone call until after about 28 hours. And New York statute does dictate that you have to see a judge in 24 hours."
	35:27 Pier 57: "Pier 57 had been an old bus depot, there was understandably about 30 years worth of oil, transmission fluid, gasoline, antifreeze, and chemical solvents on the floor."
	39:01 Like a Criminal: "I would say that criminals got better consideration, because when we got central booking the criminals were actually wisked through the booking process a lot faster than we were."
	44:26 Are you now a Terrorist?: "There was an argument made that merely by protesting and by engaging in civil disobedience during the week, we were actually engaging in terrorism because we were making it easier for terorists to attack us."
	47:38 The Obsolescence of Protest: "You got arrested, the law was broken, I don't see any inquiry into that. I don't see masses waking up to the fact that the country is not as well off as it used to be, so what did the protest accomplish?"
	47:38 A Country Divided: "Until we start listening to each other, until we start sitting down and talking to each other as people, respectfully, peacefully, then we're not going to get anywhere."

Participants:

Ellen Braune (E.B.): street interviewer.

Michael Hall (M.H.): videographer and detainee.

Savic Rasovic (S.R.): political commentator.

Rich Schieferdecker (R.S.): host

Charles Shaw (C.S.): Green Party Co-Chair and detainee.


	Titles are indicated in italics. Visual cues are indicated in [brackets]. Timing is in bold and indicated after long breaks. In many cases, the use of verbal fillers or repeated words or phrases have been removed for clarity.

	00:00 Internal Activation
	New York City August 31, 2004
	[Opening sequence: performers in Union Square]
	M.H.: On August 31st, there were a number of civil disobedience actions that were planned, and I didn't know the exact time or location of these actions, because they were kept fairly secret. But I was in Union Square that evening, and looking around, I could tell that something was about to happen; that there were very heartfelt expressions of dissatisfaction amongst the crowd, and passionate speeches.
	[Street performer speaking to the audience:] Now the question is, should we have to get a permit to do this? [crowd response:] No! Thank you. The question is, should you have to apply for a license to do this? [crowd response:] No! I cannot understand how anybody can get behind somebody who starts an illegal war, who doesn't even find anything that he said he was looking for. I'm really having trouble fathoming this situation. And I feel like, 50 years from now, even twenty, maybe even 10, it's going to be hard to find those people who supported this man.
	[2nd voice:] Yeah, because we're complacent
	[Performer:] If you notice, I'm trying very hard not to directly mention any names because this is about our own internal activation, you know what I'm saying? Because what's going on, you can't always change that. You can influence, maybe affect, but you can't ever change. But one thing you can change, we should change, is our internal activation.
	M.H.: I found a marching band that was getting ready to march into the street, they were setting up in Union Square. And I thought it was possible that they could be starting this whole business. So, I kept my eye on them, and sure enough, they launched into the street, in defiance of a police order that they get a permit before they march.
	R.S.: Did the police make their presence known?
	M.H.: Absolutely. They were in the square, they had a parimeter around the square, their presence was well known. They had motor scooters, bicycles and in fact, paddy wagons and busses on the street. But this was typical for the entire time I was in New York, since Sunday. That the police were making their presence known, but just basically to contain the peace. In fact, there were demonstrations the day before, which were also not permitted, which the police allowed to pursue without confrontation. So, I figured at the time that there would be no problems, that I could continue documenting this protest, and not be apprehended by the police.

	04:20 The Culprits
	R.S.: Savic, you were at the Sunday demonstrations, is that right? And that went off peacefully, yes?
	S.R.: It did. Mike called me and said he is going, so I thought, I don't want to just go to a protest, and participate as one of the whistling people, I wanted to do something. So, I thought I could assist him, carry equipment, do extra camera shots, whatever it is. And Sunday was great, because all these people, cops were nice. But I think if I were one of them I would have planned the whole thing days in advance, anyway. So I assumed that Sunday was nice because you don't want to abuse half a million people.
	August 29, 2004
	[Street scenes from the march on Sunday: police, demonstrators]
	S.R.: [Being interviewd on the street] I would like to say that besides George W. Bush, the main culprits for this situation we are in, lack of democracy, civil rights stripping, wars, you name it. Is, CNN, ABC, CBS, NBC, Fox News obviously, NPR, PBS, who did I forget who's major? UPN, all these media have failed. They have failed miserably to inform the public, they have failed to be truthful to themselves, and they have failed as journalists. I do not accept that as a journalist you can be a news reader. That is not journalism.
	E.B.: Why do you think that is?
	S.R.: Well it's not like somebody came down and told them not to, but they're owned by corporations, and it's a trend, right? They earn money by saying "wow, is lipstick dangerous for your lips?" They earn money for tag lines. People don't have time to bother with real knowledge. So thus the media says, we don't want to actually tell you anything, we just want to earn the money. I'm ranting because nobody's saying this. Everybody wants to be on the media's good side, why? We should ignore them. We should turn off our TVs, our radios, and turn to independent news sources online.

	07:17 Alternative Points of View
	R.S.: [to Mike:] Were you there sort of as a protester, or were you really there as a documenter?
	M.H.: I'd say definitely that I was supporting the protesters. That, the point of my documentary, if pressed, would be to get the voices of the dissenting political views out into the open. Because I considered the standard Republican issued sound bites to be well covered by the corporate media, and I thought it was very important to get out the alternative points of view, which coincidentally I happened to agree with. So, I was not timid about following them, because I supported them, I thought that they were doing the right thing. But at the same time I was running my camera, and I fully intended to create a documentary about this protest, without being jailed. I mean, practically speaking, I was off the streets for two days, and those were two days that I could not collect video for my job, for my work. So, I was surprised at the result.
	Union Square "The A31 Street Party" [Video of Union Square at about 7pm, as the band prepares to march.]
	M.H.: This part of the video shows the beginning of the parade, you can see that the marchers had entered the street that borders Union Square, and that's the point at which they had performed their act of civil disobedience. As you can see, there is nobody stopping them. As they go further down the street, you will be able see the police that are amassing at the corner of 16th Street. When they get up to that point, you'll see the police directing them onto 16th Street, which we would later learn for the purpose of sealing the street and performing these mass arrests. On this day, I should add, many other civil disobediene acts were being organized, at the World Trade Center, at Herald Square, and at the New York Public Library, a large number of individuals were arrested simultaneously. In fact, 1200 in all. For the entire course of the convention, something like 1600 or 1800 people had been arrested total. So on this one day, it's remarkable that so many arrests had occurred.

	12:12 The Trap
	M.H.: You can see the police are directing the parade onto 16th Street, and by this time, people had caught on that a parade was happening, you can see photographers all over the place, [and] interested bystanders. I'd later talked to others who had been arrested at this location and had found out that many had been just walking on the street incidentally, that they were buying a gallon of milk for their family, or because they lived on the street, that's why they were there, and were trapped.
	R.S.: Everyone on the street got swept up.
	M.H.: Absolutely, it was indiscriminate. You can see later on how the police had actually moved in a tactical way, almost as if this were a military operation.
	R.S.: Were there even elderly people on the street?
	M.H.: Yes, there were people in their teens, in their seventies, and I can't say how long those individuals were confined. I'd say, for the most part, the 20ish, 30ish, and 40ish people were the ones who were held the longest.
	M.H.: So, what's remarkable actually about this segment is that you don't see any police around. The police were at the end of the block which the band will approach in a minute or two. And the police were at the beginning of the block, where we were directed from Union Square. There was no purpose for them to be in this location because their tactic was to stop the parade and trap people on the street.

	[The band encounters a blockade at the end of the street]
	M.H.: At this stage, the band has reached the end of the street, and there are several dozen protesters, maybe 50 in all, sitting on the street locking their arms, and chanting. And, this is clearly a group who intended to break the law for the purpose of this demonstration. You can see photographers lining up, like paparazzi, to get this event on film. And now you see police officers motioning them away. This was a fairly decisive moment because it was the point at which the police line had been drawn. That is, the photographers who were covering the event were allow to go, but now a line had been defined by the police, which at this point of view of the camera is behind our backs. And, there was no passing through that barrier. It's kind of difficult to see the details of this, but in the distance you can make out the motorcycles the police were riding in, the busses, and perhaps as many as 100 police officers.
	R.S.: Behind you.
	M.H.: Behind me, at this point. But you could tell that the mood on the street is like one of celebration. The band is playing something you might hear during Mardi Gras. People are dancing and clapping. Although, [it was] very crowded at this time. Nobody was allowed to move at this end of the street. And, I heard some complants about that, people were getting frustrated, and were talking about how there were so many police. And, wondering why they were pressing us and making us turn around. So, questioning now what our fate would be, what would actually happen to us. Whether all of us would be arrested, or just the organizers, the band, or who it was that would be singled out.
	R.S.: This was when it started to dawn on you that something was happening
	M.H.: We were pretty certain we were going to get into trouble.
	R.S.: At this point, did you see anypolicemen above at all?
	M.H.: Not yet, but I did, in the course of maybe 10 or 12 minutes, I caught video of police stationed in a balcony of one of the apartments that is on the street.

	16:59 Violence on 16th Street
	M.H.: Here you can see how the police have lined up on the Union Square side of 16th Street. And now the band is marching on the sidewalk, in columns of two.
	R.S.: And that's permitted under New York state law?
	M.H.: That is permitted under law, however you're not supposed to block more than half of the sidewalk, and all of the audience, and all the other people including myself, combined, clearly is blocking the sidewalk.
	R.S.: By that point, that's kind of out the window, because of what the police did. So there was no way you could comply with the law.
	M.H.: And the fact that they had already broken the law. They clearly had done what they had come to do, which was to make their statement by visibly breaking the law, and intentially getting arrested.
	M.H.: This is the first instance of a very physical, almost violent arrest tactic the police were using, which would be to push the protesters onto the ground, with the weight of many officers on them. It was remarkable because I believe, from my impression of the scene, it was so unnecessary. As could be seen in earlier parts of this video, the crowd was peaceful.
	M.H.: The purpose of this was non-violent political action. Aggressive action that would defy the establishment in a particular way in order to get a message across. What we're seeing in this video and what will occur actually in a more disturbing way, around 7:19pm, about 8 minutes from what we're seing in the video here, some very aggressive tactics, it's hard to look at them and not use the word brutal.

	22:21 Well Prepared
	M.H.: [This was] clearly a premeditated action by the police. That is, they directed the procession onto that street because they were were ready at the other end. They had the busses lined up, to take us to the detention facility. They had enough numbers that they could overcome some three or four hundred people who were on the street at the time. So, they were well prepared.
	M.H.: Deescalation of violent behavior can be attempted. That is, if a police officer is being aggressive with you, find ways to talk them out of it. Or, if you were to encounter other protesters on the street who were spewing invectives, or being otherwise confrontational with police that you should try to calm them down in a particular way. Because, these types of situations, as we've seen in the past, violence during political protests can be very dangerous. That people can get seriously hurt. Especially when when you have a mass hysteria situation that can occur with the police entering into the equation. So, I think that a lot of people were conscious of the possibility that violence could occur, and were trying to deescalate it as much as possible.
	R.S.: There's that little hint there that police have things pretty tightlly under control there. Up on the fire escape as well, so they've got the street cordoned off, both ends, and they're going to arrest everybody, everybody on the street. And they're going to take them all to jail, and they're going to hold them indefinitely.
	M.H.: Yes, and that was just the beginning of the story.
	S.R.: So, deescalation was successful according to you?
	M.H.: Well, I must say that from what I could tell, I didn't see ambulances in the area, I didn't hear stories of people being seriously hurt during this. Although, in a minute or two you'll see some of the most disturbing incidents of police violent arrest, which I can't imagine someone could walk away without a scratched knee or something affecting them.

	25:55 Panic
	M.H.: In this case you can see, it's hard to see the people they're arresting because there are so many officers that are piling on top of the arrestees. But it's easy to image when someone is attacked like that would naturally flail their arms or try to defend themselves, try to prevent personal injury to themselves. Or, if they felt animosity to the police, perhaps even swing a punch or two. It would be hard to imagine the justification for this type of tactic, this type of really just bullying, of people who are otherwise basically just standing on the street. This woman says it quite clearly, she wants to disperse, and go home. And you could see, almost the fear in her eyes, the panic that was developing in this audience. We were all afraid that this type of treatment would be inflicted on us. And, we couldn't see a pattern, in other words. It was scary because it seemed so random. That the police would attack protesters seemingly as if this behavior was justified, and we weren't certain as to what own fate was.
	R.S.: Comparing the tactics that the police used, that Mike has documented here, with the tactics that were used in Seattle, say. That's where they learned to do it this way.
	[Charles Shaw joins the conversation from Chicago.]
	C.S.: Actually you can chart it back about 3 years earlier than Seattle. The model of security strategy that was rolled out in Seattle was actually developed for the 1996 Democratic Convention in Chicago. The reason being pretty obvious, it's the first time a Democratic Convention had returned to Chicago since 1968. These were tactics that were developed by Bill Clinton, they were not something that was developed by George Bush, they've been around for quite a bit. And they involved massive security detainment and deterrent. They involved the rollout of the riot police, the use of tear gas, the use of concussion grenades, mace, pepper spray, sweep nets, and all of these wonderful toys that out security establishment has at their disposal these days.

	30:19 Breach of Rights
	M.H.: Now Charles, were you aware of any instances of using for example, tear gas, or pepper spray, or any of these other [things] like you just mentioned... in New York?
	C.S.: Yes. On Monday, there were two marches, that were billed as poor people's marches. And how ironic that when the poor people come out to complain, the violence starts. But there was an early morning march of the Still We Rise coalition, and that took place on the West Side. And then at about 3 o'clock in the afternoon in front of the United Nations, there was an international poor persons march that was to go down 2nd Avenue. They started up at the U.N., which was in the fifties, and it was a non-permitted march but it was full of a lot of disabled folks, in wheelchairs, old people, people who had traveled from all around the world to protest global poverty. Once again the police said you'll be fine if you just march down the sidewalk, don't obstruct anything, everything will be great. By the time they got down to 23rd street and 2nd Avenue, there were reports, which have been substatiated subsequently, of plainclothes police officers on mopeds driving into the crowd, and knocking people into the street in order to arrest them. At one point in time, after a certain police officer had rammed into a certain crowd enough times, one person turned around and slugged him. And the police used this as kind of entrance to call out the Calvary, and they brought in massive amounts of reinforcements, they tear gassed the crowd, they pepper sprayed a lot of people, they pulled out the orange netting, and they just scooped up anyone inside of it.
	R.S.: Right, so what hapened her was minus all that violence... [but] where the story goes from here, is that Mike was detained for 43 hours without your Miranda Rights?
	M.H.: Without my rights being read to me, without the ability to talk to a lawyer, and clearly without the due process of 24 hours, which is, I believe, by New York stratute, required.
	C.S.: That's correct, Mike. Actually Mike and I were cellmates for a while, and we both spent the bulk of 48 hours locked up. We did not get to see a judge, and we did not even get to make a phone call until after about 28 hours. And New York statute does dictate that you have to see a judge in 24 hours.
	R.S.: Right, now just to finish up on the last topic, were people similarly denied council or read their charges in the Seattle instance?
	C.S.: In Seattle it was a bit of different circumstance. There weren't as many people as there were in New York City. I think the maximum amount of people in the street of Seattle was probably about 50,000. And the bulk of the violence, although the mainstream media and now subsequently historical lore has always shown that there was "anarchist violence" going on there. Actually the bulk of the violence was done by the police. And the police were deployed in Seattle to take the protesters, and what isn't reported in the mainstream press is that most of the delegates to developing nations, trade representatives that were supporting some of the poorest nations in the world were locked out of the conference rooms where decisions about what their nations's trade policies going to be were being made for them. And so they were standing outside, pounding on the doors, and they communicated out to the folks at indy media and Democracy Now!, "we're not allowed to come in and debate and discuss our own country's trade policy." It was at that point in time when the rally started to get a lot larger, and Seattle called out the riot police and started to clear the street using tear gas, rubber bullets, bean bags, and all of the usual tricks.
	R.S.: Right, but in focusing back on the topic of this particular protest, and any comparison between the two, was there a similar detention at the end, as a result for the people who were arrested in these other... ?
	C.S.: Yes, to my understanding there was detention, and there were also a lot of preemptive arrests made of organizers. They were held in a similar type of pen situation, although from what I understand, the conditions on that detention center were not as deplorable as those on Pier 57.

	35:27 Pier 57
	R.S.: Right, so what were the conditions like on Pier 57?
	C.S.: Well, let me draw a portrait for you. Pier 57 is about the size of a football field. On the perimeter, on the exterior, it was surrounded by chain-link razor wire fence which was drilled right into the street outside. There was a dual-fenced gate through which the transport busses would pull in, and deposit prisoners into a long chute where they would be checked in, one by one, through metal detectors, with their arresting officers. Pier 57 had been an old bus depot, there was understandably about 30 years worth of oil, transmission fluid, gasoline, antifreeze, and chemical solvents on the floor. It was so thick that when you stepped on it, your shoe made an imprint on the floor. There had been a fire there, and there were still remnants of the fire up in the windows, of course all of them were sealed so there was no air flowing through the place. There was asbestos dropping off the ceiling in chunks and clouds. Very quickly it became filled to capacity, beyond capacity, so that whatever temporary bathroom facilities that were there, they were very quickly filled up, and you can only imagine the stench that was coming from the place.
	R.S.: How many bathrooms?
	C.S.: There was no room for anybody to lay down or to sit down, so people were forced to go on the floor, which very quickly filled them with -- people were coated from head to toe in a black sludge, and after a while it started creating skin irritation problems, and rashes and burns. I've got some myself on both of my forearms. The air was stifling, it was really horrible.
	M.H.: Talk about the food.
	C.S.: The food, OK. The bulk of the food that they distributed was a kind of unidentifiable meat product, that was probably a few months past the spoiling date, inbetween two pieces of hard stale bread. They also distributed a number of cheese sanwhiches, and that was about it on Pier 57.
	M.H.: The best food that they gave was was apples and oranges. I chose not to eat the oranges because it required really touching the food, and my hands were covered with this black grit, grime and oily stuff. Whereas with an apple, you can just grab it at either pole. I liked the fruit, the fact that we were eating some nutritious food, but these stale white bread sandwhiches were just deplorable, couldn't even hold them down. And there wan't enough water, there was one water cooler for one or two hundred people, and not enough cups, and the water would keep running out, and people would use the water to wash their hands, so it would be used up faster than you'd expect. The combination of all those factors, the food, the water, the smell, the lack of sleep. I didn't even want to sit down on this surface, I continued to walk as long as I could, until 2 or 3 in the morning, but after a while I had to sit down. I had to lie down, and try to sleep.

	39:01 Like a Criminal
	R.S.: Mike, you were describing to me that for quite a while when you arrived there, you were bound up still with many other people.
	M.H.: Yes, that was one aspect that was particularly humiliating because while we were in this cage that had razor wire ten feet up in the air, we had to have these plastic zip-tie shackles connecting our hands behind our backs. There was no reasonable explanation for this, the fact is, we were in their custody, and there was no way that we could get out of the cage, even if we were ubound. The only way to get those chackles removed was to stand in line for an hour or more, and wait your turn to use the four porta-potties.
	R.S.: So, there were four porta-potties for how many people?
	M.H.: I would guess about 500 people at any given time. I waqs brought into the facility at about 9 o'clock, and stayed there until about noon the next day. People were coming in and out, there were busloads coming from different parts of the city, all of them looking as dazed and confused as we were, but the ones who had been there longer, were shaking their heads like these people have to go behind us, so they have to stay even longer.
	R.S.: Men and women were together
	M.H.: Initially, yes.
	R.S.: Five hundred men and women together with four porta-potties.
	M.H.: Yes, absolutely
	R.S.: Did everybody manage to get to the john when they wanted to? I think one has to ask.
	M.H.: I can only speak for myself. I wasn't aware of any incidents, but it was a deplorable situation. I basically tried to keep to myself, and just kind of meditate on my situation and try to get the internal emotional strength to deal with it, and I couldn't pay attention much to the struggles of other people.
	R.S.: In order to get your shackles taken off..
	M.H.: Yes, we had to stand in line. Eventually half the people were free and half of the people had these things binding their hands behind their backs. Again, it was ridiculous there was no reason for that situation to occur. Those bindings did bite into my wrists, I had scars for about a week after the detainment.
	C.S.: I can speak to that as well. I have nerve damage in my left hand from these cuffs that they put on us. They were not very kind about them, and I complained to them about a shoulder condition which causes my shoulder to come out of the joint every time you pull it behind me, and I had asked them very kindly, you can cuff me, but if you cuff me from the back, you're going to pull my shoulder out. They could have cared less. It wasn't only until they pulled my arm behind me, and it went out of joint, that they actually realized that I was going to raise holy hell about it, and they re-cuffed me in the front.
	R.S.: Do you feel like you were treated like a criminal?
	C.S.: We were treated like... I would say that criminals got better consideration, because when we got central booking the criminals were actually wisked through the booking process a lot faster than we were.
	R.S.: How long did it take you to be booked?
	C.S.: There was 24 hours where we were on Pier 57, and that was just a containment facility, just like all of us being thrown into a pen. We were overcrowded, and that was when we were all filthy, and covered in filth, and sick, and dealing with the fumes and the chemicals. I'm almost willing to say that central booking was worse, because there was the same amount of people, but the space that we occupied had been shrunk by about 90%.
	M.H.: That's true, there was extreme overcrowding.
	C.S.: They had holding cells that were designed for maybe ten people, maybe twenty on a busy day, and there were sixty and seventy men stuck into each one of them.
	R.S.: What was the attitude of the cops?
	C.S.: They could have cared less. It was only until about the last six hours, and I can't say whether or not this was because of information coming down the police chain that said oh, the Supreme Court is on to this, oh we might have to let these guys go, oh, there's a lot of complaints, better be nice. But it was only until about the last six hours that the police even started expressing any sort of humanity. It was at that last phase in central booking where some of them started approaching us and saying "we feel bad about what's happening to you guys". We agree with what you're doing. We don't think this is right. But for every one who would say that, there was ten that would scream, get a job you figgin dirtbag hippies, why don't you get the hell out of my city, open your mouth again and you'll be here until Christmas, and so on. And I just kind of chalked all of that up to the general mental and emotional harassment that they were giving us. But I can say genuinely that there were quite a few of them that did not agreee with what was going on.

	44:26 Are you now a Terrorist?
	R.S.: I'd like to broaden the discussion a little bit, because you feel you were treated worse than a criminal, and I think Mike you feel the same way.
	M.H.: Absolutely.
	R.S.: Now, if you are a political protester, exercising your right to protected protest speech, and an activist, are you now a terrorist?
	C.S.: Well, under the Patrio Act, we can easily be construed as domestic terrorists. I think that's an important distinction that people need to make. And they need to understand that the legislation that exists within the Patriot Act permits our government to label anyone who dissents against them as domestic terrorists. In fact, there was an argument made that merely by protesting and by engaging in civil disobedience during the week, we were actually engaging in terrorism because we were making it easier for terorists to attack us because the police had to divert their attention elsewhere. This is the kind of fatuous logic that leads to such things as the McCarthyism, and the red scare, and ridiculous political maneuvers that are used to quash any type of dissent or any type of public opion that doesn't fit in with the agenda of the ruling powers.
	M.H.: Do you feel, Charles, as if this was an intentional attempt by the police to quash political speech or do you think they were just following the Patriot Act to the letter, and that they actually did intend to try to control terrorism by sweeping the street of all people?
	C.S.: I think that the New York City Police Department were just doing their job. And I know that's kind of a... they say that the Nazis are just following orders, and all this stuff. I'm not going to take it that far. I'm really willing to bet that the bulk of the New York City Police Department were just doing what they thought they had to do. I'm utterly convinced that the orders came down from up above. I think that it was all homeland security, and secret service, and the Republican national committee, that was handing out the orders. And, I think that when you start to deal with people on a person-to-person basis, you're dealing with a beat cop who's got a family, and who watched 911 happen right in front of his face. You start to connect on a very human level. They don't want to go for this stuff any more than we want to go for it. But when you're dealing with the powers that be in Washington, and the larger powers that be, the FBI and homeland security, which have been monitoring activists, and infiltrating non-violent peace groups, and harassing people, and pre-emptively locking them up before they even got to the convention, that's when you start to deal with something that's much more sinister.

	47:38 The Obsolescence of Protest
	S.R.: I have a question actually, and I have an opinion too, but quickly because I don't think we have much time, I just wanted to say that to me, I always look at demonstrations and protests as a goal to something else, it's not a goal per se. And as somebody who has worked as a propagandist and a spin doctor partially, I have to ask you Charles, and you Mike, what do you think this accomplished? I think it was a failure, the protest. Why, first of all George W. Bush, the idiot -- I can say that, I can't vote -- has a ten percent boost after the RNC. You got arrested, the law was broken, I don't see any inquiry into that. I don't see masses waking up to the fact that the country is not as well off as it used to be, so what did the protest accomplish?
	C.S.: That's a good point, and if I may, I think I agree with you in that techniques of protests that have been used for previous generations are proving their obsolescence now, I think that's fairly clear. But on the other hand, I think that the fact that there are two thousand people arrested in a day, that there are people willing to go to the lengths that some of us who actually... you know, Mike's in a very different position than I was. Mike was a legitimate victim. He was somebody that was just trying to stand there and record the incident, or witness it, but he wasn't a participant. I was somebody who actually consciously participated in a die-in. And I attribute most of what you're saying to the absolute irresponsibility and lack of coverage on the part of the mainstream media. If you harken back to 1968, what turned the tide in '68 was that Daly decided to sick his police force on the hippies. And when he did so, the police indiscriminately cracked skulls towards anyone they could find. They made the big mistake of attacking the press. And the next day in all the major papers and all the syndicated newswires, was Daly attacks press, Daly attacks people indiscriminately. And once the mainstream media turned against the establishment, which was represented by Daly when he said, this is Chicago, this is America, and they said if this is America, why are you beating up our kids? And here was a number of teenage and young children in their twenties calling their parents saying the Chicago police have attacked us, and then all this makes in the papers the next day, and then Walter Cronkite talks about it on the news the next day, that swung the tide. All that we have today is a media that is completely an arm and an extention of the political aparatus.

	50:54 A Country Divided
	R.S.: Let me ask you, you and Mike both now, or all of you, is protest now a particularly liberal form of speech? If you march in a parade and chant, is that basically a liberal tactic?
	C.S.: Oh absolutely not, in fact some of the most violent and some of the most energetic protests are the pro-lifers, on the very conservative side. When I was in Boston for the Democratic National Convention there was a contingent of pro-lifers that were driving around huge vans that had these 6-foot-high photocopies of mutilated fetuses from abortions on them, and huge contingencies of people that were following behind them, condeming the Democrats for being decadent for killing unborn human beings. So I would definitely say that it's not a liberal tactic. Protest is protest, it's an extension of democracy. But what's happening now is that the protest itself, particularly the liberal end of the protest, is being marginalized, it's being mocked, it's being belittled.
	M.H.: Charles, have you ever seen instances of right-wing protests being dealt with in the same way as the liberal protests are being dealt with, particularly in New York? [repeats the question]
	C.S.: You saw a lot more of it in the nineties, when the pro-life movement got violent and started bombing clinics. And there was quite a bit of police reprisal against that. And, there was quite a bit of the security establishment rolled out to protect abortion doctors and clinic workers and so on and so forth. So I think it is relevant and it is relative, and I think... it is reflected by whoever is in power. So, what we have now is a very conservive establishment, so what they're going to do is demonize the liberal or progressive elements. If you have the other element in power, they're going to demonize the other side. Ultimately, what it all boils down to is that we have a country that is completely divided in half, and half the country does not want to hear what the other half has to say. But until we start listening to each other, until we start sitting down and talking to each other as people, respectfully, peacefully, then we're not going to get anywhere and we're certainly not going to solve any of this, and we're certainly not going to recognize that it's all of us against the power establishment. And that they're only creating this arbitrary division between us. We're all working people, we're all poor, we're all trying to just get by. And these folks up here, whether they're John Kerry or whether their George Bush, they're all trying to pull something on an entirely different level than what we, as normal Americans, are accostomed to.