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Introduction Greetings loyal readers! My friends who are old enough to have lived through the McCarthy era (one of the most shameful and frightening periods in our nation's history) tell that nothing that went on then is as terrifying as what is happening in our nation right now. As some Canadian activists have rightly pointed out, the United States of America meets the criteria for a rogue nation: (1) we possess weapons of mass destruction (and are the only nation on the planet to have used nuclear weapons on civilian populations), (2) we routinely ignore UN resolutions, (3) we routinely ignore treaties which we have signed, (4) we routinely bully and threaten other nations, and (5) our leaders took power illegally. This column contains a small rundown of some recent atrocities taking place within our own borders. Fascism in Domestic Law Enforcement Recently while eating lunch in the basement of Grand Central Station I observed an incident illustrating the moral bankruptcy of our police state society. A homeless woman approached a fellow sitting in a chair and asked him for money. (Panhandling is illegal in Grand Central Station.) Immediately thereafter she was approached by a uniformed New York City police officer accompanied by a uniformed U.S. Army soldier. Ever since September 11th, 2001 there have been soldiers in Grand Central Station assisting domestic law enforcement. This happens to be a blatant violation of the Posse Comitatus Act, an 1895 piece of federal legislation that prevents involvement of the military in domestic law enforcement except during periods of national emergency. There doesn't happen to be any national emergency in New York City, and there certainly isn't any in Grand Central Station. Yet the soldiers remain. I believe this activity is for purposes of psychological indoctrination – to get the population accustomed to seeing military personnel on a daily basis so we get to thinking that a military occupation of our own streets is normal. But I digress; so let's get back to the homeless panhandler. The police officer approached the woman and said: "I told you before, you can't do that in here. Now you have to leave the building." The woman just stood there and looked at him blankly. It was at this point I realized that the woman was mentally ill. The police officer again told her to leave the building or he would have to arrest her. "Is that what you want?" he asked. He gave her a few chances to move. She did nothing. Finally he gave up. "Have it your way," he said as he pulled out a pair of handcuffs and, assisted by the soldier, handcuffed the woman and arrested her. She then started screaming that he was hurting her, that he wasn't N.Y.P.D. and that she wanted to see the N.Y.P.D. Mind you, I am the first person to criticize the N.Y.P.D. for using excessive force or being rude or unnecessarily mean. However, this particular officer was behaving very professionally and doing his job according to the law. He was not using unnecessary roughness. He was not gratuitously rude or nasty to the woman. Clearly the problem here is with the law, not with the conduct of this particular officer who was merely doing his job as he was supposed to be doing it. As I watched the woman being hauled away I was struck by the fact that what this woman needed was the mental health care delivery system, not the criminal justice system. However, many of the facilities that existed thirty years ago to house and care for people like this mentally deranged homeless woman were de-funded and dismantled during the 1970s. This kind of heartlessness is so institutionalized in our society that no one but me seemed to even notice the scene I just described, much less care. I generally try to avoid watching television news, because it is so distorted and the video images are so horrible. No matter how conscious a person may be, violent media images go deeply into our subconscious and affect us negatively. I especially try to avoid local network news, because it is particularly horrible. Yet recently my partner Bryan was watching a local news story, so I was involuntarily subjected to it. (My entreaties to change the channel were ignored, of course.) It was a very cold night, and the local reporter was doing a story on homeless people. He interviewed a local homeless man and asked about the shelters. The homeless man (who was African-American, clean and articulate) said that many times there is no room in the shelters, and that even if he can manage to find a place in a shelter he is subject to being beaten up by mentally ill people and having everything he owns stolen if he falls asleep. Then the reporter addressed the camera and said that homeless people who could not find room in one of the shelters would be "escorted by the police into the justice system." (Of course, I shouted "JAIL" at the television at the same moment the reporter was saying "the justice system.") Does the average viewer experience the same outrage that I do over this? It is now considered a crime in New York City to be poor, homeless and down on one's luck. It is now considered a crime to be poor and mentally ill. Yet many people tell me they approve of the job Rudolph Guiliani did as mayor because he got the squeegee men off the streets. When I ask those people if they know what happened to the squeegee men they look at me blankly. I then explain that they're all either in jail or living homeless on the streets in some rural place in upstate New York. Yes, friends, Rudy Guiliani, the former U.S. prosecutor who routinely violated the First Amendment rights of artists and activists in New York City and managed the City's budget so poorly that he created the largest budget deficit in the history of New York (which may explain why he is now being considered for the chairmanship of one of the biggest criminal enterprises in U.S. history, MCI Worldcom) kidnapped poor and homeless men who were trying to earn a living on the streets of New York by cleaning windshields and sent them out of town to be homeless on the side of the road in a community with far less economic opportunity than the place they were kidnapped from. But many wealthy people approve of this, simply because they don't want to be "harassed" by the sight of poor people struggling to survive in adverse conditions. What's Next? For those of you who didn't hear about this (it did not get a great deal of coverage in the mainstream press), recently an amateur Denver photographer was arrested for taking pictures of buildings in an area where Vice President Dick Cheney was staying. (It is important to bear in mind that the city of Denver is the western headquarters of the New World Order.) Mike Maginnis, who works in information technology, was in the habit of photographing such subjects as corporate buildings and communications equipment, routinely took his camera with him wherever he went. His daily commute took him by the Adams Mark Hotel on Court Place. Maginnis decided to take some pictures. Maginnis said he had taken about thirty pictures of the hotel and the area around it, which was populated by Denver police, Army rangers and rooftop snipers. According to Maginnis, he was putting away the camera when a Denver cop approached him and demanded his camera and film. When Maginnis refused, the officer pushed him to the ground and arrested him. The police kept Maginnis in an interrogation room for a few hours before a Secret Service agent arrived. The agent informed the photographer that his "suspicious activities" made him a terrorist and a threat to national security under the USA-PATRIOT act. The agent then tried to force Maginnis to admit that he was taking photographs to evaluate weaknesses in Cheney's security and "cause terror and mayhem." When Maginnis refused, the agent called him a "raghead collaborator" and a "dirty pinko faggot." After about an hour, Maginnis was allowed to make a telephone call. Instead of calling a lawyer, he called the Denver Post and requested the news desk. A desk sergeant came over, hung up the phone and placed Maginnis in a holding cell. Maginnis was released several hours later although his camera was not returned nor was he given a receipt for its seizure. Friends, this is what the United States of America has become – a totalitarian, fascist police state. So what's next? Will the police start arresting people for merely looking at the Vice President's hotel? And if they do, how long after that will they start arresting folks for merely thinking about looking at the Vice President's hotel? If that's the world you want to live in, then keep ignoring mentally ill panhandlers, keep watching television news, and keep being grateful that the police state forcibly removes poor and homeless people from your communities. If that's not the world you want to live in, then keep reading alternative news sources, keep going to demonstrations and be prepared to engage in some massive civil disobedience. Remember, the Viet Nam war didn't end until hundreds of thousands of us got out into this nation's streets. It's going to take millions of us to overthrow this police state. Doing so is more than a nice idea – it's our patriotic duty. Copyright 2003 Marcy J. Gordon. All rights reserved. The author wants you to know you are free to copy and distribute this article for noncommercial purposes, provided you reproduce it in its entirety and credit the author. For quotation permission, please contact the author at mgordon@pipeline.com. In addition, the author wishes to thank those peer reviewers who responded with comments and suggestions for this article. |