The bulwark against tyranny is dissent. Open opposition, the right to challenge those in power, is a mainstay of any healthy democracy. The Democratic and Republican conventions will test the commitment of the two dominant
The full spectrum of police and military will also be on hand at the Democratic convention in
Civil rights advocates fear the fusion center could enable unwarranted spying on protesters exercising their First Amendment rights at the convention. Documents obtained by I-Witness Video, a group that documents police abuses and demonstrations, revealed that the CIA and the Defense Intelligence Agency were receiving intelligence about the protests at the 2004 Republican National Convention in New York City. The growing problem is that legal, peaceful protesters are ending up on federal databases and watch lists with scant legal oversight.
Former FBI agent Mike German is now a national-security-policy counsel for the American Civil Liberties Union. He said, "It’s unclear who is actually in charge and whose rules apply to the information that’s being collected and shared and distributed through these fusion centers." Maryland State Police were recently exposed infiltrating groups like the Baltimore Coalition Against the Death Penalty. German explains how police expand "beyond normal law-enforcement functions, and start becoming intelligence collectors against protest groups. The reports that we obtained … make clear that there was no indication of any sort of criminal activity. And yet, that investigation went on for 14 months, and these reports were uploaded into a federal database. … When all these agencies are authorized to go out and start collecting this information and putting it in areas where it’s accessible by the intelligence community, it’s a very dangerous proposition for our democracy."
After Barack Obama became the presumptive Democratic nominee, the protest coalition in
In the Twin Cities on the evening Obama was giving his Democratic acceptance speech in June, the St. Paul Police Department arrested a 50-year-old man peacefully handing out leaflets promoting a Sept. 1 march on the Republican National Convention. After mass arrests at the RNC in
For now, the eyes of the world are on the Beijing Olympics. Sportswriter Dave Zirin is reporting on the suppression of protests that are occurring there. He has an interesting perspective, as he is a member of the anti-death-penalty group infiltrated in
——–
Amy Goodman is the host of "Democracy Now!," a daily international TV/radio news hour airing on more than 700 stations in
ZNetwork is funded solely through the generosity of its readers.
Donate