Just Because It’s a Machine, Doesn’t Mean It’s Well-Oiled
OR
Big Brother isn’t Paying Attention
Well, my blogging pace has certainly picked up. A new entry before anyone has even noticed the last one. But this story is just too good.
Okay, so there’s an anti-war group called Answer. The Chicago chapter applied for a permit for a march on October 28th. The police rejected the permit and refused to have further communication with them. So Answer makes alternate plans for the day that don’t require permits.
What does the city do? They send hundreds of police in riot gear to location on out to where the march was supposed to take place!
In response to this non-trivial logistical mix-up, they were left with little choice but to blame Answer. They accused Answer of canceling the march that the police department canceled.
The ABC Channel 7 news played along with this charade. They interviewed someone from Answer who stated that they were denied a permit and then they showed the permit application in a context that made it appear that it was a city-issued permit.
So I don’t know what the city was trying to pull. They watch the anti-war movement closely and send undercover cops to protest planning meetings. This is all rather large waste of resources, but Daley and many of his most important cronies seem to have a very irrational attitude towards protesters. From what I gather, the city believed that there would be a secret protest and that Answer was able to covertly gather thousands of participants who were ready to march and get the jump on the city. The day of leafleting that they were promoting was really just a trick.
You know this makes me feel very good. You see I often worry that we are headed for a 1984-type society. I know the Chicago and New York police (and probably others) tape protests and keep the footage. I know the government is has a very extensive wire-tapping and data mining operation in effect. (The Total Information Awareness project that people were so scared of years ago has been not been terminated. It was just broken up into smaller pieces.) And they probably keep records on lil’ole me. This stuff all scares the bijous out of me.
But these events illustrate that our government simply is competent enough to utilize the information it gathers anyway. They are guided by bizarre perceptions of the anti-war movement and their right hand can’t even keep track of what their left hand is doing.
Imagine a boot attempting to kick a human over and over, but it keeps missing…
posted by Joe @ 7:38 PM
2 Comments:
Here's an email I recieved about the incident.
Chicago Police Perpetrate Fraud Against Anti-war Movement
Statement from the October 28 Coalition to Stop the War
* Please Circulate Widely*
On Saturday, October 28 the City of Chicago and Chicago Police Department perpetrated a fraud against the anti-war movement and the people of Chicago . The Chicago Police showed up in full “riot” mobilization at Washington Square, claiming wrongly that an anti-war demonstration was going to take place. The police are playing games with the facts and with their permitting system and they know it. What is their intention, to cover up their gross incompetence or to target the anti-war movement again?
The last communication from the police with protest organizers was on June 27, four months before October 28, when the police denied organizers’ request for a permit to march on Michigan Avenue . The police offered an alternate route and told organizers they had five days to accept or that offer would be rescinded. The protest organizers, however, did not respond until July 11 (15 days later). Thereafter, the police refused to confirm or advise whether any permit to march was being issued and would not respond to requests that were made by phone and fax. The October 28 organizers never issued any communications announcing a march at this location, and in September began publicly and repeatedly announcing they would be doing street team outreach and leafleting in other locations on October 28 which does not require a permit.
Either the Chicago police are so remarkably incompetent that they would coordinate, mobilize and deploy hundreds of police in riot gear, possibly on overtime, without ever once picking up the phone over months to confirm an activity existed or even what size it was, or they have undertaken an ugly effort to malign and set-up the anti-war movement in Chicago . Or perhaps both.
In both the Chicago Tribune and on ABC TV city officials are quoted as saying that the police mobilization was a “waste” of city resources and that they would seek to recoup their costs. In other words, the City of Chicago wants to demand money from the anti-war movement to fund the police department. This is just a thinly veiled attempt to shut down the anti-war movement with false accusations and threats of penalty and punishment.
The city’s farcical mobilization on October 28 was nothing other than one in a long string of attacks against the rights of free speech and assembly here in Chicago. And it is part of a general attempt to silence the anti-war majority. The city’s real but unstated aims in this case are to continue to defend its reprehensible repression of and repeated attacks on anti-war protesters and organizers which is also the focus of ongoing litigation.
In response to the city’s attacks, the real facts of the city and CPDs charade on October 28 need to be exposed and circulated to everybody in the anti-war movement and beyond.
The facts are …
* Organizers asked the city for confirmation of a permit to march on October 28 in July by phone and fax. The city never responded to these requests.
* The city had absolutely zero communication with organizers about their originally desired October 28 permit. There were no logistical meetings or any other meeting between organizers and police at any time.
* Beginning in mid-September protest organizers planned, announced and widely distributed information for a day of anti-war outreach in various Chicago neighborhoods on October 28 (not a march and rally). These October 28 plans were made publicly, repeatedly, in leaflets, in widely circulated announcement emails and were prominently displayed on the internet.
* Organizers never planned for, announced or distributed information for an October 28 protest march in Chicago at the location where the CPD perpetrated the sham “mobilization” of riot police.
* And in no case, did anti-war protesters ever request a deployment of police. It is the city that insists on criminalizing free speech by sending out platoons of riot police to First Amendment protected activities.
I just call it "The City that Works."
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