MassPrivateIA major new report detailing the global crackdown on peaceful protests, both through excessive police force and the criminalization of dissent. The report is called “Take Back the Streets: Repression and Criminalization of Protest Around the World.” It was put out by the International Network of Civil Liberties Organizations.
The name of the report, “Take Back the Streets,” comes from a police report filed in June 2010, when hundreds of thousands of Canadians took to the streets of Toronto to nonviolently protest the G-20 summit. A senior Toronto police commander responded to the protests by issuing an order to, quote, “take back the streets.” Within a span of 36 hours, over a thousand people—peaceful protesters, journalists, human rights monitors and downtown residents—were arrested and placed in detention.
What happened in Canada is emblematic of government conduct in the face of protest around the world: the tendency to perceive individuals exercising a fundamental democratic right—the right to protest—as a threat requiring a forceful government response. The case studies detailed in this report show how governments have reacted to peaceful protests in the United States, in Israel, Canada, Argentina, Egypt, Hungary, Kenya, South Africa and Britain.
It’s important to put the United States in the global context. And normally when we think about protest and freedom of speech, we think that’s been a right that’s been well established and well respected. And yet, the difficulties we’ve seen with the WTO protesters, the protesters with the Occupy movement and, in particular, this case study that was highlighted in Puerto Rico, a place where most Americans don’t think of Puerto Rico as part of the United States, but it is. The Constitution applies.
Close to four million American citizens live there. And yet, you have the second-largest police department in the nation, only second to New York City Police Department, and the massive levels of repression and shutdown of—of arrests, of tear-gassing, of beating of students, of labor leaders, the level of impunity that lasted for years, until the ACLU filed a report, lobbied our Justice Department, filed a lawsuit, and then the Justice Department stepped in, only recently, to try to put the Puerto Rico Police Department under better control of rule of law.
http://truth-out.org/news/item/19382-report-finds-police-worldwide-criminalize-dissent-assert-new-powers-in-crackdown-on-protests?goback=.gde_62979_member_5794542177698721794#!
The repression of resistance in the era of neoliberal globalization:
http://www.cap-press.com/books/isbn/9781611630886/Protest-and-Punishment
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http://massprivatei.blogspot.com/2013/10/repression-and-criminalization-of.html
The good news here is that the “Ghandi” crowd is waking up to the fact that peaceful protests aren’t gong to be very effective. The protest itself will be ignored by the media, and the protesters will be beaten by cops.
And this will result in protests becoming a lot less peaceful.