- To: <znetupdates@tao.ca>
- Subject: ZNet Free Update -- Statement from demonstrators inside the DC Jails
- From: "Michael Albert" <sysop@zmag.org>
- Date: Mon, 24 Apr 2000 10:43:31 +0100
- Importance: Normal
Dear ZNet Update Recipient,
Well, it hasn't been ten days since the last update sent your way...I
admit...but I felt that the folks in jail in DC deserve to have their
statement seen, and that we all deserve to beenfit from seeing it...so I am
sending it along even a bit out of schedule.
It is also posted online on ZNet, of course, along with our regularly
updated global economics and other coverage -- www.zmag.org/weluser.htm
----
Public Statement from
Jailed IMF/World Bank Protestors
Contact Information: Ben Hale: 631-331-5915; bhale@ic.sunysb.edu (New York)
William Slattery: 619-867-6000; jdoty2@san.rr.com (San Diego) Gabriel
Freeman: 360-866-2120; gabriel_freeman@yahoo.com (Seattle)
The following statement was written by 70 of the male protestors arrested
during the IMF protests and incarcerated for the past week. The writers
consolidated ideas, suggestions, and editorial comments for the letter by
passing suggestions between bars, from cell to cell.
We, the male prisoners arrested in Washington, D.C. during the week of the
A16 demonstrations against the IMF/ World Bank (April 16-22, 2000), wish to
express our solidarity with our fellow inmates, as well as with prisoners
around the world who die and are tortured daily, often simply because they
ask to be treated fairly, equally, and justly.
Second, we wish to express our sincere thanks to the many supporters who
stayed outside the jail in solidarity with us, and to those many who sent
e-mails, wrote letters, and made phone calls on our behalf.
Also, we would like to thank the elected officials and members of congress
who supported us.
We wish to express our deepest thanks to the noble and tireless efforts of
the volunteers with the Midnight Special Law Collective and the National
Lawyers Guild.
Most of all, we would like to express our deepest gratitude to our sisters
in the adjacent cell block, whose powerful spirits and attitudes kept us
strong during the past week.Collectively, this supportive response stands as
testament to a growing worldwide community of resistance to unjust economic
globalization and to the increasing corporate control over our daily lives.
Over the past five days we have been shuttled through the D.C./Federal
judicial system. Despite the relatively trivial charges that most of us
received (“crossing a police line”, “parading without a permit”, or
“incommoding”) and our shared decision to remain silent when asked to
identify ourselves, we were subjected to a series of “divide and conquer”
tactics, both psychological and physical. We were denied contact with our
lawyers for consecutive periods of more than 30 hours at a time; left
handcuffed and shackled for up to eight hours; moved up to 10 times from
holding cell to holding cell. Many of us were denied food for more than 30
hours and denied water for up to 10 hours at a time. Though many of us were
soaking wet after Monday’s protest, we were refused dry clothing, and left
shackled and shivering on very cold floors. For no apparent reason, some of
us were physically attacked by U.S. Marshals; we were forcefully thrown up
against the wall, pepper sprayed directly in the face, or thrown on the
floor and beaten. At least two individuals were forced against the wall by
their necks in strangulation holds, with threats of further violence. This
sort of violence was perpetrated against at least two juveniles in order to
separate them from the larger group.
The U.S. Marshals told us that we would be going to D.C. Jail, where we
would be raped, beaten, and given AIDS or murdered by “faggots” and
“niggers”. Chief Judge Eugene Hamilton, in a shocking violation of legal
ethics, appointed public attorneys for each member of our group and ordered
them to post our bonds while we were still in the D.C. Jail, expressly
against our wishes and best interests. In fact, though we asked repeatedly
for our own lawyers, we were assigned public defenders who consistently
acted in the interests of the prosecution.All of this came after the
excessive violence used against peaceful demonstrators in the streets of
Washington. (Violence perpetrated by police included running people over
with police motorcycles, clubbing, beating, pepper spraying, tear gassing,
trampling with horses, and systematically fabricating scenarios to
legitimize police actions in the eyes of the public.)
After our arrests last week, many of us chose to remain anonymous to protest
these abuses. We chose to show solidarity with our fellow protestors who
were unjustly charged with felonies and misdemeanors in the act of
non-violent civil disobedience against the IMF and the World Bank. It is
clear to us that the District of Columbia and the Federal Government, by
trumping up charges, by arresting frivolously, and by keeping us in jail for
a week, had much less of a problem with our alleged infractions than with
the fact that we spoke our minds and faced up to their brutality and
threats.Simply put, our jail time was not about our trivial charges, but
instead about our peaceful, nonviolent, and successful exercise of our
constitutionally protected rights to freedom of speech and freedom of
assembly. Despite efforts by prison officials to alienate us from the
resident inmate population, we continue to feel a great sense of community
and solidarity with them.
Unlike the “brutal monsters” that the racist, homophobic U.S. Marshals
described to us in offensive and threatening detail, we found our fellow
inmates to be intelligent, caring, and passionately concerned about
injustice inflicted on all members of our society by governments, as well as
injustice perpetrated by U.S. based corporations, around the globe. Many
were informed about the severe injustices caused by IMF/World Bank programs
which have forced hardships on the majority of the world’s people. Together
we discussed how life in a D.C. prison resembles the life of residents in
the third world. In the same way that corporate investors profit from the
sustained poverty of poorer countries (poverty sustained in part through the
loans and polices of IMF/World Bank), so too do many investors profit from
the sustained incarceration of U.S. citizens as prisons in the U.S. become
privatized.
The increasing privatization of prisons creates perverse incentives for
prisons to incarcerate citizens in a system that benefits from what can only
be called “slave labor.” We believe that the increasing injustices of the
prison system and of the IMF/World Bank are fueled by the same naked greed.
Racism, homophobia, sexism, global and local environmental devastation, the
ongoing campaign to criminalize basic labor organizing tools, and many other
forms of oppression are merely symptoms of a system that places profits
above all other values.
We believe that love, compassion, liberty, and basic human and environmental
rights should be the driving forces in our society. We are determined to
help create a world in which these values are stronger than selfishness. Our
movement is a small part of a worldwide brotherhood and sisterhood joining
in solidarity with all the impoverished, oppressed, and progressive people
of earth. For us, breaking the law is not a frivolous gesture, but rather a
last-resort means of exposing the immense powers that we all face when we
attempt to create real, ethical change.
We continue to draw inspiration from the civil rights, anti-nuclear,
anti-war, environmental justice, labor rights, and anti-oppression
movements. Who are we? We are your sons and daughters, your sisters and
brothers, your fathers, mothers, grandfathers, and grandmothers. We are your
co-workers, your fellow parishioners and rabbis, your healers, your
teachers, and your students. We will continue to risk arrest, and if
necessary resist with our very lives, until we expose this world as one in
which profits come before people, so that a more just, humane, and free
global society may take its place.