Karen Moulding, fabulous activist lawyer and GLAMerican, gave me permission to post this report from yesterday’s demo, where the police arrested people for simply being on the sidewalk with signs.

Yesterday morning I accompanied several members of the “Glamericans for Peace” at a legal, sidewalk demonstration in support of others committing non-violent civil disobedience outside a corporation called “The Carlyse Group.” An attorney with ample demonstrations experience, I was there as a “legal observer,” but no one in my group anticipated arrest, and we all assumed we’d be on our way to our jobs within an hour.

The Glamericans stood with a few dozen others, holding funny yet to-the-point signs (many ironic, such as, “make war not love,” “paranoia is patriotic,” “more blood for oil,” “stocks and bombs,” etc.), and dressed as rich folk (pin stripe suits, etc.). Across the street, those who had planned to commit civil disobedience sat at the corporation’s entrance, and were arrested as planned.

Then, without warning, police surrounded and arrested the peaceful demonstrators on the sidewalk across the street. The police gave no order to disperse, and, in fact, the demonstrators were not even in the way of other pedestrians. The cops simply surrounded the legal protest, and conducted a “surprise arrest” of everyone standing on the sidewalk, including a 70+ year old woman, a journalist, and dozens of others who had planned to go to work that day. Many asked the police if they could please leave, and were refused. When I approached the captain and asked what the charges could possibly be, and informed him that people were not causing any blockade and wanted to leave, he said, “get on the sidewalk or I’ll have you arrested too.”

This no-warning “surprise” arrest of peaceful legal demonstrators, who were not blocking pedestrian or vehicular traffic, serves no purpose other than to chill the First Amendment right to demonstrate. Someone in command apparently hopes that next time the demonstrators will remember the inconvenience and stay home rather than assemble to express their views. Even some of the cops themselves seemed privately distraught by this senseless tactic, which, apart from the violation of the 1st Amendment, is a waste of both energy and tax payer dollars.

The one hundred plus arrestees were charged with Disorderly Conduct, and held for up to 10 hours for processing. Many were not released until 10 p.m. I attempted to gain entrance to the precinct to oversee processing, and police officials told me “attorneys can stand over there” and pointed to a barricaded area outdoors. (It was 30 degrees out, and snowing.)

I’ve been an attorney at all kinds of demonstrations –hundreds and hundreds of demonstrations– for years, and I’ve never seen police behavior so obviously designed to discourage the right to peaceful protest. We need to demand that the police be encouraged to proudly protect the First Amendment right to demonstrate peacefully, rather than use scare tactics to pre-empt it. Otherwise, any claim to “patriotism” is a farce.

Greenpeace activist Mikey Rosato holds a ‘No War’ banner as he dangles from the bow of the guided missile frigate HMAS Sydney as she left for Iraq (AFP/GREENPEACE/Tim Cole)

(Click image for the story and more images)

After reading all of the puff pieces on the death of Michael Kelly, David E gives us a welcome antidote, titled Speaking Ill of the Dead. Michael Kelly, assuming homosexuality was some kind of decadence of the elite, gave us this as an example of what is wrong with liberalism:

One of those cultural interests is stamping out discrimination against gays. The problem is, all the people who are for this don’t have their children in those schools anymore. The sons and daughters of editorial writers at the New York Times haven’t been in those schools for generations. The children who are in those schools are the sons and daughters of working-class people, many of them immigrants, many of them Catholics, and they don’t want their children propagandized against their wishes.

The working class don’t have any homosexuals, right? It’s only rich lefty pansies, and no working class man ever killed a homosexual who didn’t deserve it.

Mourn for the dead Iraqis, Americans, British, and journalists of many nationalities who have died in the war, but not for those who helped send them there with writings like these:

The depth of denial here is stunning. Lieven concedes that the militarily superior United States probably could topple Saddam’s regime. But what then? He writes: “The ‘democracy’ which replaces it will presumably resemble that of Afghanistan–a ramshackle coalition of ethnic groups and warlords, utterly dependent on U.S. military power and utterly subservient to U.S. (and Israeli) wishes.”

Yes, I suppose what exists in Afghanistan is only (so far, at least) a “democracy,”‘ not a democracy. And it sure is ethnic. And ramshackle. And, sure, post-Saddam Iraq would probably be the same.

But isn’t Afghanistan after America’s rescue a better place to live than it was before? I mean, again, from the liberal point of view: no more throwing homosexuals off buildings, whipping women, banning kites, that sort of thing. No more fascists.

and

These people could be liberated from this horror–relatively easily and very quickly. There is every reason to think that an American invasion will swiftly vanquish the few elite units that can be counted on to defend the detested Saddam; and that the victory will come at the cost of few–likely hundreds, not thousands or tens of thousands–Iraqi and American lives. There is risk here; and if things go terribly wrong it is a risk that could result in terrible suffering. But that is an equation that is present in any just war, and in this case any rational expectation has to consider the probable cost to humanity low and the probable benefit tremendous. To choose perpetuation of tyranny over rescue from tyranny, where rescue may be achieved, is immoral.

…

To march against the war is not to give peace a chance. It is to give tyranny a chance. It is to give the Iraqi nuke a chance. It is to give the next terrorist mass murder a chance. It is to march for the furtherance of evil instead of the vanquishing of evil.

For those who think Afghanistan is fine now, and we’re going do the same for Iraq, I recommend reading this post from Digby — direct link might not work. The Taliban is organized enough in Afghanistan to be killing Red Cross workers, and remember this story from February 14:

The United States Congress has stepped in to find nearly $300 million in humanitarian and reconstruction funds for Afghanistan after the Bush administration failed to request any money in the latest budget.

A Tomahawk missile, of which we have dropped hundreds on Iraq, cost $1.4 million each.