Garvey's Ghost: Black Talk

The Police State grows

A while back I reported on how NYPD were found in Boston attending a metting of an civil organization in order to identify protest leadership and plans. Today the The New York Times has posted two articles that should cast aside any doubt as to the police state that the Unites States is becoming under the present administration.

Eric Lichblau has written on how FBI agents have been "visiting" persons from a "list" at their homes in order to "question" them about thier activities surrounding anti-war activity. Of course, just as when Malcolm X and Martin L. King Jr. were under surveliance, the FBI is using the "lookout for criminal activity" as thier cover.

quote:
F.B.I. officials are urging agents to canvass their communities for information about planned disruptions aimed at the convention and other coming political events, and they say they have developed a list of people who they think may have information about possible violence. They say the inquiries, which began last month before the Democratic convention in Boston, are focused solely on possible crimes, not on dissent, at major political events.

"The message I took from it," said Sarah Bardwell, 21, an intern at a Denver antiwar group who was visited by six investigators a few weeks ago, "was that they were trying to intimidate us into not going to any protests and to let us know that, 'hey, we're watching you.' ''

..."We vetted down a list and went out and knocked on doors and had a laundry list of questions to ask about possible criminal behavior," he added. "No one was dragged from their homes and put under bright lights. The interviewees were free to talk to us or close the door in our faces."

Six investigators come to your door, flash FBI badges and most Americans don't think to say "no I'm not saying sqaut, please leave." And we know that refusal to cooperate ( a constitutionally 'guaranteed' right) will only lead to more problems. Damned if you do, damned if you don't.

But is this isolated? is it merely the convention? No! Bob Herbert writes in the same edition of the NYT

tate police officers have gone into the homes of elderly black voters in Orlando and interrogated them as part of an odd "investigation" that has frightened many voters, intimidated elderly volunteers and thrown a chill over efforts to get out the black vote in November...

"We did a preliminary inquiry into those allegations and then we concluded that there was enough evidence to follow through with a full criminal investigation," said Geo Morales, a spokesman for the Department of Law Enforcement.

The state police officers, armed and in plain clothes, have questioned dozens of voters in their homes. Some of those questioned have been volunteers in get-out-the-vote campaigns.

I asked Mr. Morales in a telephone conversation to tell me what criminal activity had taken place.

"I can't talk about that," he said.

I asked if all the people interrogated were black.

"Well, mainly it was a black neighborhood we were looking at - yes,'' he said.

He also said, "Most of them were elderly."

When I asked why, he said, "That's just the people we selected out of a random sample to interview."

... "People who have voted by absentee ballot for years are refusing to allow campaign workers to come to their homes. And volunteers who have participated for years in assisting people, particularly the elderly or handicapped, are scared and don't want to risk a criminal investigation."

MAy be a different "reason" but it's the same aparatus of the state "law enforcement" making unneccessary and I believe extra-legal attempts at intimidating people who are against the current administration. Meanwhile these people talk about Chavez and how he's being undemocratic. But like it's been said: when you point at someone, four other fingers are pointing right back at you.

Links:

http://nytimes.com/2004/08/16/opinion/16herbert.html?hp
http://nytimes.com/2004/08/16/politics/campaign/16fbi.html?pagewanted=2&hp