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Cops Scare and Fool the
Media about Protests
was an odd fact of the demonstrations sur
rounding the Democratic Convention in
Los Angeles that the only protests to get mass
media coverage were those where cops moved in
and arrested people.
The only news from the streets of LA. on
August 14, for example, was that the police
broke up a 8,000-person rock concert that
evening outside the Staples Center, carting off
about 15 people who had thrown bottles and
'•hunks of concrete across a high-security fence.
The next day, networks and newspapers covered
the arrests of 25 animal rights activists who
banged on a fur shop window and approximately
75 members of the bicyde group Critical M«ss
who were surrounded and arrested by a legion of
motorcycle cops.
But other than this kind of coverage of police
hauling off protesters to jail, the press seemed
to be fairly befuddled about how to describe
what the demonstrators were doing. Delegates
were similarly undear about the demonstrators'
intentions. "I don't even know what they're
demonstrating about," Michigan delegate Bill
Hanner told the Los Angeles Times. "I don't
think they're doing a very good job of getting
their message out, because we're very willing to
listen."
This is bad news for the thousands of
activists, workers and students who poured into
L.A. to attend peaceful
rallies on the drug
war, police brutality,
corporate power, glob
alization, youth crimi
nalization, welfare,
educational reform,
capital punishment,
sweatshop labor, Ralph
Nader's indusion in
the presidential
debates and dozens of
other issues on the
progressive agenda.
These issues are
important ones, but
because they are so
diverse and because
the protests weren't
always directed specif
ically at the
Democrats, media cov
erage has been less
than astute. Typical
coverage on CNN
showed footage of
demonstrators in
handcuffs and black-
clad, masked anarchists walking down the street
and then quickly returned to covering the con
vention.
Certainly competing with a media event like
the Democratic National Convention is no easy
feat. But leaders of the various activist move
ments in LA. could have been more media-
savvy. Ever since activists had their coming out
party in Seattle last November, there has been
much hand-wringing about how to keep a coali
tion of labor, environmentalists, anti-globalists
and other members of the American left together
while remaining non-hierarchical: How to repli
cate the success of Seattle? How to get messages
across?
"This weird psychology had set in where
they're so afraid of losing the momentum of
Seattle that they have to keep organizing the
next Seattle or the whole thing will dissipate,"
says Naomi Klein, author of Vo Logo: Taking Aim
at the Brand Bullies. "And so a tremendous
amount of resources and energy an<1 creativity is
being thrown into moving bodies to protest. But
the protests since [Seattle] have not been as
pulled together, and the protests have been
thrown together too quickly."
Klein says that a centralizing issue for
demonstrators and activists in Los Angeles
should have been corporate influence over poli
tics. Yet no such thing happened. Speakers con
tinually raised the issue of corruption of politics
by big business, but not in a way that got the
attention of the media that could disseminate
their message.
One exception to this was the Million
Billionaires March on August 14, where nearly
10,000 people showed up to condemn the wealth
gap, chanting: "Corporation go to hell! Our com
munity is not for sale!" Unfortunately, this suc
cessful protest was capped oft by the concert
outside the Staples Center where a few demon
strators became raucous and the cops moved in
with their batons and rubber bullets.
In part, the Seattle pretests were such a suc
cess because they showed that collective deci
sion-making could work both to organize people
and get Americans to think about the repercus
sions of globalization. Time even published an
article about globalization and the protests,
which included a diagram of the activists' decen
tralized organizing methods.
No such coverage likely will come out of Los
Angeles. Instead, the media will probably focus
on the LAPIYs extreme and questionable tactics
of crowd control. The ACLU has announced plans
to sue the LAPD for attacks on the media. The
first night of the convention, police fired Tubber
bullets at press members documenting the vio
lent end to the rock concert. On August 16, LA.
policemen hit a CNN
sounuperson who was
recording the anti
police brutality march,
sending her to the
hospital. L.A. police
were also doing their
best to scare journal
ists away from the
demonstrations. "The
cops told me to hide
my press pass under
my shne," says jour
nalist Barbara
Ehrenreich. "They said
I would be attacked by
the kids, but that is
absolutely ridiculous."
Legal observers are
also examining such
events as a march and
rally to protest police
brutality and the
death penalty on
August 16. Police man
aged to divide a group
of 1,500 or so demon
strators on a street
through which they had a permit to pass,
accused the demonstrators of "illegal assembly"
and barred them from entering their final desti
nation: a chain-linked fence area in front of the
Staples convention that the police themselves
had created for the protesters' rallies.
The day before, cops faced down a crowd of
people who had witnessed the arrest of the
Critical Mass bicyclists a few blocks from the
convention center. Instead of taking the bicy
clists off to jail, police placed them in a parked
paddy wagon, brought in approximately 100
motorcycle cops and stood with their batons,
pepper spray guns and other weapons at the
ready, waiting, it seems, for the observexs to
either attack them or disperse from the area.
"We are not the enemy!" shouted members of
the crowd.
It is times like this that call for a leader (or
even a few visible representatives from the vai-
ious movements) to help get the message out to
the press. These representatives could call in
police abuses to media outlets and simultane
ously talk up key issues. They could, as was the
case during the 1968 Democratic National
Convention and the protects in Seattle, get
Americans to understand why they are on the
street.
Tamara Straus
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