Results tagged “democracynow”

The Republican National Convention may have ended last week, but lost in the haze of John McCain's acceptance of the nomination was how the final day of the St. Paul protests was marked by a spike in arrests. Police rounded up nearly 400 demonstrators during and after a major protest march, and at least 19 journalists were also arrested--including two from the Associated Press and even a New York-based reporter with the GOP-friendly Fox News. He's just published an outraged account of the experience, and says police misled protesters by telling them to disperse over a bridge, only to block the other side and then arrest hundreds of them en masse.

The Post has a funny editorial today about how St. Paul police could have avoided all "the ugliness that's marred the GOP convention this week" by taking some tips from the NYPD's "effective" management of the 2004 RNC protests. Of course, St. Paul officials did consult with the NYPD before the convention, and their raids on protesters' homes seem partly inspired by the NYPD's pre-convention spying in 2004. But according to the Post, demonstrators in St. Paul are now "pining for the apparently gentler tactics of the NYPD."

No surprises here; more reports of heavy-handed police tactics are filtering in from the Twin Cities, where the NYPD has been consulting with local law enforcement on how to handle demonstrations during the Republican convention. Salon has a long story on police and federal officers ("in riot gear, with semi-automatic weapons drawn") raiding houses where protest organizers are suspected of staying, in some cases seizing computers, journals, and political pamphlets.

TRIVIA: Think you know a lot about New York? Come "challenge your knowledge of New York places, faces, dates and facts at the New York Book Club’s first trivia night. Special guests Steve Zeitlin and Marci Reaven, authors of Hidden New York and directors of City Lore, will be on hand to explain and educate." They warn you to bone up on your trivia at www.citylore.org and www.placematters.net beforehand.

Yesterday, Democracy Now.org showed footage taken from the Air Train station near the club in Jamaica, Queens where Sean Bell and his two friends were shot by police. And the video (link to download MP3) is bananas. One video shows a bullet coming into the station and barely missing a man. Another video shows two Port Authority police officers ducking from the bullets and running. The Daily News' Juan Gonzalez, who co-hosts Democracy Now, explained the tape:

JUAN GONZALEZ: Well, I think one of the things it shows, number one, is that there were a lot more people in danger that night by this shooting, the 50-shot barrage of the police officers at the scene, five cops at the scene, plainclothes and undercover. There had been a report that there had been at least one errant bullet, and I think Graham Weatherspoon -- he was on this show also -- talked about one that went into a home and hit a lamp. But it turns out that this particular bullet that went to the Air Train, which was --

Continue reading "Queens Shooting: Videos from Air Train Station"

Yesterday, the NY Times looked at Columbia President - and First Amendement scholar - Lee Bollinger's free speech stance given this incident as well as many other instances at the the school were speech seems to have been shut down. And did you see Jim Gilchrist on The Colbert Report? Stephen Colbert didn't run across the stage from his desk to the interview area - it was probably in Gilchrist's rider that no one approach him suddenly before speaking.

•Tonight we suggest that all delegates go see The Seconds, Parts of Labor, Aa, Pterodactyl and The Wobblies @ the Knitting Factory for a benefit to support Democracy Now, specifically Amy Goodman's show which has become a critical antiwar voice in today's media.