MEDIA ROOTS — Yesterday, Michael Ratner, President of the Center for
Constitutional Rights, discussed on Letters and Politics the
Federal involvement in the coordinated nationwide repression of the Occupy
Movement, evictions of OM encampments and the U.S. history of police state repression
of dissent and First Amendment activities. He also talks about the recent disturbing
provision, sponsored by Democrat Carl Levin, to the National Defense
Authorization Act Bill S.1867, granting the Executive authority to order the
Military to detain indefinitely U.S. citizens without charge.
Ratner asserts: “The governments of various cities, mayors, in conjunction with the Feds, wanted to see [the OM] come to an end.” He also points out the false pretexts for evicting OM encampments, which, because of the visibility, functioned as powerful symbols of economic disparity. Ratner confirms there are deep First Amendment issues with the Federal repression and evictions of the OM encampments and reminds people have the right to expressive protest: “Even the use of tents can be a form of expressive protest, certainly sleeping outside, particularly when it’s related to the homeless situation, is considered a form of expressive protest.”
Messina
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Mitch Jeserich (16:09): “Now for more on the evictions of Occupy encampments around the country, I’m joined by Michael Ratner, President of the Center for Constitutional Rights. He’s also the co-author of the new book Hell No: You’re Right to Dissent in the 21st Century. Michael Ratner, always good to talk to you.”
Michael Ratner (16:24): “Mitch, it’s always good to be with you.”
Mitch Jeserich (16:26): “Okay, so, reportedly more than a thousand police officers participated in evicting both Occupy Los Angeles and Philadelphia earlier this morning. Most Occupations across the country have had one type of raid or another. Here in the [S.F.] Bay Area, we still have two sizeable Occupations, one in San Francisco and one in Berkeley. But what is your take?”
Michael Ratner (16:49): “Well, we’ve seen over the last two weeks, it was really three weeks maybe, is a coordinated effort by the mayors, most likely, it appears, in conjunction with the Feds, start clearing the Occupied spaces all over the country. And that’s worrisome because as long as they existed, I think, as a public symbol, we were really pushing this agenda in a positive, amazing way, both real democracy and economic disparities. And the fact that they were all coordinated, you know, it makes you think this was a real threat to them. It wasn’t just about, as they said, in the excuse in Los Angeles, something about health and safety. The excuse in Philadelphia was they had to use a $50 Million dollar renovation of a plaza. In New York, it was health and safety. They come up with different excuses all the time. But in the end, the bottom line is this visible symbol of economic disparity in the United States. The governments of various cities, mayors, and, I think, in conjunction with the Feds, wanted to see it come to an end.”
Mitch Jeserich (17:52): “Do you think that’s what’s really behind this? ‘Cos there’s a lot of people, at the same time, that would say, ‘Well, these are mostly plazas in front of city hall or whatever it may be. They’re not campsites.’ Issues like that.”
Michael Ratner (18:05): “Well, there are deep First Amendment issues [here]. But, you know, we have won in New York in the past the right to sleep on the sidewalk. And I think the big issue that comes in is, ‘Can other people use that space as well?’ That’s one issue. But in New York, for example, we have Zuccotti/Liberty Park. But we have 550 public plazas in New York, so the fact that the Occupy Wall Street people were dominating one and were willing, as far as I understand to negotiate how that domination would take place, it seems to me, and the answer to the question of, ‘Well, these are public for everybody,’ it does seem when you have an overriding issue like this and you have 550 plazas, the idea that you say, ‘Well, all of a sudden we have to clear this particular one,’ or in Philadelphia to make the renovations, or in Los Angeles, I’m not as familiar with the public space there, it does seem to me to be justified that you should allow the people under their First Amendment rights to continue those kinds of protests.”
Mitch Jeserich (19:09): “So, you think that people have the First Amendment right to form an encampment to protest?”
Michael Ratner (19:17): “It’s called ‘expressive protest.’ And, you know, most people think of free speech as I have the right to speak to you now as I am. But, in fact, the way social change happens and the way First Amendment protections are provided, it includes the right to assemble and to petition the government. And expressive protest is permitted. And that’s what you see when you wear, you know, a black armband in protest. That’s what you see when you burn the American flag. Those are all protected. And we have won many cases saying that expressive protest is protected. Even the use of tents can be a form of expressive protest, certainly sleeping outside, particularly when it’s related to the homeless situation, is considered a form of expressive protest. So, I think we have a strong argument in many of these situations that, first of all, getting rid of the curfews, which [we] succeeded, in a number of cities. We didn’t succeed as well on the sleeping part. We succeeded on that in some cities. So, it’s sporadic. But I think it’s clearly protected by the First Amendment. You have a right to protest by sleeping in a public space. And that’s particularly tied in with the message of the protest, which is homelessness, housing, economic disparity. Our view is that you have the right to do that. As I said, the courts have been uneven on it. But in some cases we’ve been winning.”
Mitch Jeserich (20:40): “Again, we are speaking to Michael Ratner. Michael Ratner is the President of the Center for Constitutional Rights. He is the co-author of the new book Hell No: You’re Right to Dissent in the 21st Century. In your book, you, kind of, outline the policing of movements over the last decade or so, especially around some of the anti-globalisation movements. Tell me about that and how Occupy Movements fit into this?”
Michael Ratner (21:05): “You know, looking backwards, it’s interesting because everybody says, ‘Oh, where did this spring from? Where do we get all of a sudden Occupy Wall Street?’ If you look backwards to Seattle 1999, that was a protest against the economic disparities in this world. If you look to the Free Trade [Area] of the Americas demonstrations in Miami, again economic disparities. If you look to the G8 in Pittsburgh a couple of years ago, again economic disparities. If you look at Montreal, again, against G8 and G20. So, looking backwards, you see that there was a lot of bubbling up, and, of course, you look to North Africa. But a lot of bubbling up of opposition to the economic division of the world and the way it was going. Then you also look back to Seattle and you see what came out of Seattle. It was the Seattle model of policing. Even before 9/11, and as your listeners may recall, the demonstrators were actually successful in Seattle from blocking the delegates from getting to the World Trade Organization meeting that they were supposed to go to. And, after that, they began to develop the governments, state, local, Federal, began to develop a Seattle form of policing.
“And, of course, after 9/11 it got accelerated. But some of the elements were there early on. One is the Darth Vader-type outfits, which are militarised police that really send a message of, ‘You get out of here or we’ll use force and violence against you.’ You saw the use of penning. You know, we had our march in 2003 against the Iraq War in New York. We had tens of thousands of people, but none of us could really be in one place together. They put us in pens on the blocks, so that we could only stay on those blocks and those pens. That you’ve seen consistently. We saw it in New York at Occupy Wall Street when they round up people on the Brooklyn Bridge. We saw it at the 2004 Republican Convention in New York where they arrested 400 people by putting netting around them. So, netting and penning came out of Seattle and came out of 9/11. And, of course, tear gas, which you saw used in Oakland so outrageously is another form of policing. Surveillance is another, is the beginning of that, trying to get information from people. So, we’ve seen, really, what I would say is incredibly aggressive policing with Federal involvement, with huge amounts of money coming from Homeland Security into these local police departments, a huge amount of weaponry, really, a militarisation of the police that should just terrify us, really.”
Mitch Jeserich (23:41): “Tell me about the 2008 FBI Guidelines, which I suppose regulate the Government’s domestic response to dissent.”
Michael Ratner (23:49): “The FBI has an internal set of guidelines that were originally promulgated in [the] 1970s after all the exposures of what the FBI did to the Black Panthers, the Black Liberation Movement, the New Left , Communist Party, etcetera, a number of dirty tricks and surveillance. And they were never great, but the key thing was in ’76 and on, they required there to be some kind of, what they called, criminal predicate before the FBI could start an investigation and start intrusive surveillance techniques. They’ve been watered down and watered down and watered down ‘til there was very little left and at the end of the Bush Administration, Bush 2, [Michael] Mukasey, the Attorney General, issued a new set of FBI Guidelines that, essentially, removed any criminal predicate. It really gave open season to the FBI to walk into every mosque in the country, to infiltrate every Muslim group, to infiltrate every anti-war group, to infiltrate the Quakers, to start surveillance. And those were passed. They don’t need to pass the legislator; they’re just passed by the FBI or they’re promulgated by the FBI. A new President, in this case, President Obama could have decided to have his Attorney General [Eric] Holder issue a new, tighter set of guidelines, but he refused to do that. So, now the FBI’s operating, essentially, with no restrictions. And the best recent example, or good recent example, was the G8 Demonstration in Pittsburgh where the FBI labelled certain Quaker groups as ‘terrorists’ and started infiltrating them. The Inspector General for the FBI was asked to look into, ‘How could they do this? These are Quaker pacifist groups? What is this?’ And he concluded that, while he didn’t like it, that it was completely legal under the Guidelines. That gives you an example of the fact that we have almost, what’s the way to say this, almost no way of, really, restricting the FBI at this point. And, of course, in New York we have our City Police, which are broad authority. Then we have the FBI, of course, domestic. Then we have the CIA operating here, although, we claim it’s not the CIA actually doing work; we’re just giving them information. And then, of course, on my last demonstration that I walked, after we were kicked out of Occupy Wall Street, you know Zuccotti/Liberty Park, we had a court order to walk back into the Park briefly and along the entire path there are Homeland Security people, again, indicating the Federal involvement in making sure the Occupy Wall Street Movement is suppressed.
Mitch Jeserich (26:34): “Michael Ratner, I wanna turn our attention to Capitol Hill where the Senate yesterday [11/29/11] rejected an amendment to the Defense Authorization Bill that would have taken out language that would make law the indefinite detention of so-called ‘enemy combatants,’ have the Military take the lead in detaining people that are deemed ‘terror suspects’ regardless that they are apprehended in another country or even in this country and potentially even U.S. citizens. This is Carl Levin, the Chair of the Senate Armed Services Committee. He is a Democrat and he is the principal sponsor of [the provision within this S.1867 bill authorising a President to order the Military to detain indefinitely U.S. citizens without charges]. He spoke about it on the Senate floor yesterday [11/29/11].
Audio of Democrat Senator Carl Levin (27:15): “A citizen, the Supreme Court said in 2004, no less than an alien can be part of supporting forces hostile to the United States and engage in armed conflict against the United States. Such a citizen, referring to an American citizen, if released could pose the same threat of returning to the front during the ongoing conflict. And here’s the bottom line for the Supreme Court. If we just take this one line out of this whole debate, it would be a breath of fresh air to cut through some of the words that have been used here this morning, one line. ‘There is no bar to this nation’s holding one of its own citizens as an enemy combatant.’”
Mitch Jeserich (28:00): “Again that was the Democrat Chair of the Senate Armed Services Committee, Carl Levin of Michigan. He was speaking on the Senate floor yesterday [11/29/11]. And we are right now speaking to Michael Ratner, President of the Center for Constitutional Rights. Michael Ratner, your response to these proposals.”
Michael Ratner (28:18): “It’s hard to believe that Senator Levin was a legal aid lawyer once. And it’s harder to believe he’s a lawyer. And it’s harder to believe, maybe not harder, than he’s a Democrat. Maybe it’s harder to believe he’s a lawyer. It’s an utter misinterpretation of the Supreme Court’s position on Hamdi. And just to be a tiny bit, not technical, but precise, [Yaser Esam] Hamdi was an American citizen picked up in the actual war in Afghanistan on the battlefield that was initially authorised. That is not what the Levin legislation is any longer talking about. He’s using that. Of course, an American citizen, if he’s fighting against your forces in an actual shooting war, he can be picked up and detained ‘til the end of that particular shooting war. It doesn’t make any difference, American citizen or not. What this new legislation is doing, I mean, it’s saying that anywhere in the world in the so-called ‘War On Terror,’ not the shooting war in Afghanistan that took place for a number of months after 2001, but an alleged terrorist anywhere in the world, U.S. citizen or not, even in the United States, can be picked up and sent and put in Military detention and held there for life. And part of the [S.1867] bill makes that detention mandatory. It doesn’t even give the President the right to take him out and try him. I mean it’s such an outrageous—”
Mitch Jeserich (29:40): “I thought the President would have the right to issue a waiver.”
Michael Ratner (29:43): “Yeah, right. There is a waiver in that section, a very difficult waiver. And, of course, the President, if we know anything about waivers, rarely, if ever, has exercised such a waiver. In the current situation, which has to do with whether the President can get people from Guantanamo into trials, get people from Guantanamo transferred to other countries, he has a waiver for that. But have we seen any waivers? No. So, the waiver is not really a relevant part. What’s relevant here is that Senator Levin is, essentially, putting into law, I mean, part of what he’s putting into law is what Obama is already doing, which is preventive detention in general. But he’s going beyond that and saying a certain category of preventive detention, including U.S. citizens has to mandatorily be detained by the U.S. Military. They can’t, except for this waiver we just mentioned, be brought into a civilian trial system.”
Mitch Jeserich (30:38): “We haven’t had such a law since the 1950s and that was never used.”
Michael Ratner (30:43): “Right. That’s correct. We haven’t had a detention law like that since the 1950s. It was never used. This law, there was an objection, this new law, the Japanese-Americans, you know, put in a letter saying, just like they did with our Guantanamo litigation earlier, ‘Look what happened to us. Is this what you want to happen to people living here? Detention? Just look at what happened to us during the Second World War.’ And they know. It’s hard for me to believe that the country is going backwards much faster than it’s moving forwards, at least not the country; Congress, the President, I mean they just don’t get it. In the similar way they don’t get Occupy Wall Street. They don’t get that the world has changed. And they don’t get that the Constitution still has a place in our democracy.”
Mitch Jeserich (31:35): “Well, it seems strange that this is happening now. Osama bin Laden is dead. We’re planning to withdraw by the end of the year from Iraq. There’s even plans to get out of Afghanistan. Yet, here we are putting many of the practices that we’ve seen over the last decade and solidifying them.”
Michael Ratner (31:55): “Ten years after and the ten-year Guantanamo anniversary, January 11th. If you had told me this, I was outraged obviously when they started Guantanamo, that I would be sitting here talking to you ten years later and these practices were becoming a permanent part of our law, I would’ve said, ‘It’ll never happen.’ And here it is. And you have, really, remember, this term antediluvian, you know, before the flood. These guys are operating in another theatre. They’re ignoring the Constitution. They’re looking at what they think is gonna sell on national security. And you would think that Obama, after all of, you know, the killing of bin Laden and all those things that he would believe helping our national security, that they would stand up a little more for this. There is one provision I don’t like, which is the one on the mandatory detention, but the rest of the preventive detention act they seem to be going along with just fine.”
Mitch Jeserich (32:52): “Michael Ratner, thank you so much.”
Michael Ratner (32:54): “Thank you very much.”
Mitch Jeserich (32:55): “Again, Michael Ratner has been our guest, President of the Center for Constitutional Rights and co-author of the new book Hell No: You’re Right to Dissent in the 21st Century.”
Transcript by Felipe Messina
Photo by flickr user Beverly and Pack
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