The Great Wall of America

Left Field by Patricia Nell Warren

With four weeks left till the election, I ponder the extreme to which some in government are fearful of non-violent dissent. Things have gotten worse, not better, since 2000. The events of 9/11 have pushed anti-dissent fears over the top.

While Republicans must bear blame, because they’re fighting a cutthroat fight to hang onto their power, Democrats bear some blame too, because their position on this issue is so puny. During the DNC in July, the city of Boston did try to keep the lid on police aggressiveness; there were only a few arrests. But the FBI paid pre-DNC visits to protest groups whose plans they got wind of, and the Democrats didn’t complain.

A month later, the RNC set an all-time U.S. record for police ugliness. The NYPD insisted that peaceful protest would be respected—yet they arrested thousands of people, compared to 668 anti-war arrestees during the 1968 Chicago convention (our previous benchmark for convention catastrophe). Some innocent bystanders were arrested—including the twenty-tw0-year-old nephew of a friend of mine. The nephew, an NYU student, was caught up in a sweep on his way to the subway. According to his uncle, he was treated like a terrorist—held for more than forty hours without charges or access to attorneys. Finally, after pressure from the National Lawyers Guild, he was released.

Holding protesters indefinitely without charging them is illegal, but law enforcement doesn’t care—it keeps protesters off the street till the event is over. As I write this, a New York judge wrathfully ordered the release of 470 arrestees whom he believed were being held till after Bush’s acceptance speech.

AIDS issues galvanized some New York protest. Ten ACT UP NY members dropped their clothes in front of Madison Square Garden to spotlight the “bare truth” about Bush’s AIDS policy. They were arrested, along with other ACT UP members who hung a banner saying “DROP THE DEBT.” The issue: The GOP had just released its global AIDS platform, trumpeting that Bush is “devoting at least $15 billion over five years.” Yet according to the American Friends Service Committee, African countries send around $15 billion a year in debt service to the IMF, World Bank, and creditor nations, including the U.S. The Democratic Republic of the Congo alone owes the U.S. $2 billion. ACT UP was pointing out that the money gulped by these interest payments is lost to fighting disease and building public-health infrastructures in those countries.

One could quibble that these issues are best addressed with clothes on. Well, non-nudity hasn’t done much good so far. At a June G-8 summit, a gaggle of fully clothed leaders were willing to discuss canceling these debts, but President Bush refused to go along. Evidently Dubya needs those millions in African interest payments to keep his own administration afloat. Meanwhile, the issue’s seriousness went over the heads of New York Daily News editors, who dismissed civil disobedience as “wacky.”

Many Americans believe that today’s anti-dissent atmosphere started with 9/11. Not completely. Criminalization of peaceful protest started back in the 1990s, when the minor charges and light fines that were traditionally levied against peaceful protesters began giving way to punitive felony prosecutions. That wall of police that we saw in Boston and New York City is becoming a permanent structure in our society, as our leaders use all powers available to them—including FBI harassment—to shield themselves from dissent, even the non-violent variety.

I’m embarrassed to see the leaders of my country so unable to tell the difference between a real terrorist and a citizen with a legitimate beef. Most convention protesters are loyal Americans who are fed up with a system that gets more dysfunctional and corrupt by the day. Many, including AIDS activists, have tried the standard peaceful options—litigation, activist alerts, letters to Congress, boycotts, etc.—and they’ve gotten nowhere. Next option: Paint a placard and hit the street. Maybe take off your clothes. But isn’t nudity non-violent? I mean, compared to hitting cops and throwing Molotov cocktails?

Judging by the sorry record of most politicians in office, many so-called “leaders” don’t want to fix our ailing system. It’s more profitable for them—and for major corporations and lobbyists and media whosupport them—to protect the status quo. Yet they feel the rising anger in their constituents. So they’re afraid. Their response is the standard one in history: to build a wall around themselves.

A wall can be a visible, towering cliff of concrete, or an invisible rampart of policy, but, either way, it’s a step toward totalitarian government. Walls protect privilege and prevent unwanted change. History is lined with walls. Ancient emperors built the Great Wall of China across half of Asia. In modern times, the Communist bloc threw up a wall of barbed wire and machine guns from the Baltic Sea to the Sea of Japan—plus an actual wall through the middle of Berlin.

History has its grim lessons about walls. After a few decades, a few centuries, the governments that build them always collapse. Liberty-loving citizens—and/or the law of nature that makes change inevitable—bring these governments down. When communism fell in 1989, citizens on both sides of the Berlin Wall tore it down. Yet the repressive-minded in the U.S. government are busy ignoring these lessons as they build their own Great Wall across America. Indeed, they believe their Wall will work.

Protest is as American as the Fourth of July. Women who chained themselves to the White House gate got the vote for women. Marches won civil rights for blacks and Latinos and gays. Protest ended our involvement in Vietnam—indeed, a year after the Chicago demonstrations, the U.S. started to pull troops out. The right to peacefully assemble is guaranteed by the Constitution. To limit or deny that right is itself a terrorist act.

The American people want to be governed by real leaders with courage and vision—not shadowy rulers hiding behind a wall.

Best-selling novelist Patricia Nell Warren (The Front Runner) also writes provocative commentary. Her 2001 editorial in A&U on the growing repression of dissent, titled “14 Dollars,” sparked the California passage of SB 1796, a bill protecting legitimate peaceful protest (the bill was vetoed by Governor Gray Davis). Log on to www.justdissent.org for more information.

October 2004