More OA&L on the Amy Goodman Arrest

Posted elsewhere: "The Line Amy Goodman Crossed."

I've been looking repeatedly at the first four seconds of the Amy Goodman arrest video, that moment when she steps between cars and into an area controlled by riot police. 

There are no drifting persons, couples, trios, or other groups in that space.

Goodman looks distraught. 

We know she's concerned with hearing of the arrest of two of her peers and wants to ameliorate that situation.

After a few words and perhaps a lightly ignored suggestion or instruction, an order comes from off the frame to arrest the journalist, but I do not know whose voice that is--that is, whether it is an officer's voice or a protester's.

The arrest proceeds.

Not mentioned in the talk that follows may be two aspects of political crowd control either far overlooked or willfully not mentioned by those who have their little balls invested in drama:

1. IF the police have set up a perimeter or do-not-cross line, at what level of infraction should they act?  Would letting a few individuals across be okay?  How about milling--a few people standing around together? How about a verbal challenge from inside the wire?  In event crowd control terms, what is a spark, what are sparks, and what is a flash point for a riot?  How are the three related?

2. IF police arrest unruly demonstrators at, say, an abortion clinic, do they not then become the avatars of liberal government? 

Conversely, if working the Republican National Convention and putting a sweet mature grape like Amy Goodman into the paddy wagon, are they then not the goons of conservative fascists? 

Who, really, makes the police choose sides: do police have an inherent political DNA or do fringe leaders seek to label them through the orchestration of on-the-street action?

St. Paul Mayor Chris Coleman, a former Hennepin County public defender and prosecuting attorney, also ostensibly the buck-stops-here boss of the riot police, is a Democrat, one who campaigned for John Kerry not long ago, and, it may be argued, won his office when incumbent Democratic candidate (in Minnesota, the party seems to be named "Democratic-Farmer-Labor") Randy Kelly endorsed for U.S. President George W. Bush.

I think the police simply had a "zero tolerance" plan for their line at the convention.  Amy Goodman, polite as may be and concerned for her peers, nonetheless crossed that line, and arrest ensued, and that is the alpha-omega of the action part of the story.

In the development of larger conflicts, the politicizing of the police force to represent the repressive mentality of an incumbent government seems de rigeur--they're an obvious symbol of invested authority--and often enough, start with President (for life) Mugabe's Zimbabwe, they're well in league with thugs who maintain the dictator's hold on the country. 

However, question the specific case, especially in the United States, Great Britain, Canada, and other of the "open society" democracies around the world.

In Democratic Minnesota and St. Paul especially, trying to wrench Chicago 1968 out of the RNC smacks of New Old New Left ego and romanticism more than it does anything like political reality: the urgency and importance associated with the arrests may be more the province of those willing on conflict--spoiling for a fight--than those charged with responding to it or, if in the audience, watching it.

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