When the cops beat an innocent man for standing up for his rights at a checkpoint, a Baptist pastor no less, you know you’re in a police state… unless you’re wearing some seriously amped up rose-colored glasses. Checkpoints, people. Checkpoints inside the U.S. where everyone is stopped without any sort of suspicion, much less reasonable suspicion, and asked for their papers. Is this not sounding disturbingly familiar?!
As one of the behind the scenes people around here, you aren’t terribly likely to see me at an event such as Monday’s deplorable mass arrests of liberty activists and members of the press in Keene. Instead, I do things like upgrade the software that runs Free Keene, and participate in other things which make activists on the front lines more effective at getting their message out. One of these things in particular deserves some attention in the wake of what happened on Monday, and that’s Porcupine 411.
The Keene District Court broke fascism records yesterday with the number of peaceful and innocent people they arrested. For details about the events as they unfolded, I recommend you listen to the Free Talk Live episode from Monday night. That link will only work for a week or two but the monthly zipped archive will remain available for some time.
I was there, and what I want to emphasize is that most of the people arrested yesterday for disorderly conduct were merely quietly standing or sitting in the lobby area listening to screams of pain from our friend who was just arrested for refusing to shut off a camera.
The first video below is during the arrests. The 2nd and 3rd are interviews with some of them after they were processed and released. (Read on…)
Here’s the article. Thanks to reporter Anika Clark and photojournalist Michael Moore for covering yesterday’s oppression:
A bit of commotion is nothing new in the courtroom.
But on Monday, the action was in the Keene District Court lobby, where five people were arrested and two were handed summonses on charges of disorderly conduct.
The hubbub started shortly before the arraignment of Dave Ridley, who was arrested in March, accused of refusing to turn off his video camera in the court lobby before attending the arraignment of a marijuana activist. (more…)
A great deal has happened these last several days involving activists and various Law Enforcement Agencies around Keene, NH. Many videos have been posted and much outrage expressed. In the end I think the heat of the moment causes us to lose sight of the reality and perhaps creates an illusionary world where one does not exist.
I might catch hell from my friends for posting this but I’m the type of person who speaks his mind regardless.
In general the Keene Police Department and the local Sheriffs have acted in a very professional manner and have shown a great deal of restraint in dealing with activists. Most notably, Lt. Shane Maxfield. In every incident I have seen involving the Lt. he has been calm and communicative, dare I say honorable. This is reality. Whether you like the job they do, the actions they take or the orders they follow, we are fortunate to have good humans in those uniforms. And they are human, just as we are, subject to the same flaws and features, the same mistakes and misjudgments.
I do take issue with the way Patrick was carried today and the way Sam was likely treated, I do take issue with the orders to arrest peaceful activists for victimless crimes and I do take issue with the use of force in general to achieve a hegemony of the State over the Individual. One need only read my previous blog entries to see how I feel.
