Police arrested more than 117 journalists in
At least 117 journalists were arrested in the United States in 2020, setting a new record for arrests of journalists by a significant margin, according to a report released this week by the Freedom of the Press Foundation based on data compiled by the US Press Freedom Tracker. The number is expected to rise as more than a dozen cases are still under investigation.
From 2017 to 2019, 68 journalists were arrested: nine in 2019, 11 in 2018 and 48 in 2017. This year, in the week from May 29 to June 4 alone, more arrests of journalists were carried out than in these three years combined.
The timing of this police rampage against the press is significant.
Prior to May 29, only two journalists had been arrested. However, following the police murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis on May 25, mass multiracial protests against police violence and racism spread rapidly across the country.
These protests are believed to be the largest in American history, with an estimated 15–26 million people participating in demonstrations that occurred in 40 percent of American counties.
Immense social anger erupted, with millions of people taking to the streets to protest not just against Floyd’s murder, but against the whole police apparatus, which has been built up with hundreds of millions of dollars in funding and free military equipment, while the budgets of social programs and public education have been gutted year after year.
Working class people of all races and ethnicities joined together to voice their anger at the epidemic of police murders and violence that has ravaged communities across the country—with approximately 1,000 killed every year—culminating in calls for the defunding and even abolition of police departments across the country.
The fact that millions of working class people united in a common cause against the police, the agents of capitalist repression and class rule, sparked fear in the ruling class. Both Republican and Democratic politicians moved quickly to brutally repress the protests through violent police crackdowns, terrified that the protests would expand further.
The Democratic Party was especially afraid that the demonstrations would break free of its identity-politics stranglehold on social movements, prompting it to bring forward Black Lives Matter and pump millions of dollars into racialist initiatives, disregarding the fact that the plurality of police violence victims are white and that a black and Asian-American police officer were involved in the murder of Floyd.
President Donald Trump expressed this fear of social unrest most clearly when he told governors, “It’s a movement, if you don’t put it down it will get worse and worse... The only time it’s successful is when you’re weak and most of you are weak.” He further expressed his fascistic intentions, stating that “you’ve got to arrest people, you have to track people, you have to put them in jail for 10 years and you’ll never see this stuff again.”
On June 1, Trump threatened to invoke the Insurrection Act of 1807 and deploy the US military against the protests but pulled back when the reluctant Pentagon brass made clear that plans for martial law were not well prepared and could trigger a civil war.
Both Republican and Democratic governors and mayors, however, were more than happy to oblige Trump’s call to action, deploying local and state police forces along with the National Guard in full force to the streets of dozens of American cities. The result was an escalation in police assaults on protesters and a brutal campaign to silence journalists in an effort to cover up acts of violence committed by the police. Freelance and major network reporters alike were deliberately shot by rubber bullets and tear gas and had their equipment smashed.
So far in 2020, the US Press Freedom Tracker has recorded 311 physical attacks on journalists, 75 equipment damages, 17 equipment searches and seizures, and more than 960 violations of press freedom related to “national social justice protests.” Thirty-six percent of the 120 arrests were accompanied by a physical attack by the police.
No known officer has been charged with violating the constitutional rights of the press, yet 16 journalists currently face criminal prosecution.
These assaults on press freedom have catapulted the United States toward the top of the global list of press freedom violators.
In 2019, Turkey and China led the globe in imprisoned journalists with 47 and 48 respectively. While there are currently no journalists imprisoned in the US, a record of 120 arrests presents a serious warning that journalists may soon face prolonged detention and more serious criminal charges. Meanwhile, journalist and WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange is currently being held in London’s Belmarsh Prison, where he awaits extradition to the US, where he faces a possible 175 year sentence for publishing information on American war crimes.
The sharp spike in the number and severity of attacks on journalists is bound up with the decline of American democracy and rapid descent of the US toward dictatorship, a process most clearly expressed by Trump.
President Trump has tweeted negatively about the press nearly 2,500 times since he began his presidential campaign in 2015, an average of 1.5 times a day, and he has repeatedly berated journalists at his political rallies.
Lucy Dalglish, dean of the Philip Merrill College of Journalism at the University of Maryland, told the Committee to Protect Journalists that she had instructed her students to think twice about wearing press badges to the Republican and Democratic National Conventions this year as it may have made them a target for the police or demonstrators.
While the role that Trump’s verbal attacks on the press has played is significant, the escalation in press attacks cannot be understood as the product of Trump alone. The whole political establishment desires free rein to suppress protests without the impediment of reporters documenting their abuses.
Now, as Trump builds up a fascist base as part of his coup plotting against the constitution and President-elect Joe Biden, the threat to journalists who attempt to expose state violence grows ever greater. There is no reason to believe that the attack on journalists and demonstrations will cease under Biden, who denounced protesters as arsonists and looters this summer and declared Assange a “hi-tech terrorist” in 2010.
Without the independent intervention of the working class to defend democratic rights, it is only a matter of time before journalists in the United States are persecuted to the same degree as Assange and whistleblowers like Chelsea Manning and Edward Snowden.
Wisconsin police conduct mass arrest of protesters, journalists after announcement of no charges against killer cop
Police in Wauwatosa, Wisconsin, a suburb of Milwaukee, arrested 24 people during protests Thursday night, including journalists and the family members of Alvin Cole, a 17-year-old African American youth who was shot and killed by Wauwatosa police officer Joseph Mensah, who is also black, on February 2 this year.
The protests marked the second night in a row in which demonstrations were held in response to Milwaukee County District Attorney John Chisholm’s announcement on Wednesday that no charges would be forthcoming against Mensah, who is currently suspended without pay from the department.
Similar to protests held around the country throughout the spring and summer following the police murders of Breonna Taylor in Louisville, Kentucky; George Floyd in Minneapolis, Minnesota and the shooting of Jacob Blake in Kenosha, which is roughly an hour to the south of Wauwatosa, the overwhelmingly peaceful protesters have been met with brutal police repression, including tear gas, baton strikes and “less-lethal” impact munitions.
Police have continued to target those trying to document the protests and police brutality in general. In startling video, heavily armed police backed up by National Guard soldiers and Humvees, deployed on the orders of Democratic governor Tony Evers, ripped journalists from their vehicles and slammed them on the ground, even as they were displaying their credentials.
Among those arrested were Shelby Talcott, 27 and Richie McGinniss, 31, both employed by the right-wing news outlet Daily Caller. In an interview with Fox News, Talcott described the arrests as an example of “excessive force.”
“Nobody was resisting,” Talcott said. “When police told us to do something, we complied.” Arrested with Talcott was independent video journalist Brendan Gutenschwager. After he was released from the Waukesha County Jail, Gutenschwager confirmed on Twitter that he was “brutalized by police.”
Gutenschwager wrote that he “pleaded with officers that I am here as press, [I was] never given a chance to cooperate before they escalated to this. I am in shock.” Gutenschwager also posted a letter he said he wrote while jailed in which he describes being threatened with a Taser, dragged on the ground and zip-tied, then thrown into a paddy wagon with a mix of protesters and journalists, including Talcott and McGinniss.
Mensah has killed three people within the last five years, including Cole, Jay Anderson, Jr. in 2016 and Antonio Gonzales in 2015. In every single instance, Chisholm, a Democrat, has ruled the actions of Mensah, “justified.”
In Cole’s case, Mensah claimed he “feared for his life” when he saw the teen in possession of a handgun. Mensah shot and killed Cole within 30 seconds of seeing him, but the weapon Cole was holding was inoperable when Mensah shot him.
Leading up to the shooting, Cole had been fleeing from police. As he was running a discharge occurred, jamming the weapon and resulting in Cole actually shooting himself in the arm. While no body camera footage of the incident exists, police allege that Mensah shot the injured Alvin while he was on the ground with the weapon still in his hand.
In addition to journalists, four family members from the Cole family were also arrested on Thursday, including Tracy Cole, the mother of Alvin, and his three sisters, Tristiana, Taleavia and Tahudah. Tahudah streamed on Facebook Live the moment police arrested her and her mother for “breaking curfew.”
On the video, which was left recording in her vehicle, police demand Tracy exit the car, stating they are under arrest. Tahudah asks, “what are we getting arrested for?” One officer tells her to relax while other voices are heard telling them to get out. Off camera, Tracy can be heard screaming, “I’m Alvin Cole’s mother,” “don’t touch me” and “I can’t breathe.” An officer can be heard threatening to electrocute Tracy, “Get on the ground, you’re going to get Tased.”
After being arrested and handcuffed on the ground, Tracy informed an officer that her head is bleeding. A cop responded, “well, that’s too bad.”
A 7:00 p.m. through 6:00 a.m. curfew was declared by Wauwatosa’s Democratic mayor Dennis McBride after Chisholm’s announcement on Wednesday and remains in effect through Monday. On Thursday, roughly 100 protesters marched on foot while a car caravan of several dozen supporters joined them, including the Cole family and Jacob Blake, Sr., the father of Jacob Blake, who was shot seven times in the back by Kenosha Police on August 23.
Once the curfew went into effect, police began grabbing peaceful protesters and disappearing them in unmarked vehicles or throwing them in police transports. Those who were participating in the car caravan, such as the Cole family, were ripped from their vehicles and then arrested.
This “de-escalation tactic” as President Donald Trump’s Acting Secretary of Homeland Security, Chad Wolf described it in testimony before Congress this summer—reminiscent of South and Central American US-backed dictatorships—has been imported to the “homeland” to oppress and silence those who dare question, or record, the murderous activities of the police. Neither Joe Biden, nor his running mate, Kamala Harris, has protested the use of the targeted kidnappings by US police in cities across the country but have repeatedly made clear their full support for the police.
The decision on the part of Chisholm not to prosecute Mensah follows similar determinations reached by Republican Kentucky Attorney General Daniel Cameron, who is African American, and Missouri special prosecutor Stephen Sokoloff, who is white and a Democrat, to not charge any of the officers involved in the murders of Breonna Taylor and Hannah Fizer, respectively. Despite the various races of those involved, the fact is in each instance the police claimed “self-defense” and were protected by district attorneys from both capitalist parties.
Overall, roughly 1,000 people a year are killed by police in the United States. Minorities, particularly African Americans and Native Americans and those suffering from mental illness or autism, such as Cameron Linden, are disproportionately targeted and killed by armed agents of the state, but the police function as an instrument of class rule, not enforcers of a racial code.
Despite decades of promises by politicians claiming to institute “reform” and “accountability” within police departments, including adding more minorities and women to the ranks, police continue to kill multiple times every day. Calls for prosecuting the police, who are virtually immune from prosecution in cases where they claim “self-defense” or “perceive a threat,” will continue to go unanswered by the state.
In fact, within the last 50 years only four cops in Milwaukee and its immediate suburbs have been charged in police-related shootings, with only one conviction—21 years after the murder took place. The last two cases in which Chisholm charged officers with a crime ended in an acquittal and a mistrial.
The question of ending state violence is not a matter of electing the “right” candidate or “defunding the police.” This will not happen as long as the system the police are charged to defend, the capitalist system, exists. This is why the Socialist Equality Party calls on all those who want to end police violence to make a class conscious decision to join our party and fight for the establishment of socialism.
No comments:
Post a Comment