FBI/police ordered to curtail protests: Explains Amy Goodman's arrest?

11/23/03 WASHINGTON - The American Civil Liberties Union today denounced a classified FBI intelligence memorandum (see the link above), obtained by the New York Times, which gives police detailed instructions on how to target and monitor lawful political demonstrations under the rubric of fighting terrorism." (Emphasis added).

"....News of the classified (FBI) bulletin (about FBI crack-downs on dissent) also comes on the heels of an ACLU lawsuit against the Secret Service for the continuing practice of allowing pro-Bush protesters to remain visible to cameras during presidential appearances, and corralling anti-Bush protesters into pens or designated areas far from the media." See the link above for much more detailed facts.

Given that background information from five years ago, in which the police actually crack down on citizen photography of police abuse as "illegal" and "intimidation tactics", it should be clear why Amy Goodman and her Democracy Now! photographers were arrested at the Republican National Convention, for the "crime" of giving news coverage to the peaceful protests at the scene. This is important to understand, as many Americans are completely in the dark about the post-911 legislation and FBI activity curtailing American freedom, at large. We citizen journalists have an important job of spreading word. Please do so!

You can read about the arrest and watch a video here (9-6-08 note: The link is no longer working. I cut and pasted this much of it to google with success:  amy-goodman-sharif-abdel-kouddous-and-nicole-salazar-released-after-illegal-arrest-at-rnc.html  )

And while the author intends no partisan statement, it also is fact that such unlawful arrests targeting free speech are more likely to occur at the Republican National Convention, such as where Amy Goodman's arrest occurred, than at Democratic ones. The reason for this has nothing to do with defending Democrats in Congress who, after all and alongside Republicans, voted twice for the police-empowering Patriot Act. It does, however, have everything to do with the fact that it is typically those "who are against us" (the Bush Administration's policies) who are targeted as "terrorists" than those who are "for us" (the Bush Administration):

Among the ACLU's "terrorist" clients are Amnesty International, Food not Bombs, United for Peace and Justice, the anti-war American Service Committee (a peaceful Quaker anti-war group), Greenpeace, Arab and Muslim groups as subjects of racial profiling, and more. Of course, the ACLU itself has also uncovered more than one thousand pages of FBI spying on the ACLU.

The great concern here is that Americans at large, not only Amy Goodman and her photographers, are bound to become discouraged and not know what to do to stop such violations. Here are a few ways we can make a beginning to change things back to America, the Land of the Free as we once knew it and to take OUR country back----for which, after all, we PAY with our tax dollars and are fully entitled to!

a) Sign Credo phone company's petition to the Press to give full and unbiased coverage of this unlawful and un-American arrest