HELIOLITH

If reading this short report on Znet about the cold, toxic, and cramped holding cage in NYC doesn’t get your ire, perhaps you think free speech is something mythical. KPFK’s Democracy Now has already carried the stories of how many protesters were rounded up in what are being called “pre-emptive arrests” a maneuver that is very likely illegal, since many of the citizens committed no crime at all. Cordoning off a city block, and then arresting everyone inside of it might be a good military strategy where a bloodbath was being avoided, but not in a society where the constitution protects your first ammendment right to assemble, and speak your mind. There really is no justification that I can imagine coming out for these gross violations of ethical police procedure. Obviously it was coordinated, obviously there is someone responsible at the upper levels of the NYPD, perhaps Bloomberg himself (following in the facist steps of his predecessor). I propose that whoever they may be, they be ordered to sit for in Pier 57, and suffer what hundreds of other upstanding citizens are being subject to: lack of miranda rights, lack of telephone, water, toilet, and exposure to caustic chemical residues. NYPD: your behavior disgusts me. Did any of you question the orders to arrest innocent people pre-emptively? What rationalization must superiors give you for you to comply?