As a small boy in the early 40's, I remember sitting in a corner
listening while my dad and his Marxist buddies swapped horror stories
about infiltrators into the local communist party.
And one of these fellows, Norm Carpenter, later turned out to be a FBI
informant. The Carpenters were a bright young couple, hard working
Party members. When it came to work, they were the first out and the
last in, stuffing envelopes, passing out flyers, visiting members and
driving folks to rally's. I remember Missus Carpenter reading stories
to my younger sister while I hung back and listened. All the while
this engaging couple were reporting back to the FBI. Later, during
the McCarthy House UnAmerican Activities Committee hearings, they,
along with Barbara Hartle, gave tons of testimony, naming names and
even making up intrigues that never happened, or were greatly
elaborated upon. Of course the difference between Hartle and the
Carpenters was that Hartle had joined the communist party as a
believer. The Carpenters joined with the knowledge and approval of
the FBI.
Earlier, back in the early 1930's, in Spokane, my dad attended a
gathering of folks living on the edge of starvation. One woman told
the group that she and her children lived in an old garage. It was a
cold winter and the garage had a dirt floor. She told of tying gunny
sacks on their feet to keep them from being Frost bitten. She said
she had been reduced to having to slice beets and put them between
crusts of bread for the children's lunch.
A Beat Cop stood in the back of the room, ordered by the city to "Keep
the Peace". As he listened, dad said big tears began rolling down his
cheeks. When the woman walked back to her seat he held out his hand
and deposited a silver dollar in hers.
Somewhere in that room sat a spy. An informant. Someone looking out
to protect the taxpayer's money. When the woman received her next
welfare stipend, a dollar had been withheld to replace to the
taxpayers the dollar the officer had given her.
Some folks argued that it was only fair. This was the Great
Depression, and all people were hurting. The woman may have had it
tough, but so did many others.
Of course such arguments overlook the fact that there were a Class of
Citizens who were above the ravenous impact of that devastating crash.
More than a few of these well-heeled Citizens believed that God was
dealing with the lazy Riff-Raff.
But I digress. The point is that snitches and stoolies have been
among us from the day the first Red Coats seized Colonists and dragged
them from their town meetings and tossed them in the local dungeons.
All on the tips of Loyalists.
Carl Jarvis
On 8/20/15, Miriam Vieni <miriamvieni@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Joseph writes: "Documents obtained by The Intercept confirm that undercover
police officers attended numerous Black Lives Matter protests in New York
City between December 2014 and February 2015. The documents also show that
police in New York have monitored activists, tracking their movements and
keeping individual photos of them on file."
Black Lives Matter protesters in New York City. (photo: Eduardo
Munoz/Reuters)
Undercover Police Have Regularly Spied on Black Lives Matter Protesters in
New York
By George Joseph, The Intercept
19 August 15
Documents obtained by The Intercept confirm that undercover police officers
attended numerous Black Lives Matter protests in New York City between
December 2014 and February 2015. The documents also show that police in New
York have monitored activists, tracking their movements and keeping
individual photos of them on file.
The nearly 300 documents, released by the Metropolitan Transit Authority
and
the Metro-North Railroad, reveal more on-the-ground surveillance of Black
Lives Matter activists than previous reports have shown, conducted by a
coalition of MTA counterterrorism agents and undercover police in
conjunction with NYPD intelligence officers.
This appears to be the first documented proof of the frequent presence of
undercover police at Black Lives Matter protests in the city of New York,
though many activists have suspected their presence since mass protests
erupted there last year over a grand jury's decision not to indict Daniel
Pantaleo, a police officer involved in the death of Eric Garner.
The protest surveillance and use of undercover officers raises questions
over whether New York-area law enforcement agencies are potentially
criminalizing the exercise of free speech and treating activists like
terrorist threats. Critics say the police files seem to document a response
vastly disproportionate to the level of law breaking associated with the
protests.
The documents were released to activists after several requests under New
York's Freedom of Information Law, which asked for records from the MTA,
MTA
Metro-North, the New York State Police, and the NYPD pertaining to Black
Lives Matter protests at Grand Central Terminal between November 2014 and
January 2015.
In the 118 pages released by the MTA, the names of undercover police
officers are redacted at least 58 times in five December 2014 protests, 124
times at five protests in January 2015, and 10 times at one protest in
February 2015. The Intercept has been unable to contact any of the
undercover police reporting on protests because the MTA said it redacted
the
"names of undercover police officers," citing the New York Public Officers
Law stipulating that certain records, which "if disclosed could endanger
the
life or safety of any person," may be withheld. Metro-North also redacted
the names of undercover officers. Both entities also said they redacted
location and contact information for regular MTA police named in the
documents.
Together the 118 MTA and 161 Metro-North documents also showed monitoring
of
an additional protest in November 2014, 11 protests in December 2014, nine
protests in January 2015, and two protests in February 2015 by MTA
officials
and undercover police working at times in conjunction with NYPD officers.
In response to The Intercept's request for information on the use of
undercover police officers at Grand Central protests, MTA spokesperson Adam
Lisberg issued the following statement: "The Metropolitan Transportation
Authority Police Department must ensure the safety and security of millions
of people who pass through our railroad systems every day, at a time when
transportation networks have been persistently targeted by terrorists. We
accommodate peaceful protest in our transportation system, while also
ensuring that protest activities do not prevent customers from using the
system for transportation. We take all appropriate police measures to
ensure
the safety and security of our customers, but we do not discuss the
particulars of those operations."
The NYPD has not released documents in response to the request, but
documents released by the MTA and Metro-North show that NYPD officials have
also been involved in the surveillance of Black Lives Matter protests in
Grand Central and beyond. The NYPD did not respond to a request for
comment.
Many of the documents released include live updates on protests from
undercover police officers, reporting on group sizes, and the tracking of
protesters' movements around the city, particularly the movements of New
York's "People's Monday" protests, which focus attention on, and
demonstrate
on behalf of, victims of police brutality, and which repeatedly convene at
Grand Central. Some of the reports go further than tracking group
movements,
however, referring to specific activists and including photos of them.
In one document concerning a protest on Martin Luther King Jr. Day, for
example, an officer, whose name is redacted because of his undercover
status, sends frequent updates on protesters' movements in Grand Central.
The officer also notes that Jose LaSalle, founder of New York police
watchdog group Copwatch Patrol Unit, has been "observed inside Grand
Central
Terminal." LaSalle is mentioned four times in the documents, twice for
delivering a "mic check" and twice for his mere presence, as seen in
document below. His picture also appears in the files several times:
"I think its just another example of how anyone who is practicing their
constitutional rights and speaking against the government is going to be
considered a domestic problem," says LaSalle. "It's sad because all we're
doing is speaking because we feel there is no justice for people being
brutalized by the system. It's sad we have to be targets of surveillance
when were not committing crimes."
Alex Vitale, a Brooklyn College associate professor in sociology, whose
work
focuses on policing, argues this is part of a long history of police
surveillance of activists like LaSalle. "Historically, law enforcement,
both
local and national, have a track record of keeping files on activists,
engaging in surveillance, and targeting for excessive enforcement action
people identified in leadership roles in social movement," he said. "The
evidence shown by these documents raises warning flags about resources
committed and, more importantly, the degree to which local police agencies
are potentially targeting non-violent activists."
The documents also hint that such surveillance operations may be targeting
groups across the city. For example, one email chain from December 9
included a table with the protest plans of four groups, including those of
"Students and Faculty from East Side Community High School," a public
school
in Manhattan's East Village:
Though the documents were obtained from the MTA and Metro-North, they
include several references to collaboration with NYPD officers. In one
from January 1, 2015, for example, an undercover police officer shares
attached field reports and photographs of a protest at Grand Central, which
MTA counterterrorism agents provided "in conjunction with NYPD Intel team
members."
In another document, sent February 13 concerning a demonstration at Grand
Central, Anthony D'Angelis, identified in the document as an MTA liaison
with the NYPD's counterterrorism division, shared and labeled a photo of
Alex Seel, a local photographer. In the documents, D'Angelis uses an NYPD
email address.
It is unclear if any of the undercover police officers, whose names are
redacted in the documents, are themselves NYPD personnel. According to the
ACLU, if the NYPD is collecting information about protesters at Grand
Central along the lines of the photographs that MTA appeared to collect, it
may be in violation of the historic "Handschu agreement," which regulates
the department's monitoring of political groups.
Under the decree, "the NYPD is not permitted to retain information gathered
from public events unless it's connected to suspected criminal or terrorist
activity," says Nusrat Choudhury, an attorney at the ACLU. "They cannot
identify someone and have their photo in their files unless they have
evidence supporting reasonable suspicion that he was about to commit
criminal activity or had engaged in criminal conduct."
Regardless of these legal gray areas and the confusing blend of agencies
engaged in the surveillance, several protesters at Grand Central say they
are perturbed by the photo file's existence, considering that Seel did not
share his name publicly that night and usually only comes to the protests
as
a quiet photographer. "I was surprised that they had photos of Alex," says
Kim Ortiz, a Black Lives Matter organizer with the Grand Central People's
Monday group, also known by its hashtag, #PeoplesMonday. "He doesn't do any
of the planning. It's very telling. If they're focusing on someone who's a
silent supporter, I can't imagine what they're doing to people more at the
forefront."
Seel says he was "surprised by how specific they were with me, calling me
photographer, and a documenter, and I'm pretty sure that photo is from Penn
Station, so they definitely had it on file or something. If you look at my
A14 pictures, I caught some serious stuff - cops pushing people over -
that's my take on it. . So it's definitely a fear tactic used to break down
certain aspects of the movement. They know that we're the lens of the
movement."
The MTA and Metro-North documents also show that numerous counterterror and
intelligence agents are involved in this monitoring, despite repeated
references in the documents to the "peaceful" and "orderly" nature of the
demonstrations. The Department of Homeland Security similarly commented on
the lack of violence at Black Lives Matter protests in documents describing
monitoring of those protests, published previously by The Intercept.
In an MTA document from January 12, D'Angelis, the NYPD counterterrorism
division liaison, shared pictures that an unnamed "activist posted" of
police milling around Grand Central. The photos in the email appear to be
from the Twitter account of Black Lives Matter activist Keegan Stephan.
Just
beneath the photos, D'Angelis's email claims the document is for
"deterring,
detecting, and preventing terrorism."
In another document from a December 7 protest for Eric Garner, Detective
Keyla Hammam, identified as a member of the MTA's Interagency
Counter-Terrorism Task Force, shared a photo of prominent activist and
former Philadelphia police officer Ray Lewis. An undercover police officer
made an entry accompanying Hammam's photo, mentioning Lewis' past
activities
with Occupy Wall Street and stating: "A retired Philadelphia Police Officer
in uniform is one of the protesters at Grand Central Terminal. He is also
known to NYPD as a protestor in OWS and has an arrest record with NYPD."
(Lewis was arrested on disorderly conduct charges in connection with an
Occupy Wall Street protest; the case was later closed by prosecutors.)
"I wasn't surprised at all," Lewis said when asked about the monitoring.
"From my experience in law enforcement, I know the key concept to knocking
out all protests is taking out leaders. So they see certain people and
target them."
Vitale, the sociology professor, argues that police response to peaceful
protests and civil disobedience is often wrongly designed to resemble
counterterrorism operations, illustrating a broader mission creep in
policing over the last decade. "Protests by their nature are disruptive,
and
that by itself should not be grounds for surveillance and file-keeping," he
said. "But in the post-9-11 environment, there's been a major shift towards
risk aversion and massive expansion of intelligence gathering in a way such
that protest activity often gets lumped in with terrorism investigation."
In January, NYPD Commissioner Bill Bratton stirred controversy when he
announced that the department would commingle efforts against terrorism
with
the containment of protests. Bratton said his new Strategic Response Group
"is designed for dealing with events like our recent [Eric Garner]
protests,
or incidents like Mumbai or what just happened in Paris." Bratton also
noted, "In New York, dealing with terrorism, and large-scale disorder, and
other so-called 'black swan' events involves similar skill sets."
Many Black Lives Matter activists argue the surveillance documented in the
MTA files does not constitute crime or terrorism prevention, especially
given how non-confrontational the People's Monday protest events have been.
"We do the same thing every week," says Stephan, the People's Monday
organizer whose Twitter photos were in the documents. "We read aloud the
facts of their cases, and statistics about police killings, generally. .
The
biggest confrontation that has occurred was when police threatened to
arrest
us for doing die-ins, but ultimately, they didn't even make arrests for
this
- and haven't - because even when we do die-in we aren't obstructing access
to the trains."
Indeed, many of the MTA and Metro-North documents support Stephan's claim,
mentioning that the protests remain "peaceful," "orderly," "in order," and
"all orderly." According to one email exchange from January 19, 2015, still
in the swing of the post-Eric Garner non-indictment protests, top MTA
officials casually discussed a Grand Central protest, CC'ing the
Metro-North's chief security officer and remarking that protesters "just
began chanting. The usual routine."
Nonetheless, this intelligence gathering on activists by undercover police
and counterterrorism agents continued, according to the documents.
Comedian and Black Lives Matter activist Elsa Waithe believes the purpose
of
this intense police surveillance is to chill dissent and gather information
in order to better target organizers. Waithe stopped attending the weekly
Grand Central protests after an April 14 demonstration in which video shows
her being shoved by a man identified as a police officer, allegedly because
Waithe was trying to film an arrest.
"Weeks before the assault, a police officer referred to me by name, and I
don't know how he knew it," says Waithe. "We were in Grand Central just
about every single week before, so they set up a crow's nest - like two to
three guys with cameras standing up high above the concourse - a lot of
those photos in your documents look like it must have come from that angle.
When you know they're recording and watching you - that's a feeling I can't
ever shake. I don't know what they're doing with all those hours of tape
because there's nothing much there. It's just being used to intimidate us."
Waithe argues this prior surveillance in part contributed to her assault:
"The day it happened, someone was getting arrested pretty roughly so I went
to go film cause I'm a member of Copwatch. The officer shoved me back like
a
football player and I fell to the ground. I fell onto a wrought iron metal
tree guard, and had to be taken in the ambulance because of severe swelling
in my ribs. I think they already had information on me and saw that as an
opportunity."
Nonetheless, according to organizers, the intensity of this surveillance
was
expected from the get-go and dogged many of them even before the Black
Lives
Matter movement. Angie Brilliance, an organizer from Chicago with the group
Black Youth Project 100, recalls fighting in a 2012 campaign for a mental
health care facility in one of Chicago's black neighborhoods, only to find
out that some of the most provocative organizers among them may have been
police informants.
"We need to be aware, especially given the digital organizing of the modern
era, about how we're being tracked," says Brilliance. "I know we and many
groups we're affiliated with try as much as possible to not put any plans
down on digital documents, to meet in person, and other strategies I
probably shouldn't make public - we have to learn from what the state did
to
break up our ancestors' struggles."
Most Black Lives Matter activists interviewed by The Intercept noted that
while the intense surveillance of their lives gave them pause, it wouldn't
stop them from protesting.
"Some of this surveillance is meant to scare us and potentially to figure
out what people's next steps are," says DeRay Mckesson, an activist whose
prominent social media presence has reportedly been monitored by both
private cybersecurity firms and the Department of Homeland Security. "But
what we're doing is right."
Error! Hyperlink reference not valid. Error! Hyperlink reference not valid.
Black Lives Matter protesters in New York City. (photo: Eduardo
Munoz/Reuters)
https://firstlook.org/theintercept/2015/08/18/undercover-police-spied-on-ny-
black-lives-matter/https://firstlook.org/theintercept/2015/08/18/undercover-
police-spied-on-ny-black-lives-matter/
Undercover Police Have Regularly Spied on Black Lives Matter Protesters in
New York
By George Joseph, The Intercept
19 August 15
ocuments obtained by The Intercept confirm that undercover police officers
attended numerous Black Lives Matter protests in New York City between
December 2014 and February 2015. The documents also show that police in New
York have monitored activists, tracking their movements and keeping
individual photos of them on file.
The nearly 300 documents, released by the Metropolitan Transit Authority
and
the Metro-North Railroad, reveal more on-the-ground surveillance of Black
Lives Matter activists than previous reports have shown, conducted by a
coalition of MTA counterterrorism agents and undercover police in
conjunction with NYPD intelligence officers.
This appears to be the first documented proof of the frequent presence of
undercover police at Black Lives Matter protests in the city of New York,
though many activists have suspected their presence since mass protests
erupted there last year over a grand jury's decision not to indict Daniel
Pantaleo, a police officer involved in the death of Eric Garner.
The protest surveillance and use of undercover officers raises questions
over whether New York-area law enforcement agencies are potentially
criminalizing the exercise of free speech and treating activists like
terrorist threats. Critics say the police files seem to document a response
vastly disproportionate to the level of law breaking associated with the
protests.
The documents were released to activists after several requests under New
York's Freedom of Information Law, which asked for records from the MTA,
MTA
Metro-North, the New York State Police, and the NYPD pertaining to Black
Lives Matter protests at Grand Central Terminal between November 2014 and
January 2015.
In the 118 pages released by the MTA, the names of undercover police
officers are redacted at least 58 times in five December 2014 protests, 124
times at five protests in January 2015, and 10 times at one protest in
February 2015. The Intercept has been unable to contact any of the
undercover police reporting on protests because the MTA said it redacted
the
"names of undercover police officers," citing the New York Public Officers
Law stipulating that certain records, which "if disclosed could endanger
the
life or safety of any person," may be withheld. Metro-North also redacted
the names of undercover officers. Both entities also said they redacted
location and contact information for regular MTA police named in the
documents.
Together the 118 MTA and 161 Metro-North documents also showed monitoring
of
an additional protest in November 2014, 11 protests in December 2014, nine
protests in January 2015, and two protests in February 2015 by MTA
officials
and undercover police working at times in conjunction with NYPD officers.
In response to The Intercept's request for information on the use of
undercover police officers at Grand Central protests, MTA spokesperson Adam
Lisberg issued the following statement: "The Metropolitan Transportation
Authority Police Department must ensure the safety and security of millions
of people who pass through our railroad systems every day, at a time when
transportation networks have been persistently targeted by terrorists. We
accommodate peaceful protest in our transportation system, while also
ensuring that protest activities do not prevent customers from using the
system for transportation. We take all appropriate police measures to
ensure
the safety and security of our customers, but we do not discuss the
particulars of those operations."
The NYPD has not released documents in response to the request, but
documents released by the MTA and Metro-North show that NYPD officials have
also been involved in the surveillance of Black Lives Matter protests in
Grand Central and beyond. The NYPD did not respond to a request for
comment.
Many of the documents released include live updates on protests from
undercover police officers, reporting on group sizes, and the tracking of
protesters' movements around the city, particularly the movements of New
York's "People's Monday" protests, which focus attention on, and
demonstrate
on behalf of, victims of police brutality, and which repeatedly convene at
Grand Central. Some of the reports go further than tracking group
movements,
however, referring to specific activists and including photos of them.
In one document concerning a protest on Martin Luther King Jr. Day, for
example, an officer, whose name is redacted because of his undercover
status, sends frequent updates on protesters' movements in Grand Central.
The officer also notes that Jose LaSalle, founder of New York police
watchdog group Copwatch Patrol Unit, has been "observed inside Grand
Central
Terminal." LaSalle is mentioned four times in the documents, twice for
delivering a "mic check" and twice for his mere presence, as seen in
document below. His picture also appears in the files several times:
https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/2287877-mta-blm-lasalle.html
https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/2287877-mta-blm-lasalle.html
"I think its just another example of how anyone who is practicing their
constitutional rights and speaking against the government is going to be
considered a domestic problem," says LaSalle. "It's sad because all we're
doing is speaking because we feel there is no justice for people being
brutalized by the system. It's sad we have to be targets of surveillance
when were not committing crimes."
Alex Vitale, a Brooklyn College associate professor in sociology, whose
work
focuses on policing, argues this is part of a long history of police
surveillance of activists like LaSalle. "Historically, law enforcement,
both
local and national, have a track record of keeping files on activists,
engaging in surveillance, and targeting for excessive enforcement action
people identified in leadership roles in social movement," he said. "The
evidence shown by these documents raises warning flags about resources
committed and, more importantly, the degree to which local police agencies
are potentially targeting non-violent activists."
The documents also hint that such surveillance operations may be targeting
groups across the city. For example, one email chain from December 9
included a table with the protest plans of four groups, including those of
"Students and Faculty from East Side Community High School," a public
school
in Manhattan's East Village:
https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/2287926-mta-blm-metronorth.html
https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/2287926-mta-blm-metronorth.html
Though the documents were obtained from the MTA and Metro-North, they
include several references to collaboration with NYPD officers. In one
from January 1, 2015, for example, an undercover police officer shares
attached field reports and photographs of a protest at Grand Central, which
MTA counterterrorism agents provided "in conjunction with NYPD Intel team
members."
https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/2287875-mta-blm-in-conjunction-w-nyp
d.html
https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/2287875-mta-blm-in-conjunction-w-nyp
d.html
In another document, sent February 13 concerning a demonstration at Grand
Central, Anthony D'Angelis, identified in the document as an MTA liaison
with the NYPD's counterterrorism division, shared and labeled a photo of
Alex Seel, a local photographer. In the documents, D'Angelis uses an NYPD
email address.
https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/2287874-mta-blm-sill.html
https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/2287874-mta-blm-sill.html
It is unclear if any of the undercover police officers, whose names are
redacted in the documents, are themselves NYPD personnel. According to the
ACLU, if the NYPD is collecting information about protesters at Grand
Central along the lines of the photographs that MTA appeared to collect, it
may be in violation of the historic "Handschu agreement," which regulates
the department's monitoring of political groups.
Under the decree, "the NYPD is not permitted to retain information gathered
from public events unless it's connected to suspected criminal or terrorist
activity," says Nusrat Choudhury, an attorney at the ACLU. "They cannot
identify someone and have their photo in their files unless they have
evidence supporting reasonable suspicion that he was about to commit
criminal activity or had engaged in criminal conduct."
Regardless of these legal gray areas and the confusing blend of agencies
engaged in the surveillance, several protesters at Grand Central say they
are perturbed by the photo file's existence, considering that Seel did not
share his name publicly that night and usually only comes to the protests
as
a quiet photographer. "I was surprised that they had photos of Alex," says
Kim Ortiz, a Black Lives Matter organizer with the Grand Central People's
Monday group, also known by its hashtag, #PeoplesMonday. "He doesn't do any
of the planning. It's very telling. If they're focusing on someone who's a
silent supporter, I can't imagine what they're doing to people more at the
forefront."
Seel says he was "surprised by how specific they were with me, calling me
photographer, and a documenter, and I'm pretty sure that photo is from Penn
Station, so they definitely had it on file or something. If you look at my
A14 pictures, I caught some serious stuff - cops pushing people over -
that's my take on it. . So it's definitely a fear tactic used to break down
certain aspects of the movement. They know that we're the lens of the
movement."
The MTA and Metro-North documents also show that numerous counterterror and
intelligence agents are involved in this monitoring, despite repeated
references in the documents to the "peaceful" and "orderly" nature of the
demonstrations. The Department of Homeland Security similarly commented on
the lack of violence at Black Lives Matter protests in documents describing
monitoring of those protests, published previously by The Intercept.
In an MTA document from January 12, D'Angelis, the NYPD counterterrorism
division liaison, shared pictures that an unnamed "activist posted" of
police milling around Grand Central. The photos in the email appear to be
from the Twitter account of Black Lives Matter activist Keegan Stephan.
Just
beneath the photos, D'Angelis's email claims the document is for
"deterring,
detecting, and preventing terrorism."
https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/2287873-mta-blm-dangelis-stopping-te
rrorism.html
https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/2287873-mta-blm-dangelis-stopping-te
rrorism.html
In another document from a December 7 protest for Eric Garner, Detective
Keyla Hammam, identified as a member of the MTA's Interagency
Counter-Terrorism Task Force, shared a photo of prominent activist and
former Philadelphia police officer Ray Lewis. An undercover police officer
made an entry accompanying Hammam's photo, mentioning Lewis' past
activities
with Occupy Wall Street and stating: "A retired Philadelphia Police Officer
in uniform is one of the protesters at Grand Central Terminal. He is also
known to NYPD as a protestor in OWS and has an arrest record with NYPD."
(Lewis was arrested on disorderly conduct charges in connection with an
Occupy Wall Street protest; the case was later closed by prosecutors.)
"I wasn't surprised at all," Lewis said when asked about the monitoring.
"From my experience in law enforcement, I know the key concept to knocking
out all protests is taking out leaders. So they see certain people and
target them."
https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/2287872-mta-blm-ray-lewis.html
https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/2287872-mta-blm-ray-lewis.html
Vitale, the sociology professor, argues that police response to peaceful
protests and civil disobedience is often wrongly designed to resemble
counterterrorism operations, illustrating a broader mission creep in
policing over the last decade. "Protests by their nature are disruptive,
and
that by itself should not be grounds for surveillance and file-keeping," he
said. "But in the post-9-11 environment, there's been a major shift towards
risk aversion and massive expansion of intelligence gathering in a way such
that protest activity often gets lumped in with terrorism investigation."
In January, NYPD Commissioner Bill Bratton stirred controversy when he
announced that the department would commingle efforts against terrorism
with
the containment of protests. Bratton said his new Strategic Response Group
"is designed for dealing with events like our recent [Eric Garner]
protests,
or incidents like Mumbai or what just happened in Paris." Bratton also
noted, "In New York, dealing with terrorism, and large-scale disorder, and
other so-called 'black swan' events involves similar skill sets."
Many Black Lives Matter activists argue the surveillance documented in the
MTA files does not constitute crime or terrorism prevention, especially
given how non-confrontational the People's Monday protest events have been.
"We do the same thing every week," says Stephan, the People's Monday
organizer whose Twitter photos were in the documents. "We read aloud the
facts of their cases, and statistics about police killings, generally. .
The
biggest confrontation that has occurred was when police threatened to
arrest
us for doing die-ins, but ultimately, they didn't even make arrests for
this
- and haven't - because even when we do die-in we aren't obstructing access
to the trains."
Indeed, many of the MTA and Metro-North documents support Stephan's claim,
mentioning that the protests remain "peaceful," "orderly," "in order," and
"all orderly." According to one email exchange from January 19, 2015, still
in the swing of the post-Eric Garner non-indictment protests, top MTA
officials casually discussed a Grand Central protest, CC'ing the
Metro-North's chief security officer and remarking that protesters "just
began chanting. The usual routine."
https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/2287871-mta-blm-usual-routine.html
https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/2287871-mta-blm-usual-routine.html
Nonetheless, this intelligence gathering on activists by undercover police
and counterterrorism agents continued, according to the documents.
Comedian and Black Lives Matter activist Elsa Waithe believes the purpose
of
this intense police surveillance is to chill dissent and gather information
in order to better target organizers. Waithe stopped attending the weekly
Grand Central protests after an April 14 demonstration in which video shows
her being shoved by a man identified as a police officer, allegedly because
Waithe was trying to film an arrest.
"Weeks before the assault, a police officer referred to me by name, and I
don't know how he knew it," says Waithe. "We were in Grand Central just
about every single week before, so they set up a crow's nest - like two to
three guys with cameras standing up high above the concourse - a lot of
those photos in your documents look like it must have come from that angle.
When you know they're recording and watching you - that's a feeling I can't
ever shake. I don't know what they're doing with all those hours of tape
because there's nothing much there. It's just being used to intimidate us."
Waithe argues this prior surveillance in part contributed to her assault:
"The day it happened, someone was getting arrested pretty roughly so I went
to go film cause I'm a member of Copwatch. The officer shoved me back like
a
football player and I fell to the ground. I fell onto a wrought iron metal
tree guard, and had to be taken in the ambulance because of severe swelling
in my ribs. I think they already had information on me and saw that as an
opportunity."
Nonetheless, according to organizers, the intensity of this surveillance
was
expected from the get-go and dogged many of them even before the Black
Lives
Matter movement. Angie Brilliance, an organizer from Chicago with the group
Black Youth Project 100, recalls fighting in a 2012 campaign for a mental
health care facility in one of Chicago's black neighborhoods, only to find
out that some of the most provocative organizers among them may have been
police informants.
"We need to be aware, especially given the digital organizing of the modern
era, about how we're being tracked," says Brilliance. "I know we and many
groups we're affiliated with try as much as possible to not put any plans
down on digital documents, to meet in person, and other strategies I
probably shouldn't make public - we have to learn from what the state did
to
break up our ancestors' struggles."
Most Black Lives Matter activists interviewed by The Intercept noted that
while the intense surveillance of their lives gave them pause, it wouldn't
stop them from protesting.
"Some of this surveillance is meant to scare us and potentially to figure
out what people's next steps are," says DeRay Mckesson, an activist whose
prominent social media presence has reportedly been monitored by both
private cybersecurity firms and the Department of Homeland Security. "But
what we're doing is right."
http://e-max.it/posizionamento-siti-web/socialize
http://e-max.it/posizionamento-siti-web/socialize
