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Amy Goodman Arrested

Cara

UPDATE: Video of Democracy Now! producer Nicole Salazar’s arrest is now available. She filmed it herself. Trigger warning, because it’s very disturbing. And thanks to Ashley for the link.

Amy Goodman is a journalist with Democracy Now!, feminist, activist and all around one of the most bad ass women I can think of. I’ve have the privilege of watching her speak at two separate Planned Parenthood functions, and she is both riveting and inspiring. Both times she had me nearly in tears. But beyond all of that, the simple fact is that she didn’t do anything to deserve arrest. And yet, at the RNC, arrested she was. For doing her job as a journalist.

The video is below. It’s upsetting.

From CREDO Action:

Jailing journalists is unacceptable in a democracy. But that’s exactly what is happening at the Republican National Convention in St. Paul, Minn.

Award winning journalist and host of “Democracy Now” Amy Goodman was arrested by St. Paul police while covering a protest outside the Republican National Convention. Though clearly identified as press, Goodman was charged with “obstruction of a legal process and interference with a ‘peace officer.'” Two of her producers were arrested for “suspicion of felony riot.”

[. . .]

Goodman and her producers were released last night. (An AP photographer was also arrested and released). But the charges are still pending.

This story has been virtually ignored by the mainstream press. The cable channels are providing extensive coverage of events related to the Republican National Convention, but there has been a virtual news blackout on the arrest of Amy Goodman and the Democracy Now team.


Through CREDO Action you can write to major news outlets demanding that they cover this story. Because there is no excuse for the lack of reporting on this issue. (What, are they afraid that they’ll arrest Anderson Cooper, too?)

Through Free Press, you can write to St. Paul authorities to demand that charges are dropped and that journalists stop being intimidated and harassed.

This is our fucking First Amendment rights at stake. This is unacceptable.

Oh, and by the way? This has been going on for a couple days. Amy Goodman was not the first journalist to receive this treatment — though she did cover the raids personally, and I wouldn’t doubt if that’s why she was targeted.

For more, check out Democracy Now!’s website. As one would expect, they have all of the latest updates.

ETA: BFP has a lot more, including video of Amy Goodman discussing her arrest and the arrest of the other Democracy Now! personnel.

cross-posted at the Curvature

26 thoughts on Amy Goodman Arrested

  1. Honestly after Seattle I am no longer surprised to see how protesters are treated. I think the the idea of a free press is clearly a joke because the protests that have happened at BOTH conventions have not been covered by the media. The story has been ignored and the protesters are being imprisoned or physically abused as the code pink demonstrator was.
    It is at times like this that I see the true value of the internet, because people can get the truth out there.

  2. CNN just aired this story, so it is finally out there, though they presented the protesters as all violent and disruptive. All I say that supported their claims was one broken window of which there was not proof who really did it.

  3. Brings back memories of the illegal arrests at the DNC2000. I’ve been following Indymedia Twin Cities on the RNC protests and a lot’s been going on.

  4. This is our fucking First Amendment rights at stake. This is unacceptable.

    When the first is threatened its time for the second. Thats why its there. Seriously, any cop attempting to arrest a journalist or nonviolent protester shouldn’t make it home ever again. We outnumber them, we aren’t required to identify ourselves or our intentions, and we can always blend back into the crowd, there is no reason these kinds of behaviors should be ALLOWED to happen. Force is the only language fascists understand. I’ll never comprehend why leftist protesters in this country, a country that gives citizens the right to own weapons and in which most states allow you to carry them, have lost their teeth.

    Carrying a concealed firearm in Minnesota without a license is only a gross misdemeanor. Defend yourselves.

  5. I have a friend who works in the Ramsey County Court System (which is the county St Paul is in) and my friend told me that the local St Paul police are planning on be pretty aggressive about protester arrests. They are definitely going on arrest first and maybe get around to asking a question or two later policy. Which really isn’t all that unusual for some members of the St Paul police department. I’m planning on avoiding the whole of downtown St Paul until the RNC is over. If they are arresting reporters with no problems then I fear to go within 5 blocks of the “zone”.

  6. When the first is threatened its time for the second. Thats why its there. Seriously, any cop attempting to arrest a journalist or nonviolent protester shouldn’t make it home ever again. …we can always blend back into the crowd…

    William, are you seriously suggesting that nonviolent protesters start murdering police officers? Seriously???

    That sounds pretty violent to me.

    I mean, don’t get me wrong, I agree that this is a gross misuse of police power and that we shouldn’t stand for it. But murder is pretty extreme, never mind the fact that it would turn those cops into martyrs and the protesters, even the ones that didn’t commit such heinous acts, into “violent crazies” who will never get their voices heard in the resulting uproar.

  8. Yeah, William, right. Besides the obvious moral issue of killing a human being for taking a violent but non-fatal action against someone (and believe me, I have no love for cops, I feel that they are the enemies of anybody who isn’t cis, hetero, white, and otherwise privileged) – just as a matter of logic?

    Some dude or dudette with a pistol, against a bunch of cops in riot gear, helmets, flak jackets, high-power weapons and the training to use it, tear gas (which, i dunno, a pistol doesn’t seem to be very effective against), snipers on the rooftops, helicopters, the Nat’l Guard for backup…oh, come on, get off your hero fantasy, yeah?

    Now, a nationwide general strike for a week or two? Fuck up the economy for the privileged bastards? That might actually *do* something.

  10. For fucks sake, what is this, a Police State?

    Yeah, Amy Goodman is one of the best freaking journalists around. I haven’t heard a damn thing about all these “pre-emptive” arrests on the mainstream media.

  11. CNN just aired this story, so it is finally out there, though they presented the protesters as all violent and disruptive. All I say that supported their claims was one broken window of which there was not proof who really did it.

    Yeah, there is always the issue of Cointelpro (or whatever it is they go by these days) coming in and doing disruptive stuff so the media story is the craaaazy protesters.

    My hair is totally oon fire at this point. I really don’t think our democracy can take another four years.

    William, beyond the obvious fact that killing other people (even “evil” people… who determines evilness I don’t know) is, um, wrong, part of what defines being “the oppressed” is having less power of the conventional sort. We always will have less military power than the state, so they will always win a violent fight. Not only do the ends not justify the means, those means don’t even work.

  12. Profiled, beaten, searched, arrested. It’s not like this doesn’t happen to many people 365 days a year. We have no more of a democracy then.

  13. William, are you seriously suggesting that nonviolent protesters start murdering police officers? Seriously???

    Yes, yes I am. I’m sorry, I know its an extreme stance to take and all, but I believe that people who actively seek to silence others through the willful misuse of official power has forfeited their right to be part of game anymore.

    That sounds pretty violent to me.

    That would be the idea, yes.

    I mean, don’t get me wrong, I agree that this is a gross misuse of police power and that we shouldn’t stand for it.

    And how do you suggest we resist? I think the past 50 or so years have shown pretty well that marching, singing protest songs, and whining to sympathetic ears about how unfair it all is hasn’t done shit. Its been ’68 for forty years.

    But murder is pretty extreme, never mind the fact that it would turn those cops into martyrs and the protesters, even the ones that didn’t commit such heinous acts, into “violent crazies” who will never get their voices heard in the resulting uproar.

    I’ve drunk toasts to Bobby Sands, Fred Hampton, and George Washington. Hell, we’re trying to name a street after Hampton and old George is on our money. The only difference between a violent crazy and a folk hero is who tells the story.

    Besides, it isn’t about a voice being heard, its about drawing a line and saying that there will be no more. The message is that police cannot simply do what they please, that sometimes citizens will override their authority, that they do not hold all the power. It is a reminder of where the power of the police comes from and what their role is.

    Besides the obvious moral issue of killing a human being for taking a violent but non-fatal action against someone

    What obvious moral issue? Perhaps some people would have a moral issues with killing (and I respect that) but arguing universal moral absolutes seems to be assuming too much.

    Some dude or dudette with a pistol, against a bunch of cops in riot gear, helmets, flak jackets, high-power weapons and the training to use it, tear gas (which, i dunno, a pistol doesn’t seem to be very effective against), snipers on the rooftops, helicopters, the Nat’l Guard for backup…oh, come on, get off your hero fantasy, yeah?

    No hero fantasy here, I’m sitting a few hundred miles away and not really invested enough to put myself in harm’s way. I’m just saying that this kind of behavior from the police exists because we allow it to. People go to “free speech zones” because they’re told to. Police arrest not because they have some kind of magical power but because others do nothing to stop it. Its learned helplessness.

    . Not only do the ends not justify the means, those means don’t even work.

    I disagree that the ends don’t necessarily justify the means. I mean, its a pretty well established legal principle that lethal force can be used to protect yourself or another in the face of harm, not just death. I mean, its an open question (and one that I doubt will ever be answered) as to whether or not killing is ok, and ultimately its a purely subjective once.

    As for the ends not working, I can think of quite a few situations in which violence on the part of oppressed groups managed to overcome the established power structure. The Black Panthers in Oakland, the Stonewall Riots, the American Revolution, Villa’s Mexican Revolution, French resisters during WWII, the various Communist revolutions of the 20th century, the LA riots. Some of those instances of violence have been on a greater or lesser scale, some have had different results, but its hard to deny that a large number of relatively weak and untrained people can overcome conventionally powerful institutions.

    Either way, I find it interesting that in a community which is so often angry and feels so passionately about freedom from oppression the mere suggestion of violence is somehow so distressing.

  14. Profiled, beaten, searched, arrested. It’s not like this doesn’t happen to many people 365 days a year. We have no more of a democracy then.

    Well, I’d say fascism always begins with the most oppressed communities within a country, and of course profiling/immigration raids/Guantanamo is part of that. What I worry about is the fact that historically, there’s a tipping point where it becomes impossible to work on issues of violence and oppression at all. That’s why it matters when they start doing this to journalists.

    I find it interesting that in a community which is so often angry and feels so passionately about freedom from oppression the mere suggestion of violence is somehow so distressing.

    Women know what it means to live in constant fear of violence. A lot of us know that the likelihood of violence aimed at us only gets worse when the men start fighting with each other. And somehow, when all that fighting is done, the patriarchy is still doing just fine. That’s why violence is distressing to a feminist community.

  15. Violence is just as likely to create a socially chaotic environment where a more bloody violent oppressive regime/social order is born as it is to create a less oppressive and more pluralistic, democratic, and egalitarian society.

    There are better more productive non-violent means to deal with this as some commentators have noted.

    the various Communist revolutions of the 20th century

    Interesting you included them as many of the leaders of those Communist Revolutionaries didn’t come from the oppressed workers/peasant classes they were supposedly representing…but came from the very privileged classes of the previous social order.

    Lenin came from a noble family, Zhou Enlai was from a wealthy family who attended university in Japan, Mao Zedong was from a rich peasant background and had a privileged educational background as a part-time librarian at Peking University…enough to be considered an “intellectual” despite despising them later in his life, Zhu De was a former Warlord era military officer who attended a German university, etc. Most of them had a complicated mixture of idealism and concern for the oppressed mixed with their own personal ambitions for greater political power…….ambitions which ended up supplanting one brutal oppressive social order for another equally oppressive one.

    Just ask the victims of the 1950’s era Anti-rightist campaigns or the 1960’s era Cultural Revolution where the Chinese people ended getting the worst of totalitarianism and state-sanctioned anarchy.

  16. That’s why it matters when they start doing this to journalists.

    Except they didn’t just start. They’ve been doing this to community newspapers for years.

    Either way, I find it interesting that in a community which is so often angry and feels so passionately about freedom from oppression the mere suggestion of violence is somehow so distressing.

    Because these communities get retaliated against even more when the hankerchief wearing activists go back home.

  17. Now, here’s the way I see it, regarding violent protest:

    Suppose that the 2-million march in London against the Iraq war (January 2003 – official estimates made it only 1 million strong) had been willing to take violent action. They could have stormed the Houses of Parliament and taken control. But you need an awful lot of people for any action like that to have any lasting effect. Too few, and the military option is going to be overwhelming. As it happens, I’m fairly sure that there aren’t anything like a million soldiers in the British Army, but they do have tanks and aircraft and suchlike things, so even with a million-strong popular revolt, it wouldn’t be a foregone conclusion, except that one can hope that the soldiers would baulk at the idea of such a wholesale massacre.

    However, the idea of shooting someone for trying to arrest a journalist, isn’t going to work. Because they’ll just arrest everyone else, too. And then pass laws against peaceful assembly, because the “horror” of the incident will be sufficient political capital to make it happen (it might look like the law that restricts protest in Parliament Square in London, requiring that you gain permission seven days in advance). With a few carefully-worded caveats, I am sure they could manage a work-around to get it past any constitutional qualms with such a law, but the effect would be the same. And then you’ve still got the problem of the Establishment having helicopters, tanks, air-to-ground missiles, .50 cal machine guns etc. that are going to trump most of the weapons you’ve got, if you want to protest violently against the newly imposed restrictions.

    On the other hand, violent protest in the end was what brought the apartheid regime to the table in South Africa (for example). The ANC reluctantly moved from a stance of non-violent protest to setting up a paramilitary wing that graduated from sabotage to guerilla warfare, and eventually to terrorism, before there was willingness to talk about accepting the human rights of the black South Africans. But I think if you want to talk about, and advocate, violent protest, you need to be aware of what exactly you’re talking about, what you want to achieve, and the likely costs to other people (in the movement, and innocent bystanders).

  18. William is D-O-N-E on this post not only because his comments are outrageous and pissing me off but also because he has managed to derail this entire thread. Seeing as how this post is not about killing police officers, or telling protesters to commit suicide by cop while being unwilling to do so yourself (in the end of course, that is a good thing even if mind-bogglingly hypocritical). This post is about outrageous police abuse of power, but not about murdering police officers and turning oneself into a martyr for little more than William’s ideological satisfaction.

    So I understand that William is pissing people off, but it would be great if we could get back on topic. Carry on.

  19. Except they didn’t just start. They’ve been doing this to community newspapers for years.

    I know our government has been suppressing movements and journalism forever (Yes, they probably killed the journalists reporting on CIA/cocaine stuff, yes, they killed the Black Panthers, etc. etc. forever). Hell, I’m pretty sure someone was tapping my phone at SAFER (an anti-violence nonprofit, of all things) because my office was next to the National Lawyer’s Guild office. I take solace in the fact that our conversations about college sexual assault must have been monumentally boring for them.

    I’m just saying I think it’s important to pay attention when things start getting bad for even mild and moderate dissidents, and for journalists of any kind (they arrested someone from the AP and NY Post, fer chrissakes). Those are signs of a society closing down. There really is a difference between a government that imprisons or kills people it considers a major threat and a government that sweeps up anyone who even looks at them funny. The difference being, there are ways to resist the killing and imprisonment of activists in a society where some dissent is tolerated. But when no dissent is tolerated, the only option you really have is to try to get out if you can, and get killed if you can’t.

    I just think it’s really important not to minimize these abuses of power just because there is a history of abuses of power.

  20. Any word on what type of press pass she has? A pass issued by a news agency does not grant the bearer the right to cross a police or fire line. If she only had a news agency pass, instead of a law enforcement pass, then sadly the police would be in the right to arrest her for attempting to cross the police line.

  21. ThatCrazyEquitist — according to Amy Goodman in the video at BFP’s page, she had the maximum security clearance. She’s been doing this a long time and I’m sure knows how these things work. Further, I doubt that the AP photographer and the producers of Democracy Now! who were also arrested would have made such an amateurish mistake.

  22. All I have to add to this is that I’m really ashamed to be from the Twin Cities, MN, right now.

    Really. Really. Ashamed.

    (I’m also scared and pissed off, but not entirely certain what to do about it.)

    Laurie in Mpls.

  23. Like I said, society’s been breaking down already. For me, it became real when the city’s public works division was coming and picking up the newsracks of the paper I worked for and tossed them in the back of the truck b/c it didn’t like the coverage.

    Not that I’m not upset at what’s going on, because I am b/c it’s more of a long pattern of the same but what I’m sensing here is outrage based somewhat on surprise and no one should really be that surprised. Not even MSM is immune if you witness the LAPD breaking the limbs of even FOX reporters during a MayDay event at MacArthur Park in 2007.

  24. And mind you, the 2007 incident took place in violation of a 2002 agreement between media and the LAPD stemming from the police arresting and firing less lethal munitions at many different media personnel, alternative and mainstream, at the DNC2000. Even National Lawyers’ Guild people were arrested at those protests.

    This kind of treatment of media while appalling is historic. It’s been around for ever especially among Black-owned media which I’ve worked for.

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