I love Amy Goodman! This is so sad and a direct violation of the freedom of the press! I am definately calling that number!

She's free now. Many medics, journalists, legal observers and other protestors are not.

Police authorities said of those arrested today, 73 were charged with felonies, 42 with gross misdemeanors, and 48 with misdemeanors.

Just called ( they are very rude and hang up on you at the detention center) Anyway, Goodman has been released but, Sharif Abdel Kouddous and Nicole Salazar are still being held. I urge anyone out there to call on their behalf!!

What the fuck? Isn't this the kind of thing we pointed to the Iraqi government doing and said, "See, we need to bring democracy here"?

Dykonoclast, any names of other people held or links to their sites so we can call on their behalf?

Here are the most recent numbers: 256 total arrestees; 119 felonies, 48 gross misdemeanors; 89 misdemeanors.

I don't know that calling will really help. Welcome to fascist democracy, folks.

http://twincities.indymedia.org/

realityfighter:

We exported all our freedom while failing to manufacture a reserve for our own use.

F.T.P.

The only good stormtrooper, etc.

Pretty muhc every RATM lyric ever, and so on.

good grief, whatever happened to free speech and freedom of the press? all three have been released now, according to the Democracy Now! site, but as mentioned, others are still detained and these charges need to be dropped:
http://www.thepetitionsite.com/petition/756588519

So, just so we understand,

Asking a police officer a question is grounds for a very rough arrest. Because, award-winning journalist or not, from what is audible and visible, she was simply asking about the arrest of her peers, as any normal citizen would do in a police situation.
Between the Code Pink peaceful protester getting slammed to the ground and called a bitch in Denver, and now this---it's truly time for the higher ups to weigh in.

Tell us. Tell us now ... is this really ok?

Democrats, Republicans---this is happening outside of your events. All politics aside. Is this ok?

IS THIS OK?

Where is the outrage about the anti-war protesters who attacked members of the CT delegation by trying to rip off their credentials and spraying some kind of bleach solution in their eyes? Or about the same group lighting a trash can on fire and pushing it into a police car, slashing tires, breaking windows, etc.?

I'm also not seeing any evidence of a "rough arrest." The police are repeatedly telling her that anyone who crosses "this line" will be arrested. What looks like them jerking her around is actually her trying to resist them trying to direct her back across "the line." Then she crosses the line and resists again as the police try to redirect her away. It's more emotionally appealing, I guess, to claim that she was arrested for "asking a question" than for what actually happened.

I'm a little bothered by this, because while I don't agree with some of Goodman's politics, she's a well known peace activist, and the idea that she would be arrested for inciting riots is absurd, and I think that this video shows pretty clearly that her rights were being violated.

Bee brings up a valid point in that this video could be interpreted as actually showing Amy Goodman struggling against the police officer when he physically directs her across "the line" more than it shows a "rough arrest." What I could understand of what was said, the police seemed to be speaking in a more or less calm way, although in situations like this, most of the people there (including police) probably felt tension. Does this mean that I think that Amy Goodman was rightfully arrested? No. Just as the police did not act violently towards her, she was not acting violently towards them. It doesn't look like she was doing anything more than asking to speak with a police representative. It looks like she was just being a journalist. Did she get to close to "the line" the police had established? Probably. But there is no evidence of any demonstrators or journalists being violent here at all. Why didn't the police just direct her to someone who could answer her questions? Why was it necessary to physically move her and then arrest her?

What disturbs me most about this is that the police seemed to arrest a journalist for not much more than being a journalist on some technicality of her getting too close to the line with her questions. What disturbs me about this is that the police started crossing many lines as early as last weekend...searching private property without warrants, using force to get into homes (without warrants) and detaining activists, legal observers and journalists or confiscating property with nothing more than nebulous conspiracy charges. Charges that have no real evidence to back them up. What bothers me about all of this is that the major news sources don't report on this. What mention may be made of these fishy arrests is confusingly mixed into reports on the few instances of violence that unfortunately did break out around protests. This post doesn't mention the protester violence that AP reported on yesterday, but I assumed that this post was about focusing on the details that have been glossed over or left out by the mainstream news--that journalists and activists who have not committed any crimes are being unlawfully arrested or detained. What I find interesting is that last night I tried a simple news search on Google and a news article search on LexisNexis that really only brought up mention of the rioters that were arrested and of the police response to the incidents of violence that Bee mentions. This morning I had a little more luck, finding a total of four articles that mentioned the arrest of journalists or activists who had yet to commit crimes--two AP articles, and two other articles on LexixNexis--but trying to find information on the detainment of all of the people who haven't broken laws would have been generally pretty hard if I hadn't been able to search on internet databases or gone to indy-media sites. And the mainstream media isn't just silent when it comes to police actions at the RNC...they were pretty silent about the peaceful protests and the police actions at the DNC, too.

All this silence is why it hit me so hard when I read last night that Amy Goodman had been arrested. I listen to NPR, I check CNN and BBC websites for news, but I also listen to Democracy Now to get a wider view of what's going on. Democracy Now has been one of the few outlets that has reported on the activists and police at these political conventions. If the people who work to give us a wider view of news get arrested under dubious charges, what has happened to the state of democracy? What happens to our right to intellectual freedom and free speech?

Based on the comments, I'm coming to understand that this is OK with folks.

A further assessment: I think some prerequisites with law enforcement should be the ability to understand the threat, the ability to adeptly assess potential threats, and to establish valid missions.

What I see in this image, outside of any provided context is:

Very large, fully armed and riot-geared officials with large wooden batons assessing the threat of a middle-aged, approximately 100 lb person who is clearly not in possession of any weapon. (To include bleach.) In these images---with her palms facing outward, it is apparent that she is attempting to engage the official verbally and politely. She is then dragged to her arrest for apparently crossing an imaginary line into a "defended asset." In this case, the asset is a parking lot full of other similarly clad riot-geared officials. I assess that these officials EGREGIOUSLY overestimated any form of threat from this person to their parking lot. If they knew she was a journalist and she was, indeed questioning their tactics, well, this just adds to the muck.

I'm not certain, as I've never had my arms forcibly placed behing my back and zip-tied, and then been marched into a waiting van, but I think "rough" qualifies (scary, at the very least)--but, maybe not. Maybe this is OK.

I'm just going to crawl back into the looking glass now.

sigh.

I hope that most people would find many examples of what police have been doing during these past few days in relation to the RNC, activists, journalists and legal observers as at least questionable, and in many cases, certainly not okay. And what really frustrates me is the lack of mainstream coverage of these these police actions (some of which look most certainly unlawful, shifty and yes, scary) that keeps most people uniformed and by default, complacent.

This is not okay. They said that they arrested her, initially, on "suspicion to riot." Then later, they changed it to "obstruction of justice." I'm looking around, but I didn't see any justice to obstruct.

Cuffing the lawyer? Still looking. No justice.

Calling them "criminal anarchists"? What crime? Peacefully protesting? Being a journalist? Not crimes. Think you can just release a statement saying "they were all bad" and that's gonna cut it?

Bee, there are such things as provocateurs implanted into the ranks of peaceful protestors. You might not want to hold some people responsible for what other people do. And let's appreciate that the press aren't arrested, they are told to get back and then moved back by a police line (that yellow plastic stuff) or with arms outstretched. kthnxby.

Also, I would like someone to define for me the time at which the people have the right to defend the safety of their persons. And then I would like to know how it is that I have been trained to put that definition in someone else's hands.

Ugh. I'm not holding "some people responsible for what other people do." I'm holding the people who did it responsible--anti-war protesters who attacked members of the CT delegation, "who" being the beginning of the dependent clause. There were thousands of other protesters who acted like grown-ups (and, as I read, still others who thought it was okay to surround a bus of CUB SCOUTS and rock it back and forth and beat on it). Get a grip.

Members of the press aren't arrested? Tell that to the ABC producer in Denver.

Here's how you can defend the safety of your person--stay behind the line if you're told you're going to be arrested, or don't be shocked if you don't heed the warning and are.

I don't see a rough arrest either. There is not enough pre-arrest material to know what was happening beforehand - so it's hard to know if the arrest itself was justified. But taking that out of the question - it was not a rough arrest.

She obviously didn't want to be arrested (who does?) and wiggled around a little bit, but she didn't get violent about it. And from what I see, the police didn't really want to arrest her (they asked her to move back and she kept moving forward) but when they made the decision to arrest her, they did it as gently as possible.

I've heard pretty crazy stories from right wing folks about car bombs, acid throwing, etc. happening - but when you research it, you find out the protests have been much more mellow.

I DON'T like that we (the left) are spreading what feels like similar stories about crazy police brutality - but when you watch the video, it's much more mellow.

Makes it hard to believe the left OR the right, IMHO. Smear tactics are smear tactics, ladies... And we've got to avoid using them, or we lose credibility.

bee, manifesta destiny was talking about provocateurs. provocateurs are people who are NOT members of the protest group. they are people planted in large protests by the police to do things (breaking windows, starting fires, inciting riots) that will then give police reason to arrest large numbers of people.

the people responsible for the things you cite (sans any sources, i might add) are not actual protesters, therefore it is unfair of you to accuse them of being representative of such.