These cops have been harassing individuals, and their friends and family, about their plans to take part in protests around the Republican national convention, scheduled for August 30-September 2 in New York, where tens of thousands are expected to take part in demonstrations.

This operation and others, which include infiltration of an array of groups, are intended to produce a chilling effect on political activity and to disrupt trade unions, Black rights organizations, and others. They are consistent with a long record of such provocations by the political police.

Mark Silverstein, legal director of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) Foundation of Colorado, said activists around the country are being asked a similar series of questions on what they know about the plans of demonstrators. These include: “Are you planning to commit any crimes? Do you know anyone who plans to commit any crimes? Do you know that withholding such knowledge from us is a crime?”

Sarah Bardwell, a 21-year-old intern at the Denver American Friends Service Committee, a Quaker group that opposes the Anglo-American occupation of Iraq, said agents appeared at her house and questioned her and her four roommates, according to media reports. “The message I took from it, was that they were trying to intimidate us into not going to any protests and let us know that, ‘hey, we’re watching you,’” Bardwell said.

Bardwell said the agents who showed up at her house acted provocatively. “We said, ‘You should leave our porch’ and they said, ‘We’ll leave your porch when we want to,’” she told the Post.

Last year, the city of Denver was forced to settle a lawsuit agreeing to restrictions on spying activity by local cops when it was disclosed that the police there were keeping files on 3,000 people and 200 organizations involved in protests without “reasonable suspicion” of illegal activity.

“Intelligence gathering” such as this, acquired largely through infiltrating organizations, is used for frame-ups, provocations and disruptions.

Civil right activists in Chicago protested earlier this year when they learned that in 2002, undercover cops in that city infiltrated five protest groups, including the American Friends Service Committee and Not in Our Name. The groups were planning to protest the Trans-Atlantic Business Dialog, an international meeting of business leaders that took place in Chicago that year.

Chicago police launched four other similar operations in 2003 reported the Chicago Sun Times February 19. Such operations are increasingly common in cities across the country.

Federal prosecutors subpoenaed Drake University for records on the sponsor of a campus antiwar forum last February. The demand was dropped after an outcry from local residents, university employees, and students.

About a dozen people in Kansas and Missouri were harassed by the FBI before the Democratic convention in Boston last month. One of them, Nate Hoffman, 21, an economics student at the University of Missouri-Kansas City, agreed to meet with agents, but refused to answer their questions without a lawyer. “They told me that in their experience that when somebody didn’t want to talk to them, that meant they probably had something to hide,” he said.

Three others from Missouri who had planned to protest at the Democratic convention were followed and questioned by agents, and later subpoenaed to testify before a federal grand jury. This forced them to cancel their trip to Boston, they said. Denise Lieberman, legal director for the ACLU in St. Louis, which is representing the three men, all in their early 20s, said that prosecutors informed them that they are targets of a “domestic terrorism” investigation, but have not provided any justification.

Cops in the streets of New York have been recently harassing and trying to intimidate street vendors and political street campaigners, sometimes shutting them down or forcing them to move.
 
 
Related articles:
The FBI’s 50-year record of provocation, disruption  
 
 
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