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LOCAL News :: Peace : Protest Activity

Malachi Ritscher's Stand for Civil Liberties

Earlier this year I did a series of stories on the arrests at the second anniversary of the war. One of the arrestees was Malachi Ritscher.

Ritscher gave me an account of the arrest, parts of which I used in a story back in May. He also forwarded an account of his mass arrest experience, which I intended to add to my coverage of that milestone but never got around to — until now.


I was a participant in the protest on Thursday in downtown Chicago, which resulted in my arrest and detention overnight in a jail at 111th and the Calumet Expressway, without being charged, read my rights, or being able to make a phone call to an attorney. I was peacefully expressing my objections to the invasion of Iraq, and was not breaking any law.

The policy of the City of Chicago is best described as extreme overkill — there were more arrests than at the infamous Democratic Convention of 1968. This approach is unnecessary and ineffective (not to mention expensive). All the demonstrators wanted was to walk around with their signs shouting slogans and tie up traffic a little. If the police would have worked with the impromptu leaders, they could have lead the march down the block and up State Street, back down Michigan Avenue, over to the starting place, and everyone would have gotten tired and gone home. They could have easily protected personal property and prevented things from getting out of hand without being oppressive. A few friendly traffic cops would have been much more effective than the hundreds of goons on overtime.

Every step of the way, the intimidation factor was as heavy-handed as possible. For example, I overheard a riot squad member tell a middle-aged mother with a four year old that “we’re going to be using tear-gas, you’d better get your kid out of here.” This was about 5:30 PM, before the march had even left the Federal Building Plaza The block was already ringed by the black uniformed goon squad, with no names on their uniforms, wearing ridiculous “Empire Strikes Back” body armor, tightly controlling all entrances and exits to the plaza. Officers on horseback pressed tightly up against the crowd, then shouted at pedestrians not to get close to the horses to avoid getting kicked. At this point I saw several generally older people leave the protest.

It was apparent to me that the riot squad was there to provoke a confrontation — there was a lot of unnecessary pushing by baton wielding goons, and giving orders — “get over there” only to be told “get back over there”. There is no justification for their presence unless there is rioting, so they were bound and determined that violence would happen one way or another. Everything I saw went one way, much to the misfortune of the people I was detained with. When your hands are tightly restrained behind you by a heavy-duty nylon ty-wrap, you are not in a position to defend yourself, much less attack 3 or 4 policemen in body armor. Yet there are 3, preferably 4 officers shoving you toward the paddywagons, screaming at you “Stop resisting, stop resisting” and if you stumble, they are on you with the batons. Several of the people in the back of the squad-rol had serious welts on their torsos, and I could see through the window that towards the end of the night they were working people over pretty good before they stuffed them in the wagons.

I was held with 27 other guys in the back of the squad-rol from 7:30 to 10:30 PM, most of us with extremely painful restraints. For a while the heat was blasting, then all ventilation was shut off. One person with severely purple hands passed out and we all shouted for a doctor. It was several minutes before anyone responded. They took him out and re-cuffed him and pushed him back in. At 10:30 we were driven to a police station on the far south side, with a stop at Dunkin’ Donuts on the way. I’m serious. We waited at the police station parking lot until 12:45 before we were removed from the wagon. In the station, the same 28 guys were put in one cell, where we remained for the rest of the night. After several hours, they confiscated our IDs and filled out arrest reports. When we asked if we were under arrest, we were told “What do you think?” When we asked what the charges were, we were told it hadn’t been decided. When we asked for phone calls, they responded with taunting. None of us was given copies of our arrest reports. I was released with a handful of others at 8 AM and told to leave the area immediately. More than half remained. When I asked for directions to the train station, I was told “I don’t know.” Of course, I lost a day of work.

One of the crowd call-and-response chants sticks out in my mind: “What does democracy look like? — This is what democracy looks like!” One of my cellmates said that as the police riot took shape at the top of the Miracle Mile, he started responding with “This is what a police state looks like!” Seconds later he was grabbed and beaten and thrown in the back of the wagon with the rest of us. I guess freedom of speech is OK, as long as you say the right things.

Malachi Ritscher - Chicago - 3/21/03

 
 

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