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David Swanson arrested in Washington, DC

October 6, 2009

David Swanson arrested in Washington, DC

From Daybreak author David Swanson’s blog post at Antemedius about his arrest:

The crime? Exercising free speech in a group of more than 25 people. Seriously. We’re charged with failing to obey a lawful order. And the order was to move farther away from the White House because with more than 25 people you have to have a special permit in order to exercise free speech. At least 50 of us, maybe closer to 100, went to jail, while many more chose to comply with the lawful (if unconstitutional) order.

And what did the Park Police SWAT team do? Nothing but follow orders. They followed orders to the exclusion of all thought. They asked us not to encourage them to think. They didn’t want to think about freedom of speech. They didn’t want to think about arresting nonviolent people for peacefully demanding peace. They didn’t want to think about whether protesting illegal wars actually constitutes something closer to law enforcement than what they themselves were engaged in. And they certainly didn’t want to think about the men and women and children in Iraq and Afghanistan and Pakistan who will die because the US Park Police arrested peaceful people assembling and speaking, rather than arresting war criminals like Richard Cheney who confess to felonies on television and lives right across the river.

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