Securitizing America: Strategic Incapacitation and the Policing of Protest Since the 11 September 2001 Terrorist Attacks (original) (raw)
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In the past, we mastered riots by rifle and cannon. Today we use pick and trowel." Anonymous Parisian builder in 1858. 1 "We get up early, to BEAT the crowds"-Denver Police DNC commemorative t-shirt, 2008 Free and open speech is a fundamental right in democratic states. Whether in public or in private, the individual's right to open speech about political rule is well-protected in democracies. However, when people assemble in public spaces, and as a group vocally protest together, different forces and legalities come into play. Because any large group of people massed in an urban setting is not the normal state of affairs, these gatherings represent a potential threat to governing bodies. A mass political protest is only a few steps from a riot. At what point does a political demonstration become civil disobedience? What is the role of urban space in supporting or suppressing public political speech? How is public space used by demonstrators and regulators? 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These summits and meetings are localized embodiments of neoliberal regimes in the developed world, and protests are reactions against the deregulation of industry and retreat of the state under neoliberal economic policies. Based on surveys of recent literature, news reports, and white papers, mass protests are gaining in both size and frequency. 3 While political protests in urban space are nothing new, the number and scale of mass assemblies for political purposes in public spaces has taken on new dimensions in the last decade. This increase in scale and scope of protests is accompanied by changing protest policing tactics. Spatial control tactics used against protesters worldwide, such as the "free-speech zone" and "kettling," are taking on similar characteristics worldwide. Perhaps the signature protest event of this new era was the protests against the World Trade Organization in Seattle in 1999, where an unprecedented 40,000 protesters clashed with police over a few days, resulting in mass beatings, arrests and property damage....along with new spatial tactics of policing as well as of protest. The next significant event came in 2003 in the protests in Miami against the Free Trade Area of the Americas conference, where police used a new model of enforcement against tens of thousand of protesters, deploying innovations in protest policing under 1 Jones 367. 2 Tonkiss, as well as Dellaporta, Peterson and Reiter. 3 Ortiz et al tracks the increase in protest incidence across the globe from the period of 2006 to 2013, generally in response to economic issues. Global protest incidence grows steadily from 59 events in 2006 to 111 in the first half of 2013. The Global Database of Events, Language and Tone tracks incidences of protests and other events and shows a steady increase since 1979. Powers and Vogele explore an increase in protest movements from the Civil Rights era through the middle 1990s, Brenner and Theodore discuss the increasing number of protest events against neoliberalism (1979-2002) (4), and Sandine discusses crowd events from across American history, with particular focus on assembly rights in the 21 st century (Chs. 6-9). Further evidence is in the sheer record-breaking scale of protest events since 2003. Sagan iii what is now called the "Miami Model of Protest Policing." 4 Police used this approach again in 2004 in Los Angeles and New York City during the presidential conventions, and French police used similar tactics against protests across France in 2006. A significant element in the organization of urban political protest and the enforcement thereof has been the internationalization of methods of both protest and response. The largest protests occurring under neoliberal governance has been in response to issues that affect several nations at once. These protests typically have occurred in response to economic or military plans made in the developed world that have significant impact in the global south. The internationalization of economic and military policy under neoliberalism, combined with increasing availability of information on international developments available to citizens worldwide through communications media, has internationalized the protest response to these policies. Thus, the large protests in cities like Miami, Rostock and Seattle have not been against local events or even national policies, but rather held in solidarity with non-local and extra-national victims of said policies. Political protest has been a tradition in the United States dates to before the founding of the Republic, and the right of assembly and the protection of public speech is ensured by the Constitution. 5 However, the United States has never been as intertwined in international and global networks of power and trade as it is today, and, likewise, never before have protests in the United States been as connected to the international forces of resistance to those powers. Dozens of books have been written about globalization and its economic effects on both the global North and global South, the reorganization of power relationships between property owners and renters, and between mobile capital and embodied labor. 6 Do these new power relations entail changes in how protests are organized and managed? 7 Have there been changes in how protest events are organized by protesters, and regulated and administered to by police and enforcers? How are these changes reflected in the urban fabric that supports mass assembly? 8 What are the roles and responsibilities of professional environmental design in managing and policing protest? These new global economic relations are part of a shift from liberal economic policies into a new international economic formation called "neoliberalism." 9 Economic changes under neoliberalism bring with them new understandings of the economic relationships which underpin the production and regulation of urban space and urban life. According to geographer David Harvey, the main project of neoliberalism is the restoration of class power and the concentration of wealth among the already very wealthy. 10 This project is accomplished through financial and economic processes that reorganize urban economic relationships, altering relationships between users and regulators of urban space. This has caused a crisis in conceptions of public space, resulting in social and economic conflicts over rights to and uses of public urban spaces. When the vast array of stakeholders in urban life far outnumbers those who have direct economic stakes in urban property, how are mass public demonstrations treated? Along with new economic relationships, new spatial and administrative practices have developed under neoliberalism. How do these new relationships in urban living change the legal and procedural expectations of the role of citizen? These economic changes have brought about a corresponding shift in the administrative 4 Fernandez Ch. 4. 5 Particularly in the First Amendment, where the rights to free speech and peaceable assembly are laid out. 6 Specifically globalization as it relates to cities and urban form; see Cox, King 2004, Sassen, Smith, M., 2001. 7 Aihwa Ong's work on the relationship between neoliberalism, urban space and political economy. 8 Oscar Newman in particular deals with spatial design and crime prevention, and of course there is an entire subfield of build architecture entiled 'Crime Prevention Through Environmental Design' (CPTED), but other work (Lefebvre 1991, Low 2003, Kohn for some examples) specifically addresses transformations in urban space based on social and/or political practice.
Whose Streets? Police and Protester Struggles over Space in Washington, DC, 29–30 September 2001
Policing & Society, 2005
, approximately 20,000 people participated in anti-war protests in Washington, DC. Based on firsthand observations and interviews with police officials, we analyze the response of the Metro DC police (MPDC) to three separate protests that weekend, including those sponsored by the Anti-Capitalist Convergence (ACC), the International Action Center (IAC) and the Washington Peace Center (WPC). Our observations illustrate how the MPDC's efforts to control the space in which the respective protests occurred varied across demonstrations The MPDC tightly controlled the space in which transgressive groups (ACC) demonstrated, but were much more lenient with contained groups (WPC, IAC). We relate the MPDC tactics to changes in the policing of protest since the 1999 World Trade Organization protests in Seattle and highlight police tactics such as the partitioning of space, and the strategic incapacitation and rearranging of demonstrators.