21st Century Police State USA

If you live here in New York, you may well recall the disgraceful behavior of our mayor, police force, and various hired goons during the 2004 RNC. It was all as if out of a KGB handbook: spying, violence, random arrests without cause (they nearly got me in one of their nets). On the whole, it was perhaps the darkest chapter in our plutocratic mayor’s reign here, though he has shown considerable improvement since.

But now Sean Gardiner of the Village Voice is reporting that the Minneapolis police force, while promising a more diplomatic approach to the RNC this year, is ordering up hundreds of stun guns.

Meanwhile, the St. Paul cops apparently need more than their current arsenal. The city’s 370-member police department (compared with the NYPD’s 36,000 cops) is stocking up on stun guns. Last month, the St. Paul City Council authorized the purchase of 230 stun guns. Combine that with the 140 stun guns already issued to St. Paul cops, and it means every member of the force will have one in time for the RNC.

Other signs aren’t so good, either. Mick Kelly, a spokesman for the Coalition to March on the RNC and Stop the War, says the city is “dragging its feet” when it comes to issuing demonstration permits. Kelly also asserts that the police have been openly filming anti-war protests, and that the guidelines for gathering information on protest groups is “a page borrowed right from the playbook of the New York Police Department.”

Now this is the state where Paul Wellstone’s memory is justifiably revered, and where the Democratic candidate for the Senate is comedian Al Franken, who will likely be running to unseat warmonger Norm Coleman. Just a reminder to our friends of the north: you do not want to repeat the descent into police state darkness that occurred here four years ago. This is still America — the land of Tom Paine and Henry David Thoreau and Susan B. Anthony and Martin Luther King, Jr. — dissent has always been the glow of our brightest lights.

This is also about inviting the next generation into our democracy. On Wednesday night, I walked through the rain with about 200 of my Brooklyn neighbors, on an anti-war march from Grand Army Plaza to the military recruiting station downtown, and the average age was roughly 25. Kids half my age, of all classes and colors and both genders — some of them pushing or carrying their own children — walked, shouted, chanted, and sang, as passing traffic honked in support. These are the people who will have to set about healing the darkness and division that will be left in their nation and their planet. We owe them the right to express themselves. In fact, if anyone deserves pride of place in Minneapolis and Denver this year, it should be the protesters rather than the party fat cats.

It’s been a tough week for the world of art — we have another prominent obit to note. Paul Scofield, a truly great artist of the classical stage and modern screen, has died. If you can recall his Thomas More in A Man For All Seasons, then I don’t have to tell you a thing about the depth and scope of his talent.

But Scofield was more than one of the great actors of his era; he was a dignified and clear-seeing human being who consistently retreated from the glare of fame and the petty, medieval honors and titles of the collective (he refused a knighthood). That deep integrity was revealed in his work: whether he was playing Shakespeare or co-starring with Kate Hepburn in a Hollywood feature, Scofield’s art was always riveting and genuine — there was not a breath of artifice in either the man or his acting.

So if you’re too young to have seen Scofield in his heyday, rent or buy A Man for All Seasons. You won’t soon forget it.