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by Duane J. Roberts
Tuesday, Jan. 28, 2003 at 4:49 PM
duaneroberts92804@yahoo.com
Civil liberties are won only when masses of people organize with one another to vigorously assert and defend their rights.
Monday, January 27, 2003
ANAHEIM POLICE LOSE BATTLE TO SQUASH FREE SPEECH
People defend their rights while under seige by a platoon of police
By Duane J. Roberts
ANAHEIM, CA -- Last Saturday night, the streets and alleyways surrounding the venerable Unitarian Church of Orange County suddenly came alive with huge armada of Anaheim police cars and motorcycles passing by.
What happened a neighbor might ask?
Did an armed robbery occur? Was someone brutally raped? Had a mass murder taken place?
No.
The Anaheim Police Department was waging a fierce battle to shutdown a small event being held on church grounds that was organized by the Los Angeles Anarchist Black Cross Federation, a political prisoner support group.
In a scene reminiscent of the kind of intense repression that routinely occurs in "third world countries", a platoon of Anaheim police officers spent several hours spying and harrassing the crowd that peaceably assembled.
The war against civil liberties began early Friday afternoon when Anaheim Police and City Code Enforcement left a flurry of frantic messages on the Unitarian church's answering machine inquiring about the event.
Several church members met later that night with a very hostile Anaheim police sergeant who bullied and intimidated them into pressuring organizers to cancel the whole affair.
But this decision was reversed the next day as everyone concluded that under no circumstances should the church capitulate to unreasonable demands by Anaheim Police to curb free speech.
It was a veritable war zone Saturday evening as untold numbers of Anaheim police cars and motorcycles circled around the church much like hungry sharks looking for an easy kill.
About a dozen police officers quickly seized control of a nearby elementary school parking lot, bringing along a K-9 unit whose German Shepherds could be heard barking and yelping in the background.
As people arrived, six church members stood their ground as the same police sergeant mentioned earlier came over and tried to bully and intimidate them into submission.
But this time the sergeant's tactics backfired and he was forced to back off a bit as one church member whipped out his cellphone and contacted an Anaheim police captain he knew.
Despite the intense police harrassment, the event proceeded without incident until a City Code Enforcement officer arrived and ordered that all amplified sound be shut off under threat of citation.
The crowd of mostly young people remained peaceful even when the police sergeant called up about a dozen of his men and lined them up along an alleyway in a brazen show of force.
But instead of getting angry, all seventy of them proceeded to walk across the street to Anaheim Police headquarters to get what forms they needed to file a complaint.
Upon arriving at the front entrance, they soon discovered that Anaheim Police had locked all the doors with handcuffs to prevent any of them from going into the lobby.
After several minutes of negotiations, three police officers opened the doors and handed out forms to everybody who requested them, and they promptly returned to the Unitarian Church to fill them out.
It was then that Anaheim Police realized they had lost this battle, and they gradually withdrew all their forces and faded away into the darkness of the night.
The battle that occurred last Saturday showed that civil liberties are won only when masses of people organize with one another to vigorously assert and defend their rights.
At grave personal risk to themselves, seventy people openly defied efforts by a small platoon of police officers to deny them of their rights to free speech and assembly.
The massive amount of resistance Anaheim Police encountered that night no doubt will make them think twice about trampling over anybody else's civil liberties anytime soon.
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