{ texts for nothing }

I finally managed to get my photos from the February 13th anti-Olympic protest off my cell phone. They aren’t very good pictures, but this one is pretty interesting: These police officers are not displaying names or badge numbers. There’s only one reason why they would do that: to avoid being held accountable for their actions. If you’re a cop, you don’t need to hide your badge number unless you want to be able to use excessive force without facing the consequences. And this was a deliberate strategy: it’s not like these guys just happened to all show up without their badge numbers that day. The officers in this photograph know that as long as they don’t get caught on camera, they can beat up protesters and get away with it; their superiors have made it implicitly clear that they will cover for them.

What we have here is a recipe for tacitly sanctioned police brutality.

As a BCCLA member and a friend and ally of the anti-Olympic protesters, I was extremely disappointed to hear about David Eby’s comments to the media regarding Saturday’s protest:

David Eby, executive director of the B.C. Civil Liberties Association, said he was “sickened” by images of Black Bloc members smashing windows and tossing newspaper boxes into the streets.

Eby, who’s been outspoken against what he considers police intimidation of Olympic dissidents, said protesters were prepared for civil disobedience, such as sit-down demonstration to block an intersection.

Eby said there was a hint that the protest would turn violent when his group was asked by a faction of the protesters not to send legal observers to the march, saying they were worried they’d been infiltrated by police and could have their video documentation used as evidence in court.

This is completely unacceptable for exactly the reasons outlined by Lawrence A. Hildes, a member of the U.S. National Lawyers Guild whom I saw at two separate anti-Olympic protests in the past few days:

I don’t expect Eby or the BCCLA to condone the black bloc’s actions. But as Lawrence Hildes says, it’s not the job of either Eby or the BCCLA to decide which protesters are “good” and which are “bad” — it’s their job to ensure that the civil liberties of all protesters, peaceful or not, are protected. Talk of being “sickened” by a few broken windows protects no one’s rights; on the contrary, it lends legitimacy to the authorities’ ongoing efforts to repress dissent by sowing division among the dissenters. It also raises questions about the ability of the BCCLA to provide adequate and unbiased legal counsel to protesters who face charges over acts of civil disobedience.

This problem is compounded by Eby’s decision to reveal that some protesters asked BCCLA legal observers not to attend Saturday’s protest. Not only could that information be extremely damaging for those who are facing charges related to the protest, but clearly those who sent the email had placed a certain amount of trust in the BCCLA in matters like that. It’s no secret that there was at least some communication between anti-Olympic activists and the BCCLA in the months leading up to the Games, and it was the BCCLA’s phone number that was circulated to protesters so they’d know who to call for legal representation in case of arrest. (It speaks volumes that the Olympic Resistance Network, which did not even organize Saturday’s protest, has begun distributing a different number instead.) I have no idea whether Eby’s statement was a violation of attorney-client privilege or of BC’s Canons of Legal Ethics, but I do know that it was a shameful and profoundly disrespectful breach of trust.

I have a great deal of respect for the work that the BCCLA and David Eby personally have done over the years, Olympic-related and otherwise, and I hate to see their reputations tarnished. Nor do I want to undermine the Olympic-related work that the BCCLA still has ahead of it — like holding the RCMP accountable for the fact that many riot cops did not display their badge numbers on Saturday. But so far at least thirteen people in this province have faced charges over their opposition to the Olympics, in a climate of intense official and popular hostility to their views. They — and all of us who confront the threat of repression when we choose to dissent — deserve better.