2008 Republican Convention

I would like to bring up an incident from 2008 in the Unites States when Amy Goodman, a reporter, was arrested with a high amount of force and handcuffed along with other reporters, some of whom were, according to Goodman, bleeding as a result of the force behind their arrests by the police. This happened during the Republican National Convention in 2008.

The police claimed most of the 10 000 democratic protesters were peaceful, but a group of 200 or so were becoming violent and many were arrested, including Amy and her fellow reporters. She claimed a whole force of riot officers surrounded the area and were using extreme force to arrest people who were not neccesarily involved in the trouble-making. She claimed when she asked police if she could see her colleagues, she was roughly pushed to the ground and handcuffed, suffering a bleeding nose. She claims she was brought to cages that had been set up to hold all the arrested protesters, and that one of her reporter friends was bloodied. They all were wearing reporter tags around their necks, and allegedly secret service personnel ripped off their tags.

Here is the only clip I could find of her being arrested, it is incomplete:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oYjyvkR0bGQ&feature=related

Here is a clip of her press report about the incident:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RLgetO_BL70

Here is a newspaper report about the incident:

http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/washington/2008/09/rnc-protests.html

The issues as I see it is whether police were too heavy-handed and whether they were trying to squash dissent and political activity, and whether social media aided our understanding of the issue and helped society learn from it.

The police in riots like these arrest everyone who tries to cross riot lines, and once people start causing trouble, everyone in the near area will normally be arrested. Is this fair? If someone has a genuine problem and needs to talk to police or leave the area via another route than the allowed one, if someone lost a friend or whatever in the crowd, should the police listen to their issue and think about it; or is it justified to arrest anyone who does not stay behind the lines to maintain peace?. As we can see in the incomplete arrest video, Amy was resisting instructions to leave but she was approaching peacefully and asking to see her friends, and the officers were not listening.

Some people may believe the police were justified in using the tactics to maintain order, others believe police were heavy-handed during this incident and used excessive force amongst many people, many young, trying to voice their opinion. Social media like Youtube was used to get out information and videos about Amy's arrests and other's arrests within an hour of the RNC (Republican National Convention), and a deluge of posts via facebook and twitter, and phonecalls and letters inspired by social media, were believed to have played  a part in Amy's release.

Please dicuss this situation or about police handling of protests in general, and how social media relates.

In my opinion, the police were heavy-handed, they even stormed the houses of known activists before the rally to try and pre-emptively stop rioting, this seems like arresting people without them having done anything first. If someone approaches police peacefully and slowly I think they should not use so much force, as during a protest people can get hurt or seperated from loved ones , and may need police help. It is a bit too much to arrest so many people at a whim because some were causing trouble. There definitely some protesters who were being idiots and causing trouble, and definitely the police were right in some of the arrests.

Is it worthwhile discussing this in this blog since none of us were there? If only the people present at an incident speak up about it, will it be hard to receive answers about an incident? Did social media play a positive or negative role during this incident? There are pro-Amy videos posted on Youtube from liberal crowds, and anti-Amy videos posted by Republican figureheads blaming the incident entirely on her. Did social media help this situation be explored in an objective way?