Video: Police State New York

News from the liberterrain...

Darren Wolfe, one of the Pennsylvania libertarians who made the trip to New York City on June 14 to help Julian Heicklen distribute Fully Informed Jury Association (FIJA) pamphlets at the federal courthouse in Manhattan, has made his video available on the internet.

  Jury Rights Warrior  Julian Heicklen
  has a final word with his supporters
  before stepping out into the Rights
  Battlefield of Manhattan. (photo
  courtesy Jim Babb)

The raw footage shows the arrival of the activists as they enter the area around the courthouse, the uniformed and plainclothed law enforcers who swarm Heicklen as he prepares to hand out fliers, his peaceful resistance to being arrested, and the quick physical response by the government agents.

Wolfe describes the experience on his blog, The International Libertarian.

"Going near the courts in lower Manhattan, New York City seems under siege. Streets are blocked off with mechanized metal barriers. Police from all levels of government, local, state, and federal, abound."

They were waiting for Heicklen and arrested him, apparently on an old warrant, before he could hand out a single pamphlet.

It also appears that photographing and videotaping "the people's public servants" in action on a public street is still a contentious, and arrestable, issue.

"During this sad event," Wolfe writes on his blog, "a female officer came by yelling at the others that people were filming and that that was not allowed. Always a day late and a dollar short, none of the federal thugs tried to stop my filming until after Julian was in the sinister black van."

The right to take pictures in the public square was addressed in an earlier Libertarian News Examiner article; Manhattan Libertarian sues fed cops for illegal arrest.

The remaining activists regrouped in nearby Foley Square and passed out some 250 FIJA fliers.

Again from Wolfe's blog: "Reflecting on that day I’m surprised at Julian’s tenacity, though very glad to see it. At the same time I’m saddened to think of what the US government has become. How far they are from Jefferson’s immortal words in the Declaration of Independence telling us that government is "to secure these rights," not violate them.

 
The Libertarian News Examiner article with photo slideshow is here: NY's "finest" manhandle, humiliate rights activist Heicklen