Michael Bloom's Polite Authoritarianism

[emmaverybo]

Michael Bloomberg’s Polite Authoritarianism

He never hid his callous indifference to civil liberties; too many people just didn't care.

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Over the course of the 2004 Republican National Convention in New York City, the New York Police Department arrested nearly 2,000 people at protests. The mass arrests were indiscriminate. Bystanders and journalists were among those hauled to a filthy bus depot terminal that served as a makeshift holding pen.

Hundreds of people were charged with minor crimes so that they could be kept in jail for the duration of the convention. A judge held the city in contempt of court for failing to abide by a state policy that gives people in jail the right to see a judge or be released within 24 hours. And the city lied about how long it took to process the fingerprints of its detainees. In the end, no serious charges were brought against anyone, because the entire point was to keep people off the streets while Bush and his friends enjoyed their parties, and to dissuade others from attempting any further disruption

Even then, it was clear that the arrests were illegal. They were, as the civil rights attorney Norman Siegel put it at the time, “preventative detention.” The cops knew it, the city’s lawyers knew it even as they denied it, and the mayor knew it. I remember all this because I was there. I probably avoided arrest out of happenstance more than anything else. But most of the people who would go on to elect Michael Bloomberg to another two terms as mayor of New York City have probably forgotten the entire episode, because, like the mayor, they never really cared.

It took 10 years for the city to settle what the New York Civil Liberties Union described as “the largest protest settlement in history.” Bloomberg had been out of office for a few weeks when the settlement was announced. In his final term, he had used similar tactics against Occupy Wall Street.



https://newrepublic.com/article/156560/michael-bloombergs-polite-authoritarianism

[evertonfc]

1. lolol

wow, the hits keep coming when you start to do well. Biden supported a war that killed 300k civilians. Disqualified?

[Hassin Bin Sober]

2. Now that you mention it...

[emmaverybo]

3. Biden was not a Neo Con and not in bed with Bush. He like other democratic senators at the time

authorized Bush to go to war if WMD were found. Bloomberg is an entire other fish. He was full on
for the Neo-Con agenda, lies and all.

[BeckyDem]

4. Charles M. Blow @CharlesMBlow · 1h THIS is your guy?! --

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