The Bill of Rights is your friend.

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A great little video from the ACLU on how to handle yourself if you’re stopped by the Gestapo.

In their video the examples have to do mostly with drugs and graffiti, but cops use these same tactics to intimidate and search activists – and when it comes to cops searching activists they can use just about ANYTHING to fabricate “evidence” that you’re a terrorist. If you’ve got a gas can or a bottle of bleach or some fertilizer for your garden in your trunk you’ve got “bomb making materials”. If you’ve got a book by Ward Churchill or Noam Chomsky you’re carrying Extremist Propaganda, and so on. I had a friend who got charged with felony “Conspiracy to Overthrow the United States Government” charges a few years ago because we were staying with some activists who were building lockboxes for a nonviolent lockdown protest and the police said that the lockboxes were “pipe bombs.” The charges eventually got thrown out because there was absolutely no evidence, but it cost him thousands of dollars in legal fees and 4 years to get free of it. Not cool.

For now at least the bill of Rights is still standing, barely. Those rights are the last vestiges of the Anti-Federalist movement that fought against the creation of the Federal government because they believed it was too powerful, too centralized, and would evolve into a tyranny. They were right, of course. But because they fought so hard against it we at least have a few legal rights that we can use to protect our right to resist. For now anyway.

of course, with George W. “Stop throwing the Constitution in my face … it’s just a goddamned piece of paper!” Bush in office we might not have them for much longer. So use ‘em while you got ‘em, k? allright, class dismissed.

Posted: September 2nd, 2007 under politrix, video.
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