|
|
March 15, 2003
CLARK AND SHAW'S DAY IN COURT
Dear friends,
We apologize for the group email but we wanted to let people know about what happened in court yesterday as soon as possible.
But first we want to thank everyone for such tremendous support--thank you for all of the letters. And thanks also to all of you who showed up yesterday.
The letters have been incredibly meaningful, not just in their support of our case but in the support they have shown for us as individuals. Having the presence of so many people in court was reassuring to both of us. We know many of you had to miss work to be there and we're grateful for such commitment.
We had two lawyers representing us yesterday--Lytle had John Upton from the National Lawyer's Guild and Emilie had Jennifer Botticelli from Legal Aid. They both thought the prosecution would offer us an ACD dismissal which basically means that if you keep a clean record for six months the case is dropped. Instead, the prosecution charged us with disorderly conduct which would require community service, a fine and a record. We chose to reject this charge which means our lawyers must produce a statement and evidence of our not guilty plea by April 4 and then we must appear in court again on April 30th. If at that time the Judge rejects our plea, we will have to go to trial. The lawyers felt pretty confident that once they could submit our account of the arrest, all of your letters--and the photographs of the innumerable flyers on the lamp post that we supposedly vandalized--that we would be offered the ACD dismissal. We discovered in court that the police report from our arrest listed our actions as vandalism and damage to property. They also stated that we were carrying tools of destruction (our tape guns) and posting illegal advertisements. While we were in court we heard many cases--many of which seemed more serious than our own (shoplifting, for instance)--and yet were often, in fact generally, dismissed.
Provided our baby doesn't arrive 6 days early, we'll be in court April 30th and we'll let you all know of the outcome. In the meantime, come Thursday the 20th for the second Baghdad Snapshot Action. Go to
And if you don't live in NYC you can download the images and post them in your hometowns. The organizers still need some help with materials, again see the website for more details.
And thanks again,
Emilie Clark and Lytle Shaw
March 11, 2003
NEXT BAGHDAD SNAPSHOT ACTION: MARCH 20
We're planning another action for Thursday, March 20th to coincide with the March 22nd march in New York City. We need help making it happen again here. Read on.
Our little action in New York has caused a bit of a stir, to date we've gotten emails from over 50 cities nationally and internationally that have participated--everywhere from Tokyo, Warsaw, Madrid, even the Yukon! This week, The New York Press wrote an article on the project and today we fielded an email from El Mundo.
With the machinations in the UN, and our own administration itching for a fight, we feel the time is ripe for another round. We're lining up a brand new set of pictures to post. And this time around we're going to coordinate the next New York action with all the new participants for a massive global day of postering.
To make this happen in New York we need either a cash infusion or someone to step up with a free copying solution. Please let us know if you A) would be able to contribute funds to the next campaign (and how much) or B) if you have a lead to for us to get the new flyers printed free before the 20th. Here's a rough list of expenses from the last go round:
Supplies: $100
Food and Bev: $75
9000 Copies: $330
Total: $505
We'd like to get even more posters on the street, but of course this could raise the costs. So please get in touch and help us figure out how to make this happen.
Feel free to forward this email to anyone you think might be able to help. Have them reply to this address with donations of printing or funds.
Thanks for being you. Look forward to seeing you on the 20th.
The Baghdad Snapshot Action Crew
newyork2baghdad@riseup.net
February 20, 2003
IN THEIR OWN WORDS: CLARK AND SHAW'S ARREST FOR POSTING SNAPSHOTS OF IRAQIS IN NYC
Many friends have asked for more details about our spending the night in jail for taping up flyers last Thursday, February 13. So we wanted to offer a description of what happened.
First of all, the flyers we were putting up were images of daily life in Baghdad taken by Paul Chan. As many of you know, Chan was in Baghdad in December and January as part of the Iraq Peace Team, a project of Voices in the Wilderness. Last Thursday night about fifty people met to pick up 8.5 x 11-inch copies of Chan¹s photos and begin posting them around Manhattan. The goal, of course, was to particularize and humanize our soon-to-be victims.
At about 11:20pm, three plain-clothes cops (two men, one woman) in a converted taxi approached us at the corner of Mercer and Prince where we were in the process of taping a poster to a metal lamppost. (We were not using wheat paste). After flashing their badges, they asked if we had permission to poster and what we were putting up. Their next question was if we were going to the march on Saturday. We were told that postering was a "quality of life infraction" and that we would have to go to the station. We explained that Emilie was 7 months pregnant and asked if it was possible (since we both had our drivers¹ licenses) for them to write us tickets instead. They refused. We were cuffed, and put in the taxi-cab, and taken
to the first precinct, on Varick. They explained that this was just a "procedure" and that it would only take an hour or so.
At the station we waited in our separate cells for about two hours while they fed our information into their computer system. During this period five NYPD officers were more or less continually involved processing our arrest. At around 1:30am they announced that because their fingerprinting machine was not functioning they would have to take us to a different precinct for the fingerprinting. We were led out of the cells again, cuffed, packed back into a car, and driven to a precinct in Chinatown. Here Lytle was put back in a cell while Emilie was fingerprinted and vice versa. The fingerprinting machine did not work well and Emilie¹s fingers were rolled over and over again, sprayed with Windex, and then pressed yet again. The officer appeared to be having a hard time with the machine. No one offered to help him; and he didn¹t seek help. This process took about an hour, after which we were again cuffed, led out to the car and driven back to the first precinct.
They explained that after our information was sent to Albany it would take about an hour and so long as we didn¹t have any warrants, we could be let go with a court date. But at 5 am we were still locked up, with no information. Eventually (just after 5) Lytle¹s clearance came through. Emilie¹s, however, did not. And they could not tell us why. Only after repeated questions were we finally told that Emilie¹s finger prints had not been legible (though the machine approved or rejected each print at the time of its initial printing, and this was the reason it had taken so long in the first place). Emilie, we were told, would have to be taken to yet a third precinct and fingerprinted again. At this point we began to protest our treatment. Emilie had a bloody nose and was feeling weak and sick. She is, to say it again, seven months pregnant, and so staying up all night in a piss-soaked cell is just not a good idea. The only water she received was sent in by her brother, Andrew (who had been postering with us and was, now, luckily, waiting outside).
We asked, again, if we could have a paper ticket written. But they refused again. This time Emilie was taken alone to "Transit," a police station in the ACE station at Canal. Andrew and Lytle followed on foot. They then waited for Emilie for two more hours while the police re-printed Emilie and then cuffed her to a chair, while her information was sent, again, to Albany. At just before 7am Emilie was released.
This, then, is the basic narrative of what happened. But it¹s important to mention that this entire time we were being worked on by the police in a variety of ways‹and it¹s as much what they said (as the base fact of our incarceration) that gives a picture of how they wanted to intimidate us.
They wanted to talk. Having locked up a pregnant woman and kept her awake all night, they now wanted to appeal to what they supposed would be her protective, maternal instincts. They offered the friendly advice not to go to the march on Saturday, February 15. This, they all thought, would not be a good place for a pregnant woman. They expected violence. Mace was mentioned. They stressed that 8,000 cops would be there. They also emphasized that many of them would be rookies and suggested that they would be looking for violence. They said they wouldn¹t want to read our names in the deaths column of the newspaper. When Emilie was escorted to the bathroom, the female cop again laid into her about the danger of going to the protests while pregnant.
They also mentioned terrorism: they¹d heard there might be suicide bombers at the rally. (The logic in this one was stunning: just as Americans begin to manifest large-scale public dissent for the murdering of Iraqis and Afghanis, the U.S.-based Al Qaeda cells from those countries would specifically seek out that constituency for staging its first suicide bombing in the U.S.). We¹re all exasperatedly familiar with how this larger threat of terror has been played, again and again, as a way to shut down civil rights. In these last statements we saw it in its most reduced and illogical form.
Both of us are physically okay, though extremely angry.
We hope to organize a presence at our March 13 court date and will be in touch as that develops.
Once again, thank to all of you who have shown us your support over the last week.
Lytle Shaw and Emilie Clark
February 17, 2003
TWO ARRESTED FOR POSTING PICTURES OF IRAQIS IN NEW YORK CITY
(NEW YORK CITY)-- Artist Emilie Clark and writer Lytle Shaw were arrested for posting pictures of people from Baghdad in Soho late Thursday night. Both have been released. A court date has been set to prosecute the two for showing New York City the people who will die in a possible war against Iraq.
Clark and Shaw were members of the Baghdad Snapshot Action Crew. Based in New York City, the crew of 75 artists and activists began posting simple flyers with pictures of ordinary Iraqi citizens around New York City, in anticipation and solidarity of the February 15th anti-war rally.
The pictures were taken by artist Paul Chan, who recently returned from Baghdad as a member of the Iraq Peace Team, a project of the Chicago based, Nobel Peace Prize nominated activist group, Voices in the Wilderness.
Clark and Shaw were taping the letter sized flyer on a lamppost at the corner of Mercer and Prince Streets when three undercover policemen arrested them. They were charged with criminal misdemeanors. Shaw was released after five and a half hours. Clark spent seven hours in jail before her release. Clark is pregnant with her first son, and is expecting this Spring.
The arrests were a clear attempt by the police to intimidate New Yorkers to stay away from the protest. “If there wasn't a march on Saturday we wouldn't have been arrested.,” Shaw said. While in custody, police harassed Clark and Shaw with talk about how dangerous the rally will be. “They kept saying how mace was going to be used on all the protesters,” Clark said. “And then they said they had heard suicide bombers might attack the rally.”
What was most disturbing to Shaw was how the cops tried to justify their actions against the two. "They tried to appeal to us sentimentally," Shaw said, "as though the repression they were enacting was really in our best interest."
"They wanted to send a message that we should stay home because it [the protest] was dangerous, and they didn't want to see us hurt."
The court date is set for March 13.
For more info:
newyork2baghdad@yahoo.com
Other links:
http://unitedforpeace.org
Join the movement
http://iraqpeaceteam.org
Help them in Baghdad
February 14, 2003
BAGHDAD SNAPSHOT ACTION GOES ONLINE
AND WORLDWIDE
(New York City)-- On February 13, 2003, teams of artists and activists postered New York City with thousands of copies of snapshots from Baghdad. Quiet and casual, the snapshots show a part of Baghdad we rarely see: the part with people in it.
The snapshots were taken by a friend of ours who just got back from Baghdad working with the Iraq Peace Team (link below). Yes, he saw Iraqis suffering and struggling. But he also saw Iraqis dancing and laughing. This moved him because laughing under the weight of the UN sanctions and the threat of an absurd war is no easy task. We were moved because the people in the pictures remind us of our friends & family.
Thousands of snapshot posters now pepper Manhattan, Brooklyn, and Queens. We want to show New York the people who will get both liberty and death in one fatal stroke if this war begins. We want you to show them in your city. The entire snapshot collection is online as pdfs. Print them out and poster them anywhere and everywhere.
For more info:
newyork2baghdad@yahoo.com
Baghdad Snapshot Action Spots, in no particular order: Manhattan, Queens, Brooklyn, San Fran, Philadelphia, Princeton, Boston, Chicago, Los Angeles, Paris, Warsaw, Omaha, (your city here)
Other links:
http://unitedforpeace.org
Join the movement
http://iraqpeaceteam.org
Help them in Baghdad
|
|
