i too was in dc ("the belly of the beast") for the demos and worked as a street medic with the medical collective. i personally witnessed similar acts of violence by the police. for the most part, with some exceptions, the mainstream media, as part of the global multinational corporate power structure did not in any way provide an accurate representation of what really happened there. their reporting either ignored the issue almost entirely in relation to the importance of what was happening there, or when they did choose to report on it, they indicated that the police were doing a great job maintaining order in the face of violent protestors. that was so totally untrue that it angers me each time i hear anything about it or read another article that blatantly lies to the people. but we have to wise up and recognize that the mainstream media are now themselves part of the problem, as they are in many cases mulinational corporate profit mongers themselves. when we have mega mergers between aol and time/warner, you have to expect that their best interests are not served by representing the accurate events which occurred when the people try to reform the system.

the event i relate is not just hearsay. i was actually there in the moment and personally witnessed the action go down at the corner of pennsylvania avenue and 15th street around 12:00 noon on sunday. I saw a phalanx of cops in riot gear, who had just off-loaded from a couple of buses, march down the street into a group of peaceful activists who were sitting in the street in an area in front of police barricades that had already blocked the street. behind the barricades were additional cops in gear. the people were doing nothing except expressing their right to free speech and to congregate as guaranteed in the constitution. the cops started beating them with billie clubs and dragging them and pummeling them and rolling them over and over on the concrete, scraping up their skin. i saw two men beaten repeatedly with clubs in the head, torso and back area. i helped pull one girl away from a huge cop who was screaming at me while i did it. this was a slender girl about 18 or 19 years old who had been billie-clubbed so hard in the stomach by this cop that she couldn't catch her breath to breathe and was having to vomit because of the force of the attack. i got her to a sideline, safer area and breathing again and then i ran to where a 59-year-old a.p. photographer had been beaten on the head by a cop with a club and who was bleeding from the head wound. he suffered a concussion from the beating. there was a large pool of his blood in the street. another man was kneeling next to him in the street and had placed a gauze dressing on his head. i pulled some additional dressings from my medic pack and reinforced the dressing and we got his head bandaged up. he had to go to the hospital and was brought there later by an associate of his. i went toward the two men lying in the street, but by that time some other medics from the medic team had moved into the area and were attending to them. one of the men had some fractured ribs from the attack and had to go to the hospital. i believe the other man also went to the hospital. this is how the cops "maintained order against violent protestors".

never for one moment forget that the police are not there to protect the people anymore. they are agents of the corporate capitalist state and their purpose is to guarantee the safety of the multi- national corporations and their delegate minions so that business and trade will not be hindered. also remember, as said by nationalist theorist alfredo rocco, "the fascist economy is an organized economy. it is organized by the producers themselves, under the supreme direction and control of the state". we must also realize that our "democracy" is only allowed to go so far, until it interferes with the global multinational plan for complete dominance of our Earth for their profit.

Rob, you were very brave in facing up to the face of the beast and in speaking truth to power. your picture showed the true face of what our "democracy" really looks like. keep on with your work and make sure that these "people" pay for their brutality.

in solidarity for an Earth restored,
marie