Police and National Guard Crackdown on Impromptu Protest at Penn Station in Manhattan

Author: Stephen DeVoy

NEW YORK - A small crowd of approximately fifty protesters unexpectedly entered New York City's Penn Station at approximate 4:45 PM, Saturday the 15th of February, after the main protests near the U.N.  Chanting "Trim the Bush," "No Blood For Oil," and singing "Give Peace a Chance," the small protest began to swell as travelers in and around Penn Station began to join the protesters in their chants.

About five minutes into the protest, a large group of National Guardsmen emerged from their hidden posts and took up position in the center of the Station's Amtrak lounge area.  An even larger number of Amtrak and NYPD officers circled the area of the protest and confronted the protestors.  As a passerby visiting the station after the main protests, I took advantage of the situation by turning on my digital audio recorder and snapping photos of the protest and the growing number of Gestapo.

It is well known that all levels of government are currently involved in photographing protesters and dissidents at rallies.  Turning my camera upon the security forces resulted in a quick and angry response from the officer in charge at the scene.  The officer demanded that I stop taking photos of police and military personnel.  I caught most of the officer's diatribe on digital audio, though some of it is hard to hear as I was attempting to conceal the audio recording device during the confrontation.  I managed to exit the situation unarrested and in possession of both the photographs and the audio.  These photographs and the audio clip have now been published online.  Follow the links at the top of this page to listen.

As a child I often read of American tourists arrested in the "communist block" for taking similar photographs.  The hypocrisy of a government that reserves for itself the right to photograph its citizens while threatening arrest of those who record police actions speaks strongly to the rising state of fascism in the United States.  Interestingly, the officer in charge, responsible for the threats of arrest, refused to give me his name or badge number.  His only reply was that continued questioning would result in my arrest.

Sieg Heil!