Dissent Earns Black Man a Police Beating

This story is quite simply disgusting. And frightening. Because it sums up all that is wrong with our country in the Bush era.

A minister and African American man, the Rev. Lennox Yearwood, head of the Hip Hop Caucus, was prevented from attending the Petraeus hearing by the Capitol Hill Police who not only arrested him, but gang tackled him, tore ligaments in his leg, and then charged him with assault on a police officer and disorderly conduct. Watch this video and decide for yourself (via Black Agenda Report):

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Let me be blunt. This is police brutality. It is a violation of Rev. Yearwood’s constitutional rights. It’s the face of fascism, frankly, and racism. Rev. Yearwood was calmly standing in line, waiting to enter the hearing room when the police, without cause (for he gave them none), without justification (certainly not any legal justification), and without any shame, apparently, jumped on him, broke his leg, and then arrested several other white activists (including Cindy Sheehan) who saw what happened to Rev. Yearwood, without breaking any bones or acting like a rugby scrum had suddenly broken out in the halls of Congress.

Here’s what Glen Ford of BAR had to say about this “incident.”

It was reminiscent of black-and-white footage from the civil rights era: an African American man of the cloth, seeking to enter a public forum, threatening no one, is tackled football-style by six policemen, breaking his leg. The victim is then charged with assault on police and disorderly conduct – criminalized for exercising his constitutional rights. […]

The video shows clearly that Rev. Yearwood posed no danger to anyone, and was acting in an orderly and civil manner. But he was a marked man. That’s what police do – they mark the usual suspects, and Rev. Yearwood was, for the Capitol Police, a marked man. Yearwood had been part of a demonstration at House Judiciary Committee chairman John Conyers’ office, a few weeks back, in which the demonstrators demanded that Conyers follow through on his own well-documented evidence calling for impeachment of President Bush and others in his criminal administration. Yearwood was among those arrested. This time, the Capitol Police had apparently been given the go-ahead to preemptively use full force to prevent Rev. Yearwood from getting anywhere near the Angel of Endless War, General Petraeus, as the uniformed liar made the case that American troops should remain in Iraq indefinitely. Rev. Yearwood had to be taken down, despite the fact that the video evidence shows no sign of Yearwood posing a threat.

White anti-war activist Cindy Sheehan and eight others were gently taken into custody during the same incident – but the Black man, Rev. Yearwood, had to be physically incapacitated by the Capitol Hill Police. If anyone believes that the Democratic Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi, does not have influence over the conduct of the Capitol Hill Police, they are fools. I speak as a former Capitol Hill correspondent. Pelosi and her wing of the War Party conspire with Republicans to suppress dissent against the Iraq war. […]

It’s hard to argue with Mr. Ford’s assessment of the situation, not after watching that video. I’m ashamed of our representatives, Democrat and Republican alike, if any of them had anything to do with using the Capitol Hill Police as their “brute squad” to keep the riff-raff (i.e., antiwar activists and other “trouble makers”) out of the Petraeus hearing. For more on this story go here (Democracy Now) and/or here (Common Dreams).