John's Blog: December 2003

The Story of My Arrest

Portland, Maine. Wednesday, March 19, 2003. Approximately 8:30 PM. Single male apprehended walking down Congress Ave. carrying sign. Booked on obstruction.

So what happened, was, I went downtown on the day after the war started to join the local protest march. (Why?) In the early evening, the crowd took to the streets, with several police cars accompanying us to keep an eye on things. At this point, we were moving along, and the police did not have a problem with our being in the street.

Later on in the evening, as we were gathered around an intersection, some of the protestors began blocking traffic by standing in the road. The police arrested those individuals. During this time, I was standing on the sidewalk on a corner, not having planned to engage in any civil disobediance, and not seeing how it would be very constructive to do so. The word came down that the police would not tolerate our being in the streets any longer, we would have to stay on the sidewalk.

Shortly thereafter, the crowd began to move along. Someone encouraged everyone to get in the street despite the police order, so we did, and kept walking. A cruiser soon came up behind us and announced that everyone needed to get out of the street. Most did. I did not. I continued walking immediately next to the curb, allowing plenty of room for cars to pass, still moving, holding up my sign. I was given a second warning to get out of the street, I kept going, I was handcuffed, put in the cruiser, and taken in.

At this point, you are probably saying it was my own damn fault for not getting out of the street, and you are right. In my own defense, I will say that the whole thing took only about 30 seconds. I was in the process of working through my annoyance at the police's inconsistancy of allowing us to walk in the street before but not now, annoyance it the immaturity of the others to taunt the police by getting in the street but getting back out as soon as they were told to, and considering the fact that I was not at all blocking traffic and wondering whether they could still arrest me if I wasn't. So the answer was yes, they could. Or at least, they did.

Mary was not happy to receive the phone call from the police station at about 9:30 at night, but in the end, she didn't have to come down to get me. We were all bailed out by the local Peace Action Maine director (thank you, Greg!!). So that wrapped things up until the arraignment a few weeks later.

Long story short, I decided to go to trial and represent myself, having been given the opportunity at the arraignment to get some free advice from a public defense lawyer. I prepared what I felt was a pretty strong defense, complete with a reading of the actual statute, and measurements of the width of the street to show how much room there would have been to get around me. But once there, I ended up accepting a deal with the District Attorney's office instead. For $50 court fees (only half the amount they wanted us to pay to plead "no contest" at the arraignment!), they offered to "file" the case (not pursue it) for a year, and if I have no more incidents, they will drop it "without predjudice".

My primary aim at the trial was to conclude it as favorably as possible without saying that I was guilty, because I didn't feel I was. (Basically, the statute clearly states "unreasonable" obstruction, and I don't feel that walking along the side of the street hugging the curb is unreasonable.) Since the DA's deal did not involve any comment on the charge whatsoever, I felt that it met my requirements at the time.

Any second thoughts I have had since then about not going forward with the trial center around the appropriateness of the police's actions. I can't agree with those who say that the police gave me an order and I didn't obey it, so I was wrong. Unwise, yes, but legally, not wrong. If I was not truly obstructing, then their order was an unlawful one. And in this country, you can't be found guilty for merely disobeying an order, no matter who it is from, it has to be a lawful order. (Says so right there in the statute.) I appreciate that the police's aim at the moment was crowd control, and that my arrest was really a tactical move to continue to assert their control of the situation. And if so, then what do they care whether I'm later found guilty or innocent? That's not even their point. So why not continue and (hopefully) be found innocent, and therefore establish what I can now only suspect but can never have proven for everyone else to know -- that I was doing nothing wrong? I'm not so egotistical or naive to think that an acquittal would suddenly make the police sit up and take notice that, my gosh, they were wrong and they better not do that again. Yet, the fact remains that (I believe) it was an unlawful arrest, and if they know that they can make unlawful arrests with impunity, because the majority of them will go unchallenged, isn't that a problem? Even if you agree with the practical need to do this to some extent for valid public safety reasons in a volatile situation, isn't it still a slippery slope?

What do you think?

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Affirmative Action

I have recently been re-reading John Irving's memoirs, The Imaginary Girlfriend, which is included in a larger volume of essays and short stories, Trying to Save Piggy Sneed. In it, he explicitly admits that he was no stellar student growing up, and was able to attend the prestigious Exeter Academy in New Hampshire only because his father was on the faculty. He further concludes that the work habits he was forced to develop to overcome his academic weakness (which might possibly fit the definition of a learning disability today) and thereby keep up with the other students, have also informed his work habits as a writer, enabling him to become the successful author that he is today.

Those who rail against affirmative action in the racial realm should take note. Here is a blatant example of discrimination based on an accident of birth. I am led to believe that the practice of guaranteed enrollment for offspring is a standard benefit of employment at a private school. (I wouldn't know first-hand, having come up through the public school system myself.) The situation is not as blatant at many colleges and universities, where acceptance is not necessarily guaranteed for those with alumni parents, although bonus points are certainly given for it. In either of these cases, isn't this grounds for a lawsuit by some less well connected student who wasn't accepted, who could claim that they were better academically qualified than the "faculty brat" or alumi child who did get in?

I am not necessarily advocating such lawsuits. However, it should be kept in mind by those who are so quick to point out analogous injustices on racial criteria. Inconsistent application of that criticism betrays a double standard in our society in general, if not actually in the minds of those criticizing. I would wager that a great many federal justices and members of congress have benefited from the kind of affirmative action that gave them a head start for who their parents are, whether they realize it or not. Certainly, we have suspicions about our Commander In Chief's admittance to Harvard.

Which is not to say that's bad. We can see in John Irving's case that he was able to overcome his deficiencies and go on to a successful career as a productive member of society. Would this have been possible at a less demanding public school? (To ask the question the other way around, would I myself have had better opportunities in life had I gotten my start at a more academically demanding private school?) Creating these kinds of opportunities is precisely what affirmative action was originally all about. I hope that we can once more, as a society, begin to appreciate this fact, rather than only see access to education as a zero-sum game in which helping some to win can only be accomplished by limiting others.

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