Obama’s 101st day marked by protest

Sometimes the best camera is the camera you have.

So it was today when we stumbled upon the 100 Days Campaign’s civil disobedience in front of the White House with only our iPhone.

Reportedly 60 people were arrested (this reporter witnessed what he can most precisely say was many or several tens of people, so that jives). As Obama gave remarks in the main foyer of the White House about the Chrysler bankruptcy, just yards away dozens were being arrested in the midst of a peaceful protest of conscience on a matter of human rights.

Members of this group have been holding vigil outside the White House every day for the past many days, presumably all of the previous 100 days of Obama’s term. They’ve highlighted the plight of Uighers and others who have been held without charge or cleared for release, or both — and those who have died in custody.

While Obama has promised to close the detention facility, the group takes issue with all such facilities (including Bagram, Afghanistan) and joined literally behind the banner “justice delayed is justice denied”; they do not believe action is being taken fast enough.

Hundreds of tourists and local office workers, many likely administration employees, gathered around or witnessed the proceeding as they passed by.

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An ugly morning in DC

Click through to view the set at Flickr, with captions. Also see these photos by Jake Cunningham, some of which more closely show demonstrators being pushed into the police car by police.


The sun is hitting DC hard this morning. It’s going to be another hot one.

Another day of protests against the World Bank and IMF is planned. I hear that last night some activists took to the streets of Georgetown in the wee hours of the morning.

I’ve got a lot of questions about the choices made by some to use certain tactics and the posturing of some of these activists — but analysis and judgement of that seems irrelevant to what I witnessed Saturday morning. I went out as an independent photographer, a role I have played for years here in DC.

I saw it get ugly in Foggy Bottom.

Whatever relevance you thought the demonstrations had to the issues they were ostensibly protesting, I don’t think it was their fault that it got ugly.

Captain Herold, of the DC MPD, who appeared to be the officer in command, and who is known to activists as being in charge of the political unit — police intelligence on activists — is attributed in the Washington Post for most of their description of what took place. Herold says “the police were put in danger when they were surrounded as the crowd turned” — this is not true. If the police were put in danger or were surrounded, it is only after they surged into the crowd after an awkward and sudden attempt to stop a crowd that was, in fact, mostly surrounded by police.

If it wasn’t for a key moment where one officer came to the fore, the morning easily could have been forgettable.

I know a PNC bank branch had its windows smashed-out earlier — but that was a different time, a different neighborhood, possibly by entirely different people. I saw no behavior of that sort down around the bank.

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Rumsfeld paved the way for torture

Donald Rumsfeld at National Press Club, Sep 2003

I’m looking at a copy of the Senate Armed Services Committee report entitled “Inquiry Into the Treatment Of Detainees In U.S. Custody, November 20, 2008 (Released, April 22, 2009).

I’ve read some passages near the end about Captain Donovan’s protests within the chain of command, it seems, against the justifications and just of certain tactics. It was his opinion that it would threaten the very programs seemingly used to justify the tactics. The implication as I read it, is that these tactics threatened the safety of U.S. troops in more than one way: by invalidating the programs the tactics evolved out of, which were meant to protect U.S. personnel, and by threatening U.S. personnel in that such tactics might be more likely to be used against now that the U.S. was applying them to perceived and alleged enemies.

This was in 2003.

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