Members of a group who went to Greensburg, Kan., to assist in relief efforts after a May 5 tornado destroyed most of the town were forcibly ejected by police on the scene for being “federal security threats.”
Five members of the anarcho-communist group Kansas Mutual Aid, who traveled to Greensburg May 12 and discovered police keeping out relief workers and seizing firearms, returned to Greensburg on May 19 to provide further assistance to local residents who were attempting to salvage their possessions and clean up as best they could.
But before they could set up their operations, Olathe police officer Ty Moeder, one of the police officers from many jurisdictions across the state, who happened to know one of the group, detained the group “to see if you are affiliated with the anarchists.”
As it turns out, they were the anarchists the police wanted no help from.
Officer Moeder ordered me to step away from the rest of the relief workers and speak with him. “You’re being ordered to leave and not return. This is not negotiable, not appealable. You can’t change it. If you return you’ll be arrested on site [sic]. And believe me, you don’t want to push that right now. This system is pretty messed up, and you wouldn’t be issued bail. You’d disappear in the system.”
I asked repeatedly what we had done and why we were being ordered to leave the city. “You’re part of a dangerous anarchist group that will only drain our security resources,” he responded. “We’ve been monitoring your website and e-mails, we know what kind of agenda you have.”
“So this is about our political beliefs?” I asked.
“No,” he responded. “This is about you being federal security threats. Kansas Mutual Aid is not welcome in this city, end of story. I know you are going through legitimate means to work in the city, and you’re [sic] story seems picture perfect, but we know who you are, and you’re not allowed here.”
We were ordered back into our car and escorted out of the city by several police vehicles with their lights flashing, and left just outside the city. — Dave Strano, Kansas Mutual Aid
In 2005, some protesters affiliated with the group were arrested after chaining themselves to the door of a Lawrence military recruitment office. And in 2004, protesters were arrested for protesting a dinner in honor of Rudy Giuliani and Bob Dole; the charges were later dropped.
In 2004, agents from the Federal Bureau of Investigation questioned members of the group, family members and neighbors about a plot to detonate bombs at the Democratic National Convention in Boston, Mass., charges they vehemently denied. It later came out that the FBI had questioned, and in some cases raided, anarchist groups around the nation.
Strano described the group as entirely “nonviolent” in its protests against war and the encroaching police state.
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Ultimately, the war supporters in Congress prevailed in the vote on the resolution. Still, the vote was significant because it places every member of Congress on the record as supporting or not supporting the unconstitutional, costly, violent occupation of a country that never attacked us. This vote should serve as an important reminder to the American people of where their representatives really stand when it comes to policing the world, empire building, and war.
Gardner Goldsmith explains why claims by politicians that consumers can become "irrational" and why claims by the same politicians that government can help "fix" markets are both false and misleading. He also explains what the terms Praxeology and Epistemology mean, which is key in understanding how to place free markets in their proper place among human history.
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geri
May 23, 2007
In other words you are a danger if you don’t believe and support everything the Bush Administration is doing and saying.
Police state here we come.
Lord Metroid
May 23, 2007
It is official… Police state a’la martial law anywhere anytime and don’t dare to have forbidden ideas or you will end up in guantanamo bay.
Country has become totally rotten and gained a smell of nationalism.
a reader
May 23, 2007
The RSS feed is broken — no longer shows full text.
Verbos
May 24, 2007
@geri
I think Bush’s exact words were, “If your not with us, your against us”.
geri
May 24, 2007
Which puts his administration’s mentality in a nutshell. They sound like children on the playground who have the ball and want to make up all the rules.
Sorry, I just can’t go along with the stupidity and childishness.
Thunderbird
May 24, 2007
Don’t you poor uneducated masses worry, big brother knows what’s best for you. just keep watching TV and paying your taxes and everything will be alriiiight…. because the government looooves you and would neeever do anything to haaarm you… just do what we say and everything will be fiiine…
Dan Clore
May 26, 2007
There’s some recent history that might put this event into perspective:
So, in the case of Katrina, we see that while the government disaster relief effort became a second disaster itself, the Common Ground Collective, an anarchist (or rather, anarchist-leaning, as not all members were necessarily anarchists themselves) relief group organized on anarchist lines (note: anarchists do not oppose organization, they oppose involuntary, hierarchical organization in favor of voluntary, non-hierarchical self-organization) did a good job providing disaster relief.
I suspect that rather than any fears about Kansas Mutual Aid making trouble, this really came from concern that they would do a good job providing disaster relief, with the attendant good publicity for anarchists and anarchism and bad publicity for government.
David
May 27, 2007
The police state is not coming, it is already here. We have routine police checkpoints here in New Orleans that occur almost daily now. Why the checkpoints? To check for sobriety of course. You can now be stopped and interrogated by police just for merely being on a public street. If you don’t produce your papers and effects, you are ticketed or arrested. Probable cause and warrants are no longer necessary. Thus, American police = gestapo.
I am filing a suit in federal court next week to try and stop this practice altogether as unconstitutional. May God be with us in this final fight for man over the state.
David Kervin, Jr.
Attorney at Law
New Orleans, LA
LAW
May 29, 2007
We have rules and laws to protect others. IF anyone breaks them including cops, they should be held accountable. No one is above the law. If we did not have laws, our country would be uncivilized. We would be like Cave men. Who needs more problems???
Angel
Jun 16, 2007
Of course government officials don’t want political activists helping where they have stopped. That is exactly how Hamas has taken over Gaza. If you want to control a population, be their hero, bring them food and supplies. No guerrilla worth their grain of salt ever became the enemy of the township they were trying to take. Just like the lack of reasoning of going into Iraq. If our government had decided to take a deep breath, thought about what was in OUR best interests (not just $$$ from govt.contracts)and use the war chest budget to give everyone a rebate through DMV for exchanging their gas-hog cars for an electric car- that would have been the end of the story. Really, there are simple solutions but no one is asking US. People with simple solutions are usually the security risks. Folks, just be flexible. We will be contorting in ways never imaginable within the next 15 years.
Hmm
Jun 17, 2007
Well, speaking from a federal government perspective, I totally agree to not allow any variety of a radical group into a disaster area when they do not possess background checks or have a history of being stable in their dispositions.
Anarchists are instigators unto themselves, and have a solitary personal agenda already in place that bluntly advertises that they distrust the government or any form of governmental institutions. -So why would the government allow anyone who hates them to be amongst them? They would only cause aggravation, discourse and eventual fighting on the incident’s scene. A disaster and incident scene must be tightly controlled. Everyone is under extreme stress and does not want anyone of an adversarial nature involved; they also do not have disaster response training (also certified by the government), credit checks, criminal background checks, etc. in place.
What if one of them gets their hands on sensitive disaster paperwork (that contains social security numbers, cell phone numbers) and decides to mess with a government official or a disaster victim’s personal data just to be subversive?
Anarchists cannot snub this culture’s governmental structure and then offer assistance at the same time to the people they despise. They should stick to thier own agendas by staying at home and keep bitching and moaning about a system they cannot change.
david
Jul 11, 2007
The ‘Federal Government’ is exactly the problem. What is described in the post above is exactly the definition of fascism. Just because there is an emergency does not mean it requires police lockdown and exclusion of volunteer help. That type of thinking is extremely flawed and dangerous and is the point of this entire site. ‘We the People’ thanks but no thanks to ‘Federal Government’. Seeing the ‘help’ given by the feds after Katrina the people obvsiously would better off without federal help. Go back to Nazi Germany and . . .
Stud Muffin
Aug 03, 2007
David Strano and Kansas Mutual Aid are a bunch of losers, who are more interested in getting their names in the paper then doing anything constructive.