April 12, 2005
Citizen video undercuts city prosecutions of RNC arrestees
Last summer, New York City police arrested nearly two thousand people during the Republican National Convention. Day after day, the mayor and the chief of police got on the tv and radio news, condemning protestors for "rioting," "resisting arrest," and generally causing mayhem that dimmed the event's sheen before the nation. Meanwhile, arrestees began emerging from the the city's detention center at Pier 57, on the far west side of Manhattan, often denying that they'd done anything confrontational--some saying they were not protesting at all, and only guilty only of being in the wrong place at the wrong time.
Now, the participatory panopticon is rendering the events of those days more transparent...read the rest at Worldchanging.