The Village Voice: Guantanamo on the Hudson by Sarah Ferguson (Andre 3000 pissed)

The Village Voice: Nation: Guantanamo on the Hudson: "At a press conference on Wednesday morning on the West Side Highway—just opposite the warehouse detention center that activists have dubbed "Guantanamo on the Hudson"—activists simultaneously denounced and exulted at the extraordinary number of people who have been arrested protesting the Republican Convention: 1200 on Tuesday, nearly 1800 over the week.

That's the largest number of arrests in the history of party conventions, they noted, and coming on the heals of the hundreds of thousands who marched on Sunday, the strongest show of dissent ever mounted against a president.

But now comes the familiar litany of stories of abuse in jail, people denied access to lawyers, locked up for no reason or held for unnecessarily long stays. Bails have gone as high as $200,000 (for the kid nabbed during Sunday's puppet burning incident), while protesters are being taken to the hospital for skin reactions and asthma attacks from the chemicals and diesel soaked into the concrete floor at the Pier 57 detention center, a former bus depot, where reports are that as many as 40 protesters at a time had been crammed into the 10' by 20' pens covered in wire mesh.

Andre 3000 of Outkast, pissed that a member of his group was still in jail. Earlier today, 55 detainees in Central Booking launched a hunger strike to protest conditions at Pier 57 and their extended detentions. They include several bystanders caught up in the sweeps."


by Sarah Ferguson
The Village Voice