Madison's Capital Times newspaper ran a disturbing online dispatch over the weekend suggesting just how Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker has handled some of those in the crowds demonstrating against his further union-busting adventures. The news report describes how a pair of peaceful protesters were arrested at the Capitol Wednesday during a Wisconsin Senate hearing on the Republican Party's so-called "right-to-work" bill.
The pair, who like many others were kept from entering the hearing room to testify against the bill, were handcuffed, then, according to Cap Times reporter Steven Elbow, "taken to a Department of Administration (DOA) facility about a mile away and released without charges before being turned out with no gloves, no cash and no transportation back," despite having no winter coats and facing bone-chilling winter weather. A video of the arrest is available at the link above.
That account of Wisconsin state cops shipping protesters off to an undisclosed holding pen came out about the same time as The Guardian's report of a shadowy detention center the Chicago Police have created to handle their own collection of suspected enemies of the state.
One other noteworthy aspect of the Madison protest story: The detained woman is Kelly Albrecht, a demonstrator well known to Capitol Police and Wisconsin State Police. In 2012 she was the Democratic nominee who ran against state Rep. Robin Vos, a Republican who later became Assembly Majority Leader.
Albrecht said she was arrested when she went looking for a bathroom and state police officers ordered her to stay behind a cordon. Instead of being allowed to use the bathroom, she was handcuffed and -- without her winter jacket -- driven to the DOA facility a mile away. She and her fellow demonstrator were released an hour later without being charged and told to find their own way back. The pair eventually caught a city bus and returned to the Capitol. But not before they were frisked and Albrecht's purse searched for "contraband."
This latest incident of state police crossing the civil-rights Rubicon dovetails with Walker's campaign comments last week about how, if he could "handle" 100,000 protesters demonstrating against his anti-union law four years ago, he could handle ISIS terrorism in the Mideast.
And what do you know: In a strange and narrow sense, Walker makes a small, if skewed point. Because, based on the Cap Times dispatch, Walker is on a smaller scale acting pretty much as George W. Bush did in running roughshod over civil liberties, especially the rights of the accused (and, worse, the never accused).
The State and Capitol Police under Walker's ultimate control are more than ever handling "suspects" who oppose his policies with the same kind, if not degree, of careless authoritarianism that Bush employed to handle alleged terrorists -- or people who just seemed to be in the general vicinity of terrorism and who were rounded up indiscriminately.
Both the Bush and Walker administrations identified a putative list of alleged and dangerous opponents, on what often have turned out to be flimsy legal grounds. Both have presided over operations in which cops or soldiers have dragged people to out-of-sight, out-of-mind detention facilities.
The only difference: Those captured under Bush's presidential watch have languished for years in foreign-based "rendition" or prison camps, on very rare occasion granted only the most grudging respect for their rights, when even under especially licentious military law, they have never been accused.
Whereas, under Walker's state government the past four years, reputed (and I emphasize that word) Wisconsin "troublemakers" who protest his policies in public are often arrested but released without being charged; or, when they are charged, often go free when prosecutors or courts throw out the cases. Which looks a lot more like harassment than law enforcement, like an attempt to stifle dissent by making free speech harder to express.
This is a cynical approach, especially given that it comes from the Walker political camp that complains bitterly about intrusions on its own free speech when merely questioned about its shady, secret, legally dubious campaign activities.
Thus, trampling civil liberties in the once-progressive Badger state seems Walker's best argument for declaring himself fit and able to tackle ISIS. That might resonate with his fiery voter and patron base, but it leaves civil libertarians increasingly alarmed.
Much more below the puff of orange tear gas smoke. Follow along.