Author
Jim Macdonald
audio from protest at Gridiron Club, March 11, 2006, Washington, DC...about a minute of a typical conversation between protesters and a police officer
Refer to http://dc.indymedia.org/newswire/display/132964/index.php for context of this brief report.
Here is a bit more audio. Genevieve and I never left our spot on the same side of the street as the Hilton.
There we confronted reporters like David Broder and Bob Schieffer and politicians like Howard Dean. Though threatened with arrest for walking on the sidewalk with political signs (and for no other reason than that the police were told to move us - when I asked one officer whether this was about law or simply about orders, he said it was about orders), we did not leave, and we ultimately were not arrested.
One tactic that can work with police is simply knowing the law in a given situation. The police often don't know the law; they simply know what they've been told. No one is under any moral obligation to follow an unlawful order, whether it's a protester or an officer.
Some of the relentless give-and-take with one officer is on this bit of recording...
Jim