Anarchist Elliot Madison wrongfully arrested, robbed
October 6, 2009 – 6:46 pm by JohnIn a continuation of law-enforcement agencies’ general disdain for and dismissal of our civil liberties, Elliot Madison, a self-described anarchist, was arrested for using Twitter and a police scanner to help G20 protesters coordinate their efforts and avoid police officers.
The charges on which he was held don’t indicate any dangerous or harmful behavior, unless you consider thumbing your nose at the State and using perfectly legal technology to evade officers whose goal is to disrupt your rightful demonstrations harmful. I guess that’s the problem with the police who arrested him.
Madison had been found using a police scanner and Twitter to help numerous protesters avoid police during the Group of 20 summit and has now been charged with hindering apprehension or prosecution, criminal use of a communication facility, and possession of instruments of crime.
Madison was found in a hotel room by Pennsylvania State Police on September 24, armed with police scanners and computers so that he could disperse critical information to protesters. According to the FBI, Madison was “directing others, specifically protesters of the G-20 summit, in order to avoid apprehension after a lawful order to disperse.”
Those charges are totally bogus and remind me of the trumped-up charges that prosecutors use to railroad their innocent victims (e.g., “honest services fraud”) or to add to real criminal charges (e.g., conspiracy to do something-or-other, racketeering, money laundering).
The facts are that the police and FBI agents are the aggressors in this story and that Madison and his confederates are being victimized for attempting to avoid this aggression. The first charge, hindering apprehension or prosecution, refers to the police’s attempts to disperse and arrest the protesters, which strikes me as a clear violation of the First Amendment and our rights to free speech, association, and assembly that the First Amendment is based on. The fact that the demonstrators passively asserted these rights by communicating with each other and evading the police’s aggression, while the police responded not with peacefulness but with further aggression, highlights the distinction between the aggressors and the victims quite clearly.
The second and third charges, criminal use of a communication facility and possession of instruments of crime, lose all meaning when the absence of criminality in the first charge is understood. They are also the type of fabricated charges that only serve the purpose of getting more jail time or larger fines for the State’s victims. “Criminal use of a communication facility”? What was the crime? Charge him with the crime itself, not the use of a gadget or a medium that are perfectly legal! If he used them to harm someone, charge him with harming someone! “Possession of instruments of crime”? Why are they instruments of crime? Instruments themselves other than weapons of mass destruction cannot be dangerous or harmful; possessing some instrument cannot harm others. If he used the instruments to harm people, charge him with harming people!
What was even more appalling was the raid of his apartment and confiscation of his belongings, neither of which is justified by his actions or by the crimes he was charged with.
No matter: the FBI followed up on Madison’s arrest by searching his home late last week for evidence of other violations, such as rioting laws and whatever else they could dig up. Not only did investigators seize his computers, they also took books, clothing, gas masks, and apparently a photo of Lenin. As a self-described anarchist, Madison’s affiliations have undoubtedly contributed to police opinion of him and his activities, no matter how benign.
How fascist, how disdainful of civil liberties, how intolerant of dissent, how…neoconservative. Congratulations, Obama regime. You’re upholding the status quo about as well as any civil libertarians expected you to.
As mentioned in the above paragraph, we undoubtedly have Statists in and out of the media and law enforcement branding Elliot Madison as their archetypal “anarchist” who just wants chaos and disruption and to bring down whatever there is to bring down. Just as there are myriad types of Statists, there are myriad types of anarchists and most of us want everyone’s individual rights and moral equality to be held sacrosanct. This ideology precludes the existence of a monopolistic State because Statism puts some people in power over others, a power no one has by nature or by merit, a power to govern, regulate, confiscate, and threaten the person, liberty, and property of others.
This is what many people objected to regarding the G20 summit, and probably many actual protesters on the streets of Pittsburgh as well. Details are sparse on the specific policies and positions pushed by the protesters, but the general message they conveyed is that they wanted more jobs, affordable health care, and an end to American military interventionism in the Middle East.
I can’t speak for the merits of any individual group or its message, even the generally anarchist ones, but I know what a good libertarian denunciation of the G20 economic summit sounds like. At least the anarchists, if they deserve their categorization, couldn’t be accused of advocating government provision of jobs and affordable health care. Given Madison’s supposed possession of a photograph of Vladimir Lenin, his economic views and preferred social order over the American State might not jibe with mine very much, but don’t misinterpret my defense of his civil liberties for an agreement with his and every other anarchist agenda out there. His economic philosophy and adoration of Lenin are not relevant; his freedom to Twitter all he wants and help people march away from police officers are, and this is what has been violated by the Pennsylvania state police and Obama’s FBI. They are the aggressors and Elliot Madison is their victim.
3 Responses to “Anarchist Elliot Madison wrongfully arrested, robbed”
How can I and we help him?
By Bill Cullen on Oct 25, 2009
Bill, good question. I don’t know if we can do anything specifically for Elliot Madison. What you can do is stop showing your support for monopolistic police forces, deal with them and cooperate with them as little as possible, and organize yourselves into peaceful protests or demonstrations whenever the opportunity arises, as it did for these people in Pittsburgh. Stop voting for criminals who support the ultimate criminal enterprise, and conduct your life in a way that results in as little of your money as possible going into the State’s coffers.
By John on Oct 27, 2009
I would recommend printing out some literature from Oathkeepers.org, like a flier containing their 10 “Orders we will not obey”, and take a bunch of them with you when you protest. Make sure every cop gets one so they are reminded of the oath they took.
By Scott Pigeon on Nov 12, 2009