An Eye for Anarchy

An impounded car has been the least of Austin‘s worries. In January, his home was surrounded by FBI, Secret Service and ATF agents with guns drawn. His computers, from which he administered the Web site raisethefist.com, and political literature were seized. He was arrested soon after while attending the World Economic Forum protests in New York, and charged by federal agents with distributing information on the manufacture of explosives over the Internet. He was questioned for nine hours. “It was nothing you couldn’t find in any library,” Austin said. Deemed a threat to the community, he was denied bail. “They basically said I was a man on a mission who drove 3,000 miles to New York to carry out his plans and that I was going to drive to Salt Lake City to the Olympics to carry out my plan to blow shit up.” All charges were dropped because of lack of evidence, and Austin was released after 13 days in federal custody.

Long Beach police would not explicitly confirm that they were investigating anarchist activists, but police spokesman Officer David Marander did say that “Anarchist groups are typically surveilled by law-enforcement agencies across the United States, not only because of their goals, but particularly after September 11 -- people expect that now. We wouldn‘t be doing our jobs if we weren’t investigating that type of group.” Asked about the selective enforcement that anarchists say constitutes harassment (the jaywalking tickets and car impoundings), Marander said, “We have to enforce the laws across the board,” and pointed out that last month was Pedestrian Awareness Month, and “one of our focuses is jaywalking.”

At Sunday‘s news conference, four unmarked cars filled with Long Beach gang-enforcement officers were parked in and around Lincoln Park. Driving to the park, Candace Khaokham, who was intending to share the podium with Kearns and Ketabian, was pulled over by police. One of her windows had been smashed during a break-in, and the officers said they stopped her because “They didn’t know if I stole the car.” Her friends were searched and she was held about half an hour, she said, long enough to miss most of the event. “I didn‘t mention we were coming here,” Khaokham said, “but they asked me, ’Are you part of that protest?‘”

While she was held up, police lingering at the edge of the park issued a citation to Matt Martinez, another Infoshop habitue, for spitting on the sidewalk. Asked why members of a gang unit were monitoring a news conference, Officer Hector Gutierrez responded, “What does ’monitoring‘ mean? This is a regular working day. We’re just cruising by.”