It didn't get much play in the paper, but the occasionally "liberal" U.S. Ninth District Court of Appeals (basically covering the western states) ruled May 4 that in at least some cases, use of pepper spray against non-resisting, nonviolent protesters was unconstitutional. The case arose from forest protests in Humboldt County, California, home of the infamous 1997 Frank Riggs incident, in which pepper spray was swabbed directly into the eyes of locked down protesters--an act of unspeakable barbarity which has since become a national police standard. Since Seattle is part of the Ninth District, it can only be assumed that the wholesale use of chemical munitions during anti-WTO protests, often applied directly to the face and lips or sprayed indiscriminately from large canisters, is also "unconstitutional." If there is any justice, the lawsuits will be lining up now.

But that's just the tip of it. To our south, in Portland, police have long had the reputation of being less docile when it comes to citizens expressing constitutional freedoms (the U.S. Constitution--let's be clear--does not "give" rights. Governments don't give rights, they only take them away). But even by Rose City standards, a police riot in response to May Day protests seems to have been over the top. A crowd of some 800 compliant demonstrators was corralled, sprayed, beaten, and otherwise abused for having the temerity to spill into three lanes of traffic instead of the "agreed-upon" one.

In the current issue of the invaluable Cockburn/St. Clair newsletter CounterPunch, moreover, there is this ominous report from the A16 protests in Washington: "The father of a Maryland state trooper told me his son was given the instruction that should things get dangerously out of hand, 'don't worry about anything; shoot to kill.'"

Since, by police, media, and elected officials' standards, things got "dangerously out of hand" when a few windows were broken in Seattle, it's not hard to see where this is headed. There were also reports that when Rapist Bill came to town on December 1, after the shock of the anti-WTO protests the previous day, police and National Guard in Seattle had orders to shoot--with live ammunition, not rubber bullets--if necessary.

Media efforts to demonize the current generation of mass demonstrations in the U.S. have their effects on cops, too. May 4th was the 30th anniversary of Kent State, and it's useful to remember that at the time a majority of Americans approved of the murders of "unlawful" anti-war protesters. It's no stretch, in the current climate, to fear that somewhere in the U.S., sometime very soon, police are going to open fire on dissidents.