As part of a general protest against the activities of the World Trade Organization a protest was held in Cincinnati, Oh in November of 2000 when the TABD held a meeting in Cincinnati. Cincinnati has had many problems with police brutality over the past several years. The "Don't Beat Me" march was an effort to bring public awareness to these problems.

Here is my description of my arrest on November 18, 2000, at the TABD protests in Cincinnati.

I, along with several of my son Jacob's friends from Earlham College, were participating in a "Don't Beat Me" march against police brutality. This march was part of a larger action in Cincinnati against the Transatlantic Business Dialogue (TABD), which was meeting in Cincinnati on November 16 - 19, 2000. The TABD is sort of a business think tank for the World Trade Organization. The Don't Beat Me march started about 4:30 in the afternoon at Lytle Park and marched up Sycamore St. to the Justice Center. There were somewhere around 200 people participating. We marched around the Justice Center and headed south on Broadway and then west on Eighth St. The entire march had been peaceful and orderly. Marchers stayed on the sidewalks and were accompanied by police on motorcycles who stopped traffic at street corners so the march could cross against the lights.

Suddenly, when the entire march was on Eighth St. between Sycamore and Broadway, the police blocked us off. They lined both ends of the street with mounted police and blocked an alley that led north to the Justice Center. We protesters were obviously nervous and frightened at being trapped like this, but remained peaceful. Suddenly, a line of police on foot came from Sycamore down Eighth on the south side of the street, and in the middle of the block crossed the street and attacked the middle of the march spraying mace indiscriminately. They dragged several people into the street and arrested them. They then announced over a bull horn that this was an illegal assembly, and that we must all disperse or be placed under arrest. This caused a great deal of confusion among the protesters, since it was not apparent how we could disperse when the police had blocked all avenues of escape. Some very tense moments passed while more protesters were maced and arrested. The group I was with held a short discussion and decided to cooperate in whatever way necessary to avoid being arrested. Eventually, the police allowed people to leave, four at a time, from either end of the block.

After we left, the only direction the police allowed us to go was south on Broadway, so we went that way, then we headed west on the next street. We walked several blocks west, seeing other small groups of protesters and police on foot and horseback moving about. We stopped and had another short discussion about what we wanted to do, and decided to head back towards Fountain Square, but to keep our distance from any activities so as not to get arrested. As we walked south, we encountered a group of police on foot. One of them complained that Jacob was walking too slowly and she came up behind him and walked faster, pushing him forward. When we got to Fifth St. we headed west and encountered a group of police on horseback who said we had not dispersed because we were a group of six and were only allowed to be in groups of four. So Jacob and I walked together and the other four stayed together. We stayed like this until we got to Vine St. where we headed south.

After we went a little ways south on Vine, we heard an arrest taking place behind us, at the corner of Fifth and Vine. We stopped and watched for a little while, but once we were satisfied that the protester would probably not be beaten, we headed on down the street. When we got about midway down the block, the same group of police on horseback rounded the corner from Fourth St. and walked up Vine on their horses. We and anyone else who was walking down the street stopped to see what they were going to do. When they approached us, one of the police said she recognized someone among the protesters and they accused us of not dispersing, they then told us to sit on the sidewalk. We all sat down. There were maybe fifteen of us. Someone among us asked them if we were under arrest, and they said yes. It was around 5:30 pm. Several women began to sing softly. We waited like that until a police van arrived, when they searched, photographed, and handcuffed each one of us, then loaded us all onto the bus. They took us to a parking garage where they had set up a temporary intake processing area. We all had to kneel on the cement in a line while we waited for them to process us into the system, and after that they took us to the Justice Center, where we were processed again before being taken to our individual cells, around midnight. I believe between 40 and 50 people were arrested with us. My cell was basically a bathroom with a bed in it. The bed was metal and bolted to the floor, with a one inch thick "mattress". (I need to tell them about Thermarest sleeping pads.) There was a stainless steel toilet and sink, a window to the outside that was about five inches high and four feet wide. The steel door had a small window in it too, through which I could see an unused common area, and a guard office through some windows. A clock read 5:15, continuously. The floor, walls, and ceiling were concrete. Graffiti on the door said: "Lease Simon's soul" (our sheriff is Simon Leis). There was a fluorescent light that stayed on the entire time I was there. A couple of inmates would bring around food three times a day, and now and then a guard would walk by to check on us. The food all had the same horrible flavor that I found to be suspect, so I ate very little. We were not allowed to leave our cells until about 7 am Monday morning when we were taken to be arraigned.

The head of the Public Defender's Office tried to convince us to participate in an agreement he had worked out with the judge to plead no contest in return for getting out that morning. A no contest plea means that you don't contest the facts as the police present them and are willing to accept whatever verdict the judge gives based on the facts. The women who were arrested all agreed to plead no contest because they had reason to believe that one of them was going to be raped by the guards. (She had been accosted and threatened with rape in an elevator earlier that morning by the guards.) The women were all found guilty. The law committee has since decided to appeal the no contest plea on the basis that the Public Defender lied because he said that they all had to agree to the deal in order for it to work.

Most of the men, me included, pled not guilty. I was charged with a fourth degree misdemeanor of disorderly conduct. My lawyer was Neil Frink. Charges against me were dismissed in front of Judge West on January 18, 2001. A week later, at the trial of another person who was arrested with me, after his case was dismissed also, the arresting officer was heard to say that she made the arrests because it had been a long day and they were tired and wanted to get us off the street so they could go home.

The above statements are all true to the best of my knowledge.

Jon Blickenstaff, reporting