On graduation day, leafletters harassed, Smith arrested by MIT copsby Bill Cunningham
Katherine Gibson, Suzanne Nguyen, Anne Pollock, and Aimee Smith are members of the Social Justice Cooperative (SJC), a recognized MIT campus group. On the morning of June 4, they began handing out a leaflet to people arriving to attend graduation ceremonies.The leaflet prompted by a scheduled commencement address by Elias A. Zerhouni, director of the National Institutes of Health (NIH).
Gibson and Pollock stood on one side of the entry to Killian Court, Nguyen and Smith on the other. "We weren't chanting or even protesting the speaker," Smith said. "People just took our flyers if they were interested."
Fifteen minutes after they arrived, Suzanne Nguyen says, "MIT police approached both of us and told us we had to leave, claiming that we were blocking the way and the line had to move along.… It was unclear to me where I was supposed to move, since we were not blocking anyone's way or creating an obstruction. Roughly two minutes after having moved to our new spot the police again approached us. This time it was clear they were going after Aimee specifically and even though both of us were doing the same thing, peacefully handing out flyers and asking them why we had to leave. They just cuffed her and started carting her off. Neither Aimee nor I were yelling or acting in a violent manner. I asked them where they would take her and they didn't answer my question. They said I had to leave, and if I didn't they'd arrest me too. So I left."
The police report paints a very different picture, one of ‘protesters’ and obstruction. "The protesters were voicing political opinions to the guests trying to enter and thus causing public inconvenience to the guests." The police report goes on to claim that Smith was "yelling and ranting…," and that they "had no choice" but to arrest her.
Smith says that just before she was seized,"the cops pushed up against me," making it almost impossible for her to move away. She admits that she called the officers some unflattering names as they were taking her away in handcuffs.
Gibson and Pollock could not see what was happening to Nguyen and Smith because there was such a lot of space and people between the two pairs. "Then the cops came a third time," recalls Anne Pollock, "and said they had arrested one of our friends, the other had left, and it was our choice which we wanted. They said it would ruin our lives if we got arrested, because it would go on our record. They said not to distribute anywhere, not on Mem or Mass Ave or anywhere on campus."
Aimee Smith was charged with disorderly conduct and disrupting a school assembly. At Cambridge police headquarters an officer saw that she had sustained minor lacerations from the MIT handcuffs, and gave her bandaids. At her arraignment, Smith was offered a deal: charges would be dropped if she paid court costs. Smith indignantly rejected the idea that court costs might be "the price of exercising first amendment rights." Defense attorney Daniel Beck told the court that his client insisted on a formal apology from MIT. The court set a date of July 7 for a pretrial hearing.
Julia Steinberger of MIT Social Justice Cooperative condemned the harassment of the leafletters as a "continuation of the MIT administration turning Commencement into a super-controlled policed event rather than a celebration where everyone in the MIT community is welcome. "Two years ago," Steinberger recalled, "the head of the World Bank came. Ironically this was Aimee's graduation. MIT called in hundreds of police from five separate police departments against fewer than 50 students and activists. MIT administrators told the students that as far as they were concerned, the 'protesters were the terrorists.' As everyone can see, they still hold this dangerous belief."
Community groups appeared at every MIT commencement for fifteen years during the 1970s and 1980s, and not only handed out flyers but chanted, yelled and picketed with signs, balloons and puppets on the public sidewalk along Memorial Drive. During those years the Simplex Steering Committee led opposition to MIT’s huge University Park development in Cambridgeport. Former Simplex leader Bill Cavellini told me that no one had ever been arrested on the sidewalk or told to leave during all those years.
The SJC flyer which caused the MIT police such consternation criticized the NIH funding of a "bioweapons lab that will bring pathogens like Ebola, smallpox, and anthrax into a densely populated Boston neighborhood.… NIH prioritizes funding for genomics research with no obvious health benefits over taking steps toward preventative and environmental health, which have the greatest impact on all of us."
The incident has elicited protests to the MIT administration from students, faculty, and activists in the community. On Friday, June 11, a delegation from the group which sponsored the flyers met President Vest in his office. In a subsequent letter to Smith, Vest affirmed that MIT intended to seek dismissal of the charges against her, but offered no apology. He appeared to agree that the rules needed to be clarified.
Katherine E Gibson, who was with Anne Pollock that day, comments: "The unwarranted and illegal arrest of Aimee by the MIT police was a profoundly disappointing act against free speech and open dialogue about issues important to the students at MIT. "Everyday, but particularly on Commencement day, an institution of higher learning like MIT should be proud of and support its students who take an active interest in the public policy institutions that affect our lives and our communities. After all, if an education at a prestigious school like MIT isn't about active learning through questioning and dialogue, then MIT is failing its students."
printed in The Bridge, June 2004, a publication initiated as a project of Mystic River Green-Rainbow Action, a Somerville and Cambridge chapter of the Massachusetts Green-Rainbow Party. Aimee Smith ran for Cambridge City Council in 2003.
For More Information on her Arrest see:
Boston Indymedia and
MIT Social Justice Cooperative.
Click Here to view the leaflet they were distributing
Click Here for more information on the BioTerrorism Lab
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