Letter: Police acted correctly by not stopping recent protest

I was present at Thursday's anti-war protest as an observer and as someone who supports the anti-war movement. The Chronicle has taken a consistent editorial line in support of the occupation of Iraq, paying little heed in the process to the fact that it violates international law and that the consistent failure of the U.S. and U.K. to ensure that sick and wounded Iraqi civilians receive basic medical treatment is a clear violation of the Geneva Convention.

It was especially naive of The Chronicle to declare in its editorial that the war was over the day before the demonstration took place. U.S. soldiers are still being shot at and killed in Iraq; the American POWs had not yet been freed on the day of the demonstration (try telling their families the war was over that Wednesday!); the Pentagon admits the U.S. is still not in full control of Baghdad; the Pentagon has just said that it will not clear Iraq of the depleted uranium it dropped during its bombing campaign, thereby consigning millions of Iraqis to decades of elevated cancer risks and birth defects (try telling these Iraqi people the war ended on Wednesday). Was The Chronicle gulled into thinking the war ended the moment a few statues of Saddam Hussein were pulled down?

Chief Birkhead acted calmly and efficiently. Anyone who has been at such human chain demonstrations knows that arresting participants can take a long time, as demonstrators have to be given the required police warnings, read their rights, and then arrested by the dozens. Remember it usually takes two to four cops to drag away each unresisting but totally passive protester. How many duty officers and paddy wagons does the Duke University Police Department have available at any one time? Remember also that dozens of otherwise inactive bystanders are often inspired to sit-down in solidarity with colleagues who are being dragged away. The police start by thinking they have 50 protesters to arrest, and can end up having to arrest nearly 100. I have been at many such peaceful sit-down protests over the course of nearly four decades, and never in my experience has one involving even 20 people been cleared in less than half an hour unless 20 to 30 cops happened to be at hand. Birkhead had a hard call to make, and in my judgment he made the right one. If he took The Chronicle's editorial advice, he would probably have had to arrest 100 people with a handful of officers, and individuals who already felt inconvenienced would have had to add another 20 to 30 minutes to perceived lost time. Or is The Chronicle in favor of DUPD having a standing force of 50 to 100 officers on duty at all times to deal with demonstrations, with the inevitable cost this would entail for university budgets?

As to engaging in civil disobedience and breaking the law, Mohandas Gandhi, Martin Luther King Jr., Andrew Young, Nelson Mandela, Henry David Thoreau, Rosa Parks, Bertrand Russell, Stevie Wonder, Pete Seeger, Susan B. Anthony and Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams are distinguished precursors of today's protesters. Would you have wanted Rosa Parks to go quietly to the back of the bus so she could be a law-abiding citizen? This is what she would have had to do if she followed your editorial advice!

Kenneth Surin

Professor, Literature Program