Boston, Police Shut Down Bl(A)ck Tea Society Meeting at MIT

On Wednesday, May 5th 2004, when Bl(A)ck Tea Society
members arrived for their scheduled meeting on the MIT
campus, they were greeted by two armed and uniformed
Cambridge police officers (one of which illegally refused to
identify himself), the chief of the MIT campus police, and a
plainclothed agent (who also refused to identify himself, but one
of the the other officers referred to as Mike). They were guarding
and blocking the door to our reserved room, denying us the
meeting space we have used for months before.

Bl(A)ck Tea Society members were never informed of any such
cancellation of our room reservation. When asked about the
matter, Chief of MIT campus police John DiFava refused to
identify who was responsible for shutting the meeting space
down, or even who directed him to block the entrance. However,
in the last weeks, sources say that Kerry's Secret Service has
visited the MIT campus multiple times to convince (or to simply
inform) MIT officials that they should not allow the Bl(A)ck Tea
Society, an expressly non-violent group, to meet on their
premises. This is part of a larger pattern, according to the Boston
Herald, the Secret Service has also visited Georgia, to pressure
institutions not to host activists organizing for the upcoming G8
summit. The MIT administration had decided that the Bl(A)ck
Tea Society were not to enter the scheduled meeting room, or
have any other meetings on MIT property, under threat of police
arrest.

While surveillance and harassment targeting activist groups from
law enforcement agencies is nothing new, as we approach the
summer conventions there has been an increasing rate of
incidents like this against area activists. It seems that the intense
state repression targeting Boston activists protesting the
Democratic National Convention has already begun. These
tactics employed by local, state and federal law enforcement
agencies are designed to intimidate activists out of legally
organizing to exercise their first amendment rights.

These kind of police tactics meant to intimidate and deter us will
not accomplish their goals. As other local community and labor
groups, as well as national organizations planning their own
actions to counter the DNC, the Bl(A)ck Tea Society will
continue to plan for it's three pronged approach to the Democratic
National Convention;

Open air bazaar and concert:
http://www.blackteasociety.org/bazaar.html

Convergence Center:
http://www.blackteasociety.org/convergence.html

A call for Decentralized Direct Action
http://blackteasociety.org/calls/first.html

We urge anyone interested in helping us in these efforts to check
our website, http://www.blackteasociety.org, and come to one of
our weekly meetings. Let's show the powers that be that despite
their attempts, we WILL NOT be intimidated into ending our
organizing!

Contact the Bl(A)ck Tea Society* at: nodnc04 [at] hush.com

Link: http://blackteasociety.org/
Related at Infoshop: http://www.infoshop.org/calendar.html

posted by Bl(A)ck Tea Society at infoshop.org
Written by Gene and Andrew from the BTS