Next Left Notes Is A News Magazine Devoted To Direct Action
SDS Activists Harassed by Secret Service
By Thomas Good
New York, NY, 07 March 2006
Two members of the PACE University SDS chapter were detained for an extended period by Secret Service agents on March 5th. Lauren Giaccone and Brian Kelly, members of the new Students for a Democratic Society (SDS), were detained for heckling former president Bill Clinton, calling him a "war criminal" for his ad hoc bombing-for-peace initiatives in Yugoslavia, the Sudan, Iraq and elsewhere. Clinton was speaking at the Pleasantville campus of PACE University in Westchester, NY.
Lauren Giaccone and Brian Kelly of SDS Pace
Lauren Giaccone and Brian Kelly are both students at the Pace University Downtown campus. The students had formed a peaceful picket outside of the Westchester campus event on Sunday but had their banners confiscated for no apparent reason by Pace security. Giaccone and Kelly were issued valid tickets to the Clinton speech after their anti-war banners were seized and given to the Secret Service. The banners have not been returned although the students were released after Pace indicated no charges would be filed. Giaccone, a junior and political science major, reports that she was told "the Secret Service needs the banners for their investigation" which includes a "background check" and other forms of what Giaccone describes as harassment. Giaccone feels her membership in SDS is a key factor in the continued interest on the part of the university president, David A. Caputo, and the various security services which appear largely unaccountable for their actions.
Inside the event, Giaccone and Kelly stood during the speech, calling Clinton a war criminal and citing the atrocities he committed during his time in office: his inaction during the Rwandan genocide, the bombing of a Sudanese pharmaceutical factory, the increased ethnic cleansing in Bosnia as a result of U.S. military intervention and the sanctions and bombings against Iraq which murdered countless people. At this point, Westchester police forcibly removed the students and brought them to an isolated room within the campus where Secret Service agents were waiting. The students were interogated by police and Secret Service agents who "called us clowns and threatened to send us to the hospital for a psychiatric evaluation that one officer threatened 'would take at least 72 hours'", said Giaccone. The precipitant for the 'psychiatric emergency' was the student's steadfast refusal to provide information other than that required by law.
The students were searched and had their photos taken several times by both police and Secret Service. Detained for about 40 minutes, Giaccone and Kelly were questioned about their ties to SDS. When the students refused to divulge their Social Security numbers and other personal information, they were threatened with being held "for 3 days", according to Giaccone.
Secret Service personnel also pressured the students to sign a form that would allow the agents to investigate if they were on any medication or if they had ever been to a psychatrist; however, the students refused. The police then demanded that the students give the names of the other students that they had traveled to the event with. They also wanted to know what types of cars they traveled in. Again the students refused to provide this information. They were never read their rights or formally charged with a crime.
Other SDS members, also students, who were waiting in the Pace lobby, were questioned by police who demanded to see their identification even though none of these individuals were accused of any involvement in the incident.
Giaccone and Kelly were later questioned about a letter that the Pace Chapter of SDS sent to the President of the University denouncing the invitation to President Clinton. Giaccone stated that university president Caputo had sent this letter to the Secret Service. Following the interogation, the students were loaded into a van with an officer and driven to their cars where police searched the students' vehicles. The search was not consented to but the SDSers were informed by police that they had "no right not to consent" according to Giaccone.
Giaccone and Kelly have issued a statement announcing that they do not support Democrats or Republicans. Their protest action was "in response to the growing militarism of American presidents". The Pace Chapters of SDS and CAN have publicly denounced the actions of President Caputo, the Mount Pleasant Police and the Secret Service. Currently, the two students are facing an investigation by the Secret Service which appears to be politically motivated given the inordinate attention paid to SDS in the questioning of the two students.
Paul Buhle, Senior Lecturer at Brown University and a Distinguished Lecturer for the Organization of American Historians, said: "The growing pattern of threats to privacy and other forms of repression on campus, acknowledged or not yet discovered, constitutes a level of abuse not seen since the later 1960s, and a potential return to the lock-down of the 1950s. Pace officials and police have acted very badly, raising serious doubts about the climate for learning at Pace. If the First Amendment is not protected within higher education, how can it be protected anywhere in American life?"
Pace President David A. Caputo states on the Pace website that the University is involved in "Educating Engaged Citizens". "At Pace, we strive to build an ethic of civic engagement in our students through study and experience." One Pace initiative, "fashioned to teach and to nurture civic engagement" is Project Pericles: "that works to battle the growing sense of distrust and indifference that many young people have today towards government and society." Apparently first amendment activists are not included in this project. According to the website, Caputo can be contacted at 212-346-1097 or emailed at president@pace.edu. A request for comment was made by NLN but there has been no response at this time.
SDS organizers at several NYC Campuses have expressed interest in organizing a protest against the policies of Caputo and the Pace administration.
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(c) 2004,2006 Thomas Good
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