this is for your own good

Ed Brayton points us to this story of a young woman purportedly arrested, without cause or warrant, and held in a detention center at Pier 57 in New York City, a building apparently offered to the NYPD for such a purpose by the Republican National Committee, in order to quell protests. "Little Guantanamo," Erin Starr (the author, and mother of the young woman) calls it. A juicy quote:

My 21-year old daughter disappeared from NYC last Tuesday afternoon when walking with friends through a park where no protest was being held -- and was held prisoner -- without being charged -- by the NYPD for three days. The first day and night she spent in an unsafe and inhumane facility at Pier 57 ("Little Guantanamo") provided by the Republican Party.

Yes, it was managed by the Republican National Committee. It was leased by the RNC to hold political dissenters who disagreed with the Bush administration. The second two days, my daughter was in a city jail in Manhattan, where her treatment improved. She practices Buddhist precepts of compassion (she told the NYPD officers that she knew they must be tired and overworked also, and she did not resist arrest). She is a graduate student in Poli Sci at the University of Hawaii and is a MortarBoard honor society/service club member.

The notorious Pier 57 (owned by the Hudson River Trust--a city/state consortium) was dubbed "Little Guantanamo" by reporters who also got caught up in police sweeps and who said it looked like the Guantanamo Bay prison built by the USA to hold the Al Qaeda terrorist political prisoners in Cuba. Pier 57 was leased by the RNC before their convention.

They arranged for the NYPD to put up the chain link holding pens with razor wire on top in the old Pier 57 warehouse that had oil, gas and asbestos dust on the floor from a previous fire. My heart was in my throat when I got a call from one of my daughter's friends on Oahu who told me she had been arrested and taken to Little Guantanamo. I looked it up on the internet and fear crept into me.

I called my daughter's cell phone over and over ("it's mom, where ARE you, call me"). She didn't answer.

Only hours before, she had been calling us with joy, telling us of the peaceful protests and beautiful march. But now, nothing. I had nightmarish visions of a fire sweeping over the combustible floor with hundreds -- nearly a thousand -- trapped in the chain-link pens, razor wire on the top of the pens making escape impossible.

The tone is shrill and hysterical, so I'm a bit doubtful that things were as bad as Starr makes them sound; furthermore, she has no hard evidence that the RNC really was involved. As Brayton points out, Daily Kos is trying to sniff out the paper trail.

Raymond W. Kelly, Police Commissioner, claims in the New York Times that nothing was out of the ordinary, and his remarks are worth quoting in full:

To the Editor:

In "A Setback for the City of Tolerance" (Metro Matters, Sept. 6), Joyce Purnick asks, "Since when does New York City practice preventive detention?"

Delays in arrest processing were not part of a scheme to keep protesters off the streets during the Republican National Convention.

The fact is that the screening of arrestees at Pier 57 went smoothly until more than 1,000 people were arrested in a four-hour period. About half were women - not unusual for civil disobedience - but highly disproportionate for the court system, requiring time-consuming redeployment of cell space.

Also, 65 percent of those arrested were not New Yorkers, increasing the likelihood that they wouldn't return for court dates if released.

Before arrests ballooned, hundreds of prisoners were quickly processed and released, as evidenced by their re-arrest when they returned to the streets to engage in unlawful conduct.

All arrestees were treated humanely and processed as quickly as possible.

Raymond W. Kelly
Police Commissioner
New York, Sept. 7, 2004

Kelly, though, never explains why arrests "ballooned," especially since Summer Starr, the young woman in question, claims to have committed no illegal acts. Were the police simply rounding up protesters en masse?

It's tough to say, at this point, whether this incident is a true "erosion of civil liberties," "creeping fascism," or merely an overreaction to legitimate police work. But, interestingly, no one has bothered to shed more light on who this "Erin Starr" really is.

So, off to Google we go.

First, we learn that Erin Starr, of Makawao, Maui, Hawaii, is a published poet and author of three upcoming books.

Broadening our search, we find that, in a similar vein, she has written New Agey advice columns with such bromides as

Found in the ancient tantric teachings is the concept that Woman is the leader in a marriage. Woman is the Wisdom figure. Man is the figure of Compassionate Action. She says: "I need a good plot of soil to plant my seeds in, to grow food for the family, right here by the kitchen." He digs the garden where she wants it, and builds the soil. She plants the seeds and tends to the weeding. Together they harvest and eat.

Man refreshes his soul at the Well of Woman; and Woman refreshes her soul at the Well of Solitude. This is the bygone way. As she takes her time alone, he has his solitude if he needs it. In older times, women were often confined during their moon cycles each month, or avoided by men. Although the reason for this was a bit unsavory (women were considered "unclean" during this period), the result was that women had a chance to sip at the well of solitude once a month, which could be quite refreshing.

(These ramblings are similar to her adventure in e-book publishing.)

Erin Starr also has a skewed sense of time. In her ZNet piece, she claims her daughter was held for "three days." But at the bizarre website Signs of the Times (brought to you by the Quantum Future School!), we learn that Summer herself claimed to have been held for only two days. As Mauinews.com reports,

On the day after the arrest, [Summer] Starr said she was taken to a Manhattan jail where she and others were regularly moved from cell to cell. She said they were told they were going to be released soon and that the fingerprinting process was slow.

She said she was released around 10 p.m. on Thursday, about two days after she was arrested.

Frankly, there's just too much weirdness here. Erin Starr seems as paranoid as Annie Jacobsen, and her daughter displays all the signs of class privilege: "I can't believe that being arrested isn't a picnic!" This isn't the end of the story, though. If it could be confirmed that the RNC really did lease Pier 57 to use as a holding tank for hippies, oh boy oh boy, we got trouble in River City.

RNC officials, of course, deny everything. Which means it must be true.

Oh, and, coincidentally, the Maui Democratic Party chairman is Jonathan Starr, a Kucinich fan. Any relation? Can't tell for sure, yet, but something stinks in the state of Hawaii.

There's another version of the Erin Starr rant here.

Update: Erin's husband is Hugh Starr, a Maui realtor. Jonathan Starr isn't related, although he jokingly calls Hugh his "cousin." Alas, there seems to be no dark Democrat conspiracy.

Update update: The NYPD apparently took out the permit for Pier 57 themselves, according to Indymedia (via Ed Brayton). Sorry, Kos, there goes your smoking gun. The ghost of Annie Jacobsen lives on.