This Canadian journalist reports on her experience in Arizona covering the recent annual conference of the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), an organization that brings together large corporations and conservative state lawmakers to draft model bills. She learns about American "freedom of the press"and about how police enforcers of the One Percent contained and managed protests and media coverage at the ALEC conference.
After merely carrying on a conversation with a journalist ("Beau") from In These Times, she reports:
As I say goodnight, Beau is summoned by hotel security and herded away toward the elevator by uniformed police. Why? In Slobodan Milosevic’s Serbia, I was evicted from my hotel by machine-gun-toting militias as the Kosovo war began. But in America. . . ?
As I stand staring, two cops flank me: Do I know this man? Who is he?
Beau has disappeared now. Will anything I say be used against him? I square my shoulders and think of my British mother: “How dare you ask me such a question? Is this a morality charge? Are hotel guests of the opposite sex forbidden to speak in a bar? Is this Iran or the land of the free?”
We face off, not blinking. The questions continue. At last the inquisitors give in. “Ma’am, you’re free to go.”