Prosecutors have produced few convictions after police arrested 420 people during the 2000 Republican National Convention in Philadelphia. While the legal victories encourage Camilo Viveiros of Providence, who works as an organizer for the Boston-based Mass Alliance of HUD Tenants, he worries that Philadelphia officials may see his trial as their last chance for legal vindication.

Viveiros and co-defendants Eric Steinberg of Memphis, Tennessee, and Darby Landy of Raleigh, North Carolina, are the last protesters to face trial in connection with demonstrations at the RNC in August 2000. Known as the Timoney Three, they face multiple felony counts related to an alleged fracas with former Philadelphia police commissioner John Timoney and two officers after an anti-death penalty protest. The trial was scheduled to start Tuesday, February 18, but it has been postponed for a second time.

Civil libertarians described the mass arrests as a coordinated effort to suspend the US Constitution while Republicans gathered to nominate George W. Bush for president. Viveiros was accused of throwing a bicycle at Timoney. Police arrested hundreds of people during the convention's first days and courts set bail for individual defendants as high as $1 million. These actions disrupted other planned demonstrations and kept key leaders in jail until the Republicans left town.

Most of the charges were subsequently thrown out of court or dropped. According to the R2K Legal Collective (www.r2kphilly.org), the group coordinating legal defense efforts, only one of 43 felony defendants has been convicted, pleading guilty in return for six months of probation. Felony charges were dismissed in court or reduced to misdemeanors for 37 others. Some other defendants have appeals pending. Of the 194 misdemeanor cases that went to trail, only 23 resulted in convictions, the collective says. The remaining people were never charged or agreed to settle misdemeanor cases for probation and a clean record.

Timoney has said he was proud of the handling of the Philadelphia protests (see "Liberty denied," News, January 18, 2001), because few people were injured and since tear gas and rubber bullets were not used. Calling protesters "crybabies to the core," Timoney denied that civil liberties were violated and he insisted that Viveiros assaulted him with a police bicycle he had dropped to the pavement while arresting protesters who were attempting to overturn a car.

Viveiros denies the assault and says he will assemble witnesses from around the country to prove at trial what really happened.

Meanwhile, supporters continue to raise money for the housing activist's defense, which Viveiros estimates will ultimately cost more than $40,000. Fundraisers have been held in Providence, Fall River, San Francisco, Vermont, Philadelphia, and at the home of former Boston mayoral candidate Mel King. Last week, according to Michael Kane, director of the Mass Alliance of HUD Tenants, eight of 13 Boston city councilors signed a letter supporting Viveiros.

Timoney, meanwhile, left Philadelphia in 2001. In November 2002, in a move questioned by some Boston-area activists, the City of Boston hired him as a security consultant for the 2004 Democratic National Convention. In December, Timoney was hired to head the Miami Police Department. Miami is expected to be the site for major anti-globalization protests, Viveiros notes, when it hosts a meeting on the Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA) -- a NAFTA-like free trade zone covering most of the Western Hemisphere -- in the fall of 2003.

Issue Date: February 14 - 20, 2003