I first met Anwar Peace at a Public Safety Committee Meeting in the Seattle City Council Chambers in downtown Seattle. A clean-cut young man, with dark skin and an average build, he was sitting with a bull's eye target hanging around his neck. The next time I met him was at another City Council Safety Committee meeting. Since the City Council, Police Chief, and Mayor have done absolutely zero about the complaints of unprovoked police violence by unidentified cops in Seattle streets lately, (yes, Robocops without badges or nametags are shooting strange weaponry at us and denying it), Anwar brought in photo albums full of pictures of police without nametags rioting on us. He told Jim Compton, the chair for the Safety Committee, of police saying all kinds of things to him for taking their picture, quoting nonexistent laws, making threats, etc. I know that when I try to get the names of SPD around me, as allowed per Seattle Municipal Code 3.28.130, Seattle police officers flinch, balk, and become verbally inappropriate, and often abusive. I have been intimidated regularly by the SPD for identifying them, too. He is not making that harassment up. Simply for trying to photograph or get the name of SPD officers on duty on Seattle streets, it is fact that you risk being harassed and even jailed. At one Public Safety Committee meeting, Anwar took the target off of his chest and handed it to a police officer in the audience for him to give to the Police Chief. I took that to symbolically mean we are not going to be SPD targets any more.

The next time I saw Anwar was when he decided to sit outside police stations in town to educate the public about police brutality. He sat in front of the police station downtown with his scrapbooks of pictures, educating anyone who walked by. The police hated it. I saw him later that week at Seattle Center, during the Bite of Seattle. He was standing by the entrance to the police station, at the north end of the Center House, with his target sign on, talking to tourists, Seattlites, and police who would talk to him. He was very calm, nonviolent, not angry, and very articulate. There were a few regular SPD cops and a few not-regular black uniformed cops around him when I arrived. A few others from the peace/protest/police accountability communities came and lent support as the day went on. He was just wanting to get the message of police brutality out to people. He has been very vocal about the strange police killings of minority citizens in the NW. He is doing a lot of this activism for the families of John David Walker and Michael Randall Ealy. These families have suffered unexplained assassinations of their own family members by the SPD, and have yet to find any peace on the matter.

I received an email from Anwar saying he was going to highlight certain public officials' and officers' behaviors, such as the Mayor, the Police Chief, Jim Compton, (chair of Public Safety Committee), etc. and keep the community abreast of what they were doing. I fully support this type of citizen watch of public officials. It is much better than participating in a "Neighborhood Watch," spying on your neighbors! We need "Official Watch" now on every block. The SPD and Police Chief began to try to make Anwar out to be a violent cop-hater, which could not be any further from the truth. Anwar is very nonviolent, he has not done anything illegal or violent in all the times I have seen him protesting, and he seriously wishes only to sit down and speak with Police Chief Kerlikowski in a non-adversarial way. Instead of the Police Chief embracing this type of gallant citizen involvement, something we need much more of, as a move towards the ever-elusive Citizen's Review Board, that we never get but ask for constantly, the Chief issued a restraining order on Anwar last week! I heard about this restraining order on Thursday, August 21, 2003. By Friday, August 22, he was in King County Jail.

On Saturday, August 23, several of us attended his arraignment hearing at King County Jail. Paul Richmond, activist attorney, bless his heart, showed up to represent Anwar. I sat with a mother, like myself. She said she had met Anwar when her son was killed by the SPD and she was simply blown off by the Police Chief. She still has not gotten any peace. But she respected that Anwar stepped forth in solid support of her family and so she was now there for Anwar. I also feel a need to support Anwar. I could be the next victim of SPD harassment for trying to get them to be accountable. This is the 7th time the SPD have tried to criminalize Anwar, with all kinds of charges, including trespass, and they have lost each time, so far. He was even jailed on the 40th anniversary of MLKing's birthday.

Anwar is going to be a canary in the mine regarding this police accountability issue in Seattle, in my opinion. Seattle needs to start learning what jail and court support is. We need phone trees to show up, en masse, at courtrooms when one of ours is being arraigned and tried wrongly. The next court date on Anwar's restraining order situation is on August 29, 2003, at 9:00 in Room 902 in the Seattle Justice Center at 600 - 5th Avenue in downtown Seattle. Ironically, Anwar's showing up for the hearing would technically violate the restraining order! It is essential that we show up to support our comrades in police accountability and it is also essential that we contact the Police Chief, Jim Compton and the City Council, the Mayor, and the Office for Police Accountability regarding the rights to profile police misconduct in Seattle without fear of retaliation, harassment, assault, and jail! Anwar is a target. That sign he wears is not symbolic, it is real. The Police Chief touts an "open door policy" regarding meeting and talking to any police officer on his force. So, Anwar now vows to join the SPD to meet and talk to the Chief about this!

I know I would feel a hell of a lot safer if it was Anwar in SPD riot gear next to me at the next protest! Go Anwar!