Salem, Mass. – More than a year after a pro-Palestine encampment on Salem Common, activists are expressing concerns over new information that local police in the Witch City planned to ask federal intelligence agencies to surveil the action.
Organized by grassroots groups including North Shore for Palestine, Massachusetts Peace Action, and Jewish Voice for Peace, the two-day “Community Encampment for Palestine” in June 2024 was part of a series of peaceful overnight protests that took place across Massachusetts last summer.
Days before the encampment was scheduled to start, an administrative aide to Salem’s police chief emailed three department captains with plans to notify the Commonwealth Fusion Center (CFC). The apparatus is one of 80 intelligence collaboratives between local, state, and federal law enforcement agencies that are tooled to target potential terrorist activity across the country.
“Recommend we send a letter to the Fusion Center notifying them of the event,” the email, obtained in a public records request, read. Attached was a draft of the request asking the CFC to “continue to monitor intelligence reports for any indications and warnings of threats involving the planned protest activity.”
“Thank you for your continued support of the Salem Police Department,” the email finishes.
Created in the wake of 9/11 by the Department of Homeland Security, intelligence hubs like the CFC have long been condemned by advocates for a lack of oversight. Fusion centers have also been noted for unscrupulous surveillance practices, especially around protests, as well as obstruction and information-gathering efforts that run afoul of First and Fourth Amendment protections.
Also targeting a pro-Israel counter-protest
SPD Chief Lucas Miller, a former high-ranking officer in the NYPD’s Joint Terrorism Task Force, did not respond to multiple requests for comment. BINJ.News is currently in an appeals process to receive public records being withheld by both Salem police and the CFC which would shed further light on the monitoring request and what information it potentially yielded.
Additionally, the Massachusetts State Police (MSP) denied four relevant “Public Safety Planning Bulletins” (generated from June 27 to June 30, 2024), which they initially identified as responsive to the request. After BINJ.News won an appeal challenging the denial, the MSP then claimed it couldn’t find communications between staties and SPD. BINJ.News is currently appealing that denial.
Meanwhile, the records we already obtained indicate that SPD and the MSP did trade information from the CFC which identified a counter-protest to the Community Encampment for Palestine scheduled for weeks later. On July 1, 2024, an MSP major sent an email to Chief Miller; attached was an announcement from North Shore Rabbi Yossi Lipsker’s Facebook account promoting a counter “Community Encampment for Israel” demonstration later that month:
“Chief, I’m sure you have this but I just received it from the Fusion Center.”
Lipsker did not respond to a request for comment.
A somewhat surprising distrust between cops and organizers
Fawaz Abusharkh, a lead organizer with North Shore for Palestine, said he has longstanding community trust and even relationships with local cops, and found it odd that Salem police would request that kind of monitoring.
“I have ties with the Salem police for over 30 years,” Abusharkh said. “I know a lot of police—we deal with them in the sense [that] there are many places where we really can’t go without the police.” The activist added that one captain had children in the same school as his kid, while the SPD “was in my house many times. … He had hummus, he had baklava, he had grape leaves.”
While Abusharkh said there is an obvious lack of trust between the police and pro-Palestine activists, he said he didn’t understand what cops were looking for. “I don’t know why they wanted intelligence, because they all know my house, my cell phone number,” he said. “We’ve done so many things together, it strikes me as weird. You don’t do that to somebody you know well.”
Sabrina Zemlyansky, another organizer with North Shore for Palestine who attended the encampment, said it was a “complete surprise” to learn that police seemingly asked the feds to watch their action.
“Our encampment was a peaceful demonstration meant to call attention to the suffering in Gaza,” Zemlyansky said. “It’s troubling that activism, especially student activism—because there were listed student speakers—[is] treated like a threat instead of a valid exercise of free speech.”
Concerns about fusion centers
In the aforementioned internal email obtained through a public information request, Salem police brass address the possibility of “mass arrests” at the encampment, with one superior officer asking, “What city ordinance to cite.” Cops did not end up making any arrests at the actual pro-Palestine encampment.
Kade Crockford, director of the ACLU of Massachusetts’ Technology for Liberty Program, was not surprised to learn about Salem cops planning to surveil the encampment. Crockford has voiced concern for years about the use of fusion centers to monitor “perfectly legal” protest activity that is protected by the First Amendment.
In 2012, a bipartisan congressional investigation found that fusion centers nationwide had been involved in concerning abuses of First Amendment protections, and had “not yielded significant useful information to support federal counterterrorism intelligence efforts.”
“We have the same concerns then that we have now—that the rules in place at fusion centers are insufficient to protect people’s basic civil liberties,” Crockford said. “We have concerns about state and local fusion centers collecting, and then sharing, with the federal government and other agencies, information about people’s protected political views and their protected political association in violation of those people’s First Amendment rights.”
Abusharkh emphasized that his organization’s activity is protected: “To try to gather information or frame it in any way, they’re really infringing on our First Amendment [rights],” he said. “We should be able to do that freely and without the risk of being arrested. I strongly believe we do what we do, and we keep doing it. We don’t get intimidated.”
Growing up in Salem, Zemlyansky said that she was never a fan of the local police, but the news of federal involvement and planning for mass arrests on peaceful demonstrators nevertheless “change the way [she] view[s] the Salem police.”
“I was there with my niece—she had to be three at the time,” Zemlyansky said. “I can’t imagine what would have happened if there was a mass arrest, and I can’t imagine the Salem police being the ones in charge of that.”
