The mainstream media was too often distorting or ignoring the real word, he realized. That’s when his political activism was born. Soon after, Manzelli decided his mission in life would be to “find somebody who has something valuable to say and amplify their voice. It’s a worthwhile service,” he says. “That’s the philosophy I use to this day.”
You can listen to his recordings at 492cafe.org, or stop by FreemanZ.com to read his reports and see his photos. He’s even got a few videos up online at YouTube.com/profile?user=FreemanZee. But since his imbroglio with Brian Harer on Boston Common four years ago, and especially since he launched his appeal effort, Jeff Manzelli has added a few more Web sites to his stable of online properties. At MBTAPolice.org, BrianHarer.com, and VictoriaRiel.com (named for another MBTA police officer who was there that day and testified for the prosecution), Manzelli lays out the facts of the case as he sees them.
In actual fact, Harer’s response to Manzelli’s camera may have stemmed from the MBTA’s anti-photo policy; claimed as a preventive against terrorist reconnaissance, it has been accused of being too nebulous, and a violation of the First Amendment. As Phoenix contributor Dan Kennedy pointed out in his ninth annual “Muzzle Awards,” “there is no written policy, leaving T personnel free to make up their own rules.”
But Manzelli claims that politics was involved. He cites an interesting snatch of court testimony on his site:
Defense: Officer, this . . . was an antiwar protest, correct? . . . And you were not . . . sympathetic to . . . their viewpoint, correct?
Prosecutor: Objection, Your Honor.
The Court: Overruled.
Defense: You did not agree with their cause, correct?
Harer: No, Sir.
All the same, I suggest to Manzelli that he may not be doing his appeal any favors with such strident and unorthodox methods: splashing photographs of the officers online, using their names in URLs, baldly accusing them of lying. He doesn’t buy it. “When a crime is committed, you’re obligated to tell about it.”
Manzelli contends that Harer’s threat to sue him was a violation of Massachusetts law prohibiting intimidation of anyone involved in the “free exercise or enjoyment of any right or privilege secured to him by the constitution or laws of the commonwealth or by the constitution or laws of the United States.”
“It became very clear to me. I had a lot of struggling to come to that point, but when it came to that point, it was just like, as long as I tell the truth.” Has he had any complaints about the sites? He’s not even sure the officers know they exist. “But if they want to take issue with me and bring more attention to themselves, that’s fine with me.”
Danger zone?
I ask Cambridge performance artist/manifesto writer/former city-council candidate Ian Maxwell MacKinnon, who first alerted me to the Freeman Z story, about his friend, why he’s such an interesting character.
“Well, I don’t know that he is such an interesting character,” he says. “It’s that the MBTA policeman, by doing what he did, forced him into being an interesting character.” Back in 2002, in the ramp-up to the Iraq invasion, Manzelli was “just a guy with a microphone and a camera, covering an anti-war rally,” he says. “At that time, there were 10,000 of him or 100,000 of him at rallies around the world.” To MacKinnon, Manzelli’s case is unique — and disturbing.
