Civil Liberties Violations at the RNC
I know, I thought it was canceled because of Hurricane Gustav too. But apparently not canceled enough for some good old totalitarianism. I remember these tactics from the 2000 and 2004 GOP Conventions.
From I-Witness Video:
Breaking news from the streets around the Xcel convention center in St. Paul, Minnesota.
Journalists Amy Goodman, Sharif Abdel Kouddous and Nicole Salazar from Democracy Now were arrested around 4:45 pm in a mass arrest at 7th Street and Jackson.
According to the Coldsnap legal feed:
Police in riot gear have blocked off downtown St. Paul. Bridges closed, buses shut down.
Concussion grenades, tear gas, pepper spray and tasers have been used.
Mass arrests are underway.
Once again this we ask you to please call Mayor Chris Coleman at 651-266-8510 to protest these arrests (note: Mayor Coleman's voice mailbox is full, but you can send him an electronic message here).
And from friend Zack:
Hi all -
As you may be aware, the police in Minneaopolis staged a series of
raids over the weekend, detaining at gunpoint people who were in town
to protest the Republican Convention, shutting down the protest
headquarters, and seizing every computer they could find. Below is a
brief New York Times article, and a longer report from Starhawk. If
you are troubled by this attempt to chill dissent, please call the
phone numbers below and leave a polite message for the mayors of
Minneapolis and St. Paul letting them know that this kind of shameful
behavior reflects very poorly on their cities and undermines our most
basic liberties (something about how this kind of behavior wasn't
acceptable at the Beijing Olympics, and it's certainly not acceptable
here in the US might be an effective line).
St. Paul Mayor Chris Coleman
651-266-8510
Minneapolis Mayor RT Rybak
(612) 673-2100
(612) 673-3000 outside Minneapolis
Zack
-----
New York Times
August 30, 2008
Dozens Detained Ahead of Convention
By COLIN MOYNIHAN
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/30/us/politics/30arrests.html?ref=politics
ST. PAUL, Minn. — On the weekend before the Republican National Convention, law enforcement agencies detained dozens of people and issued a series of search warrants aimed at groups believed to be organizing demonstrations while delegates and Republican officials are in town.
On Friday night the Ramsey County sheriff's department, accompanied by the St. Paul police, detained people inside a building here that was being used as a headquarters to plan protests.
“They handcuffed all of us,” said Sonia Silbert, 28, from Washington. “They searched everyone.”
People who had been in the building said that officers entered shortly after 8:30 p.m. with a warrant and instructed them to lie on the ground, adding that they had been questioned and photographed before being released.
Jordan Kushner, a member of the National Lawyers Guild, said the two-story brick building had been rented by a nonprofit organization and was being used by several groups planning protests.
People who had been inside said teach-ins and legal training had been conducted there, and that the space was also a repository for such items as computers and bicycles.
The R.N.C. Welcoming Committee, a group that has said it wants to block roads during the convention, issued a statement Friday night that was read aloud outside the meeting place by a woman who identified herself as Sarah Coffey.
Ms. Coffey said that the officers, citing fire violations as the reason for their visit, “detained over 50 people in an attempt to pre-empt planned protests.”
The sheriff's department continued the sweeps on Saturday morning, executing warrants for three houses in Minneapolis and two in St. Paul, detaining more than 50 people and arresting 4.
A copy of a warrant at one house said the police were authorized to look for a laundry list of items, including fire bombs, Molotov cocktails, brake fluid, photographs and maps of St. Paul, paint, computers and camera equipment, and documents and other communications.
Residents of the houses where the warrants were served denied having any unlawful or dangerous materials.
Attorneys for the National Lawyers Guild said the people who were detained and photographed included local residents as well as visitors in town to demonstrate at the convention.
Bruce Nestor, a lawyer at one house, said three people there were arrested on charges of conspiracy to commit a riot.
“In my mind it's a classic preventive detention charge,” Mr. Nestor said.
He said the authorities were permitted to hold those they arrested without charging them for up to 36 hours -- excluding weekends or holidays -- in essence detaining them for the length of the convention.
On Saturday morning the father of one woman who was arrested said he was outraged.
“There is no cause for this,” said Dave Bilking, whose daughter, Monica Bilking, a 23-year-old student, had been removed in handcuffs.
The sheriff's department did not respond to a phone message requesting comment.
###
RNC2Raid on the Convergence Center
By Starhawk
It’s Friday night. Our Pagan Cluster is sitting on the bluff of the Mississippi having our first real meeting, when Lisa gets a call. The cops are raiding the Convergence Center, where we’re organizing meetings and trainings for the protests against the Republican National Convention. It’s not a role play, the caller says. It’s real.
Instantly, we jump up and hurry back the six or eight blocks to the old theater we are using for meetings, trainings and social gatherings. I‘ve spent the last two days doing magical activism trainings, teaching people how to stay calm and grounded in emergency situations and when things get chaotic. Now it’s time to put the training into practice. Aaron, a tall, red-headed young man who could be one of my nephews
strides along beside me. “Are you grounded?” I ask him. He nods, and runs ahead.
Nobody can keep up with Lisa, who speeds ahead like an arrow, walking, not running, but still covering the ground quickly. Andy and I trail behind. We’re often street buddies, because we’re both big, slow, and supremely calm and stubborn, willing to wade into almost any situation and become the immovable object.
We’re stopped by a line of cops just before we reach the building. They refuse to let us through, or to move their van which is blocking Scarecrow’s car. There’s an investigation underway, they say, and won’t say more.
Brush, our dear friend, is inside, having gone to a jail solidarity meeting, ironically enough. So are two very young people who had just joined our cluster that night. I try calling Brush’s cell phone, but get no reply.
We wait. That’s what you do when the cops have guns trained on kids inside a building. You wait, and witness, and make phone calls, and try to think of useful things to do.
We call lawyers. We call politicians. We try to call media. We call friends who might know politicians and media.
Through the kitchen door, we can see young kids sitting on the floor, handcuffed. We walk across the street, back, made more phone calls. An ambulance is parked in front, and the paramedics head into the building, leaving a gurney ready. Susu, from her car around the corner, reports that the cops have been grabbing pedestrians from the
street, forcing them down to the ground, handcuffing them.
Song, one of the local organizers, calls her City Council member. She wants to call the Mayor, Chris Coleman, who has promised that St. Paul will be as welcoming to protestors as to delegates, but no one has his home number.
What I have forgotten to tell people at the training is how much of an action is just this: tense, boring waiting, with a knot of anxiety in your stomach and your feet starting to hurt. Song talks to a helpful neighbor, who’s come over to find out what’s happening. He knows where the mayor lives, says it’s just a few blocks away, and draws us a map.
We decide to go and call on the Mayor, who could call off the cops. About five of us troop down there, through the soft night and a neighborhood of comfortable homes and wide lawns on the bluffs above the Mississippi. The Mayor’s house is a comfortable Dutch Colonial, and lights were on inside. We decide that just a few of us will go to
the door, so as not to look intimidating. Song is a round, soft-bodied middle-aged woman with a sweet face. Ellen is a tiny brunette with a gap-toothed smile, and Lisa, formidable organizer though she is, looks slight and unthreatening. The rest of us hang back. Someone opens the door. Our friends have a conversation with the mayors’ wife, who is not pleased to be visited by constituents late at night, and who tells
us we should call the office. The Mayor, she says, is asleep, and she will not wake him up.
We think a mayor who was doing his job would get up and go see what’s going on. Nonetheless, we head back to the convergence space. A protestor has been released from the building. A small crowd has gathered across the street, and Fox News has arrived. They interview Song, who does her first ever Fox media spot. She tells them the
truth that people were in there watching movies - a documentary about Meridel Le Seuer. Meridel would be proud, and I’m glad she is with us in some form.
One by one, protestor’s trickle out. Now we get more pieces of the story. The cops burst in, with no warning. They pulled drew their guns on everyone including a five year old child who was there with his mother, forced everyone down on the floor. It was terrifying.
They had a warrant, apparently, from the county, not the city, to search for ‘bomb making materials.’ They were searching everyone in the building, then one by one releasing them as they found nothing.
They continue to find nothing, as we wait through long hours. Meanwhile, more and more media arrives. These cops are not as creative as the DC cops during our first mobilization there against the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank. Those cops confiscated the lunchtime soup, which included onions and chili powder, claiming
they were materials for home made pepper spray.
We wait until the last person gets out. He’s a twenty year old who the cops have accused of stealing his own backpack but apparently they relented.
And now it’s morning. I wake up to the news that cops have been raiding houses where activists are staying, bursting in with the same bogus warrant and arresting people, including a four year old child. They’ve arrested people at the Food Not Bombs house, a group dedicated to feeding protestors and the homeless. They’ve arrested others,
presumably just for being in the wrong place at the wrong time.
The Poor Peoples’ Campaign, which had set up camp at Harriet Island, a park in the middle of the Mississippi, has also been harassed, its participants ordered to disperse and its organizers arrested.
Let me be perfectly clear hereall of us here are planning nonviolent protests against an administration which is responsible for immense violence, bombs that have destroyed whole countries, and hundreds of thousands of deaths.
This is the America that eight years of the Bush administration have brought us, a place where dissent is no longer tolerated, where pre-emptive strikes have become the strategy of choice for those who hold power, where any group can be accused of ‘bombmaking’ or ‘terrorism’ on no evidence whatsoever in order to deter dissent.
Please stand with us. Because it could be your home they are raiding, next.
Call the Mayors of St. Paul and Minneapolis. Tell them you are outraged by these attacks on dissent. Urge them to let Poor People encamp and to let dissent be heard.
FLOOD THE MAYORS' OFFICES ASAP
St. Paul Mayor Chris Coleman
651-266-8510
Minneapolis Mayor RT Rybak
(612) 673-2100
(612) 673-3000 outside Minneapolis
From I-Witness Video:
Breaking news from the streets around the Xcel convention center in St. Paul, Minnesota.
Journalists Amy Goodman, Sharif Abdel Kouddous and Nicole Salazar from Democracy Now were arrested around 4:45 pm in a mass arrest at 7th Street and Jackson.
According to the Coldsnap legal feed:
Police in riot gear have blocked off downtown St. Paul. Bridges closed, buses shut down.
Concussion grenades, tear gas, pepper spray and tasers have been used.
Mass arrests are underway.
Once again this we ask you to please call Mayor Chris Coleman at 651-266-8510 to protest these arrests (note: Mayor Coleman's voice mailbox is full, but you can send him an electronic message here).
And from friend Zack:
Hi all -
As you may be aware, the police in Minneaopolis staged a series of
raids over the weekend, detaining at gunpoint people who were in town
to protest the Republican Convention, shutting down the protest
headquarters, and seizing every computer they could find. Below is a
brief New York Times article, and a longer report from Starhawk. If
you are troubled by this attempt to chill dissent, please call the
phone numbers below and leave a polite message for the mayors of
Minneapolis and St. Paul letting them know that this kind of shameful
behavior reflects very poorly on their cities and undermines our most
basic liberties (something about how this kind of behavior wasn't
acceptable at the Beijing Olympics, and it's certainly not acceptable
here in the US might be an effective line).
St. Paul Mayor Chris Coleman
651-266-8510
Minneapolis Mayor RT Rybak
(612) 673-2100
(612) 673-3000 outside Minneapolis
Zack
-----
New York Times
August 30, 2008
Dozens Detained Ahead of Convention
By COLIN MOYNIHAN
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/30/us/politics/30arrests.html?ref=politics
ST. PAUL, Minn. — On the weekend before the Republican National Convention, law enforcement agencies detained dozens of people and issued a series of search warrants aimed at groups believed to be organizing demonstrations while delegates and Republican officials are in town.
On Friday night the Ramsey County sheriff's department, accompanied by the St. Paul police, detained people inside a building here that was being used as a headquarters to plan protests.
“They handcuffed all of us,” said Sonia Silbert, 28, from Washington. “They searched everyone.”
People who had been in the building said that officers entered shortly after 8:30 p.m. with a warrant and instructed them to lie on the ground, adding that they had been questioned and photographed before being released.
Jordan Kushner, a member of the National Lawyers Guild, said the two-story brick building had been rented by a nonprofit organization and was being used by several groups planning protests.
People who had been inside said teach-ins and legal training had been conducted there, and that the space was also a repository for such items as computers and bicycles.
The R.N.C. Welcoming Committee, a group that has said it wants to block roads during the convention, issued a statement Friday night that was read aloud outside the meeting place by a woman who identified herself as Sarah Coffey.
Ms. Coffey said that the officers, citing fire violations as the reason for their visit, “detained over 50 people in an attempt to pre-empt planned protests.”
The sheriff's department continued the sweeps on Saturday morning, executing warrants for three houses in Minneapolis and two in St. Paul, detaining more than 50 people and arresting 4.
A copy of a warrant at one house said the police were authorized to look for a laundry list of items, including fire bombs, Molotov cocktails, brake fluid, photographs and maps of St. Paul, paint, computers and camera equipment, and documents and other communications.
Residents of the houses where the warrants were served denied having any unlawful or dangerous materials.
Attorneys for the National Lawyers Guild said the people who were detained and photographed included local residents as well as visitors in town to demonstrate at the convention.
Bruce Nestor, a lawyer at one house, said three people there were arrested on charges of conspiracy to commit a riot.
“In my mind it's a classic preventive detention charge,” Mr. Nestor said.
He said the authorities were permitted to hold those they arrested without charging them for up to 36 hours -- excluding weekends or holidays -- in essence detaining them for the length of the convention.
On Saturday morning the father of one woman who was arrested said he was outraged.
“There is no cause for this,” said Dave Bilking, whose daughter, Monica Bilking, a 23-year-old student, had been removed in handcuffs.
The sheriff's department did not respond to a phone message requesting comment.
###
RNC2Raid on the Convergence Center
By Starhawk
It’s Friday night. Our Pagan Cluster is sitting on the bluff of the Mississippi having our first real meeting, when Lisa gets a call. The cops are raiding the Convergence Center, where we’re organizing meetings and trainings for the protests against the Republican National Convention. It’s not a role play, the caller says. It’s real.
Instantly, we jump up and hurry back the six or eight blocks to the old theater we are using for meetings, trainings and social gatherings. I‘ve spent the last two days doing magical activism trainings, teaching people how to stay calm and grounded in emergency situations and when things get chaotic. Now it’s time to put the training into practice. Aaron, a tall, red-headed young man who could be one of my nephews
strides along beside me. “Are you grounded?” I ask him. He nods, and runs ahead.
Nobody can keep up with Lisa, who speeds ahead like an arrow, walking, not running, but still covering the ground quickly. Andy and I trail behind. We’re often street buddies, because we’re both big, slow, and supremely calm and stubborn, willing to wade into almost any situation and become the immovable object.
We’re stopped by a line of cops just before we reach the building. They refuse to let us through, or to move their van which is blocking Scarecrow’s car. There’s an investigation underway, they say, and won’t say more.
Brush, our dear friend, is inside, having gone to a jail solidarity meeting, ironically enough. So are two very young people who had just joined our cluster that night. I try calling Brush’s cell phone, but get no reply.
We wait. That’s what you do when the cops have guns trained on kids inside a building. You wait, and witness, and make phone calls, and try to think of useful things to do.
We call lawyers. We call politicians. We try to call media. We call friends who might know politicians and media.
Through the kitchen door, we can see young kids sitting on the floor, handcuffed. We walk across the street, back, made more phone calls. An ambulance is parked in front, and the paramedics head into the building, leaving a gurney ready. Susu, from her car around the corner, reports that the cops have been grabbing pedestrians from the
street, forcing them down to the ground, handcuffing them.
Song, one of the local organizers, calls her City Council member. She wants to call the Mayor, Chris Coleman, who has promised that St. Paul will be as welcoming to protestors as to delegates, but no one has his home number.
What I have forgotten to tell people at the training is how much of an action is just this: tense, boring waiting, with a knot of anxiety in your stomach and your feet starting to hurt. Song talks to a helpful neighbor, who’s come over to find out what’s happening. He knows where the mayor lives, says it’s just a few blocks away, and draws us a map.
We decide to go and call on the Mayor, who could call off the cops. About five of us troop down there, through the soft night and a neighborhood of comfortable homes and wide lawns on the bluffs above the Mississippi. The Mayor’s house is a comfortable Dutch Colonial, and lights were on inside. We decide that just a few of us will go to
the door, so as not to look intimidating. Song is a round, soft-bodied middle-aged woman with a sweet face. Ellen is a tiny brunette with a gap-toothed smile, and Lisa, formidable organizer though she is, looks slight and unthreatening. The rest of us hang back. Someone opens the door. Our friends have a conversation with the mayors’ wife, who is not pleased to be visited by constituents late at night, and who tells
us we should call the office. The Mayor, she says, is asleep, and she will not wake him up.
We think a mayor who was doing his job would get up and go see what’s going on. Nonetheless, we head back to the convergence space. A protestor has been released from the building. A small crowd has gathered across the street, and Fox News has arrived. They interview Song, who does her first ever Fox media spot. She tells them the
truth that people were in there watching movies - a documentary about Meridel Le Seuer. Meridel would be proud, and I’m glad she is with us in some form.
One by one, protestor’s trickle out. Now we get more pieces of the story. The cops burst in, with no warning. They pulled drew their guns on everyone including a five year old child who was there with his mother, forced everyone down on the floor. It was terrifying.
They had a warrant, apparently, from the county, not the city, to search for ‘bomb making materials.’ They were searching everyone in the building, then one by one releasing them as they found nothing.
They continue to find nothing, as we wait through long hours. Meanwhile, more and more media arrives. These cops are not as creative as the DC cops during our first mobilization there against the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank. Those cops confiscated the lunchtime soup, which included onions and chili powder, claiming
they were materials for home made pepper spray.
We wait until the last person gets out. He’s a twenty year old who the cops have accused of stealing his own backpack but apparently they relented.
And now it’s morning. I wake up to the news that cops have been raiding houses where activists are staying, bursting in with the same bogus warrant and arresting people, including a four year old child. They’ve arrested people at the Food Not Bombs house, a group dedicated to feeding protestors and the homeless. They’ve arrested others,
presumably just for being in the wrong place at the wrong time.
The Poor Peoples’ Campaign, which had set up camp at Harriet Island, a park in the middle of the Mississippi, has also been harassed, its participants ordered to disperse and its organizers arrested.
Let me be perfectly clear hereall of us here are planning nonviolent protests against an administration which is responsible for immense violence, bombs that have destroyed whole countries, and hundreds of thousands of deaths.
This is the America that eight years of the Bush administration have brought us, a place where dissent is no longer tolerated, where pre-emptive strikes have become the strategy of choice for those who hold power, where any group can be accused of ‘bombmaking’ or ‘terrorism’ on no evidence whatsoever in order to deter dissent.
Please stand with us. Because it could be your home they are raiding, next.
Call the Mayors of St. Paul and Minneapolis. Tell them you are outraged by these attacks on dissent. Urge them to let Poor People encamp and to let dissent be heard.
FLOOD THE MAYORS' OFFICES ASAP
St. Paul Mayor Chris Coleman
651-266-8510
Minneapolis Mayor RT Rybak
(612) 673-2100
(612) 673-3000 outside Minneapolis