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In MN, Massive Police Raids On Suspected Protestors
X0563511 alerts us to events in Minneapolis and St. Paul in advance of the Republican convention (which has been put on hold because of Hurricane Gustav). Local police backed by the FBI raided a number of homes and public buildings and confiscated computers and other material. From Salon.com: "Last night, members of the St. Paul police department and the Ramsey County sheriff's department handcuffed, photographed and detained dozens of people meeting at a public venue to plan a demonstration, charging them with no crime other than 'fire code violations,' and early this morning, the Sheriff's department sent teams of officers into at least four Minneapolis area homes where suspected protesters were staying. Jane Hamsher and I were at two of those homes this morning — one which had just been raided and one which was in the process of being raided." Here is local reporting from the Minneapolis Star-Tribune: "Aided by informants planted in protest groups, authorities raided at least six buildings across St. Paul and Minneapolis to stop an 'anarchist' plan to disrupt this week's Republican National Convention. From Friday night through Saturday afternoon, officers surrounded houses, broke down doors, handcuffed scores of people and confiscated suspected tools of civil disobedience ... A St. Paul City Council member described it as excessive, while activists, many of whom were detained and then released without charges, called it intimidation designed to quash free speech."
Were they planning on doing something illegal? I doubt it.
In the house that had just been raided, those inside described how a team of roughly 25 officers had barged into their homes with masks and black swat gear, holding large semi-automatic rifles, and ordered them to lie on the floor, where they were handcuffed and ordered not to move. The officers refused to state why they were there and, until the very end, refused to show whether they had a search warrant. They were forced to remain on the floor for 45 minutes while the officers took away the laptops, computers, individual journals, and political materials kept in the house. One of the individuals renting the house, an 18-year-old woman, was extremely shaken as she and others described how the officers were deliberately making intimidating statements such as "Do you have Terminator ready?" as they lay on the floor in handcuffs.
I don't call this freedom.
They took along *anything* and *everything* that might be related to possible riots. When they raided a home that wasn't actually the correct home, they still detained people for over and hour while they obtained the correct warrant. When I read that I posted that I was concerned that when I arrived at home that I too would find cops on my doorstep because after all, that was the point of all of this horseshit.
When you finally hear from the other side you learn that the "buckets of urine" was actually gray water used to flush the toilet (my father developed a tank system in the 1980s that used shower/tub water to flush the toilet which saved us so much money that the water company came out 3 or 4 different times to replace the meter because they thought it was defective).
I have been ashamed to be an American for a long ass time but between the Ramsey County Sheriff's response to this event, the confiscation of camera equipment in the name of Homeland Security for the RNC, and using Blackwater mercenaries in New Orleans in preparation for Gustav I am not quite sure I am actually living in the United States of America anymore.
I am disgusted to be a Minnesota and United States resident. This is fucking shameful and horrifying. There is absolutely no excuse for this type of free speech violation. This is a stupid political rally, not a fucking war on our soil. Personally I'd love to join the protests but I seriously fear for my freedom and my life. I am not against the RNC but I am definitely against the manner in which protesting is being handled.
FUCK YOU AMERICA.
For live footage of raids and other First Amendment violations, check out The UpTake on Qik.com.
Your comment made me laugh, it really did. Go look at the civil liberties raped over and over by both sides during the American Civil War or during the First World War in the US, then compare/contrast to the current "erosion" of civil liberties.
What has gone on for the last eight years is nothing compared to what happened in the past. How many languages have been outlawed in the last 8 years? None, go back to the teens, the government did the equivalent of making Spanish outlawed when the German language was all but criminalized.
In 1918, these 'anarchists' would be getting deportation hearings right now, even if US citizens or born here.
This is the best part of the Greenwald story:
Once Gustav gets here, I'm sure all of this will blow over.
let me point out that "non violent" doesn't mean you do everything you're told, that's called "complicity" or at best "complacency". Having 50k people arrive at a location and sit down and refuse to leave may not be convenient, and might even put some people at risk (say, you were in the middle of hte crowd and had a heart attack), but that is not "violence".
"violence" involves destruction, pain, intimidation and real risk of bodily injury. *some* anarchists are into that sort of thing. But "Anarchist" covers a wide variety of people, just like "republican" does. Some "Republicans" don't think it's ok to kill anyone arab just because some arabs hate us. Some think we should "turn the middle east into a parking lot".
it's not fair to judge all republicans by the violent assholes within any more than it is to judge all anarchists by the same measure.
I also don't think that seizing property that is not being put to use when there are people who need shelter in the streets is so radical that "no civilized country" should get behind it.
further, I wouldn't demonize anyone who looks at the current state of our country and thinks that maybe we're getting close to the point where words alone is not sufficient response to the ongoing mismanagement, misinterpretation and appropriation of our government to anyone with suitable ambition and a large enough checkbook.
I'm not at that point myself, but I can't say that it would be impossible to get there in my lifetime and sometimes I do wonder if I'm just playing the game laid before me by "the house", and the house always wins.. witness RealID and the basic conception among most people that you "can't challenge the federal government", constitutional or not.
... this is how you START them. This coming from someone from Seattle who lived on Capitol Hill during the WTO riots and had police overreact and create a situation when none existed.
Exactly. You may have heard about similar unrest at the APEC summit in Vancouver in 1997, where I was living at the time. The overreaction to protests by police is a distraction tactic.
In Vancouver when Prime Minister Cretien first visited after APEC, again there were protests that turned violent. The police formed a "bike line" about 150' from the entrance to the hotel where Cretien was, meaning police with bicycles stood about 25' apart and ordered everyone not to pass them. Since it was not even remotely intimidating everyone marched right past them. But having done so, they can then be arrested and charged with disobeying a legal police order.
So they had uninhibited access to the hotel front doors, which were recessed from the sidewalk and therefore private property. Once they were on private property, asked to leave, and they did not, they were then trespassing as well. As luck would have it, there just happened to be a legion of police with full riot gear in the hotel lobby to engage the protesters with batons and pepper spray.
Either they were giving out gourmet donuts, or it was a deliberate tactic to entrap the protesters into committing crimes. They report to the press that the protesters had access to areas within vocal range of the Prime Minister, but forced their way through the "barricade" with the intent of engaging the Prime Minister violently, so reciprocal violence was justified.
In the end, the violence upstages the protest, and nothing gets done about the human rights violations they were trying to bring to the public's attention. It's been a popular tactic in North America since the 1960's. Now it appears they're taking preemptive actions to make sure the protesters are going to put on a good show. Makes sense, given the level of apathy these days.
I advise anyone involved in a protest to enlist the aid of people trained in conflict resolution (i.e. bar security staff) to quell any troublemakers among the protesters, and have a lawyer on site to act as a liaison with the police. You're probably going to need one eventually, and you know you'll have to deal with the police. Who deals with the police without a lawyer? Criminals, idiots, or both.
War as we knew it was obsolete
Nothing could beat complete denial
- Emily Haines
In February 2002, the World Economic Forum was held in New York City, and I planned to (and did) protest it. The alter-globalization movement had been protesting these things for years. New York newspaper headlines screamed that "anarchists" had better not come to NYC and cause trouble with the WTC still smoking and all of the claptrap. What made it even more nonsensical is it hadn't been planned for an NYC meeting, Giuliani had convinced them to move the meeting to NYC after 9/11/01, despite knowing the WEF always brought out massive demonstrations since evil types like Bill Gates always hobnobbed at such events. So working to bring a demonstration magnet to NYC after 9/11, and then decrying that there demonstrators would bother New Yorkers still grieving from 9/11 sounded a little hollow.
Anyhow, a friend of mine suggested we go to a building in New York called ABC No Rio. They are a "progressive community space" type of place they have art shows there, live bands, a progressive/zine library, a feed the poor group Food Not Bombs and that type of thing. Anyhow we went in and they were organizing a demonstration. I should point out I had never been there and my friend had rarely been there, we were just nearby and at the spur of the moment he wanted to see if a friend of his was there.
I should also point out that of all the progressive demonstrations in the US in the past twenty years, I can't recall an instance of physical violence against someone. There may have been one or more cases, but I can't think of any. A handful of way-out folks smashed windows in Seattle, burned down some new unoccupied houses in a new housing development somewhere out west and the like, and in the case of the latter a massive federal investigation sent some of those people to jail. So one has to question the need for a massive federal "monitoring" of progressive groups is needed for. Especially considering the history of these things - Nixon had a bunch of burglars break into the Democratic Party election headquarters, the FBI used these extraordinary powers granted to it to interfere in the political sphere - stating as a goal the need to stop a "black messiah" from arising, which including bugging Martin Luther King Jr. and leaking tapes they made of him to the press, particularly extra-marital affairs. When Warsaw Pact secret police did such things in their countries, it was decried as tyranny here - when our secret police work to dismantle organization of African-American and progressive people (as the FBI did, Google COINTELPRO), it is soon forgotten and you hear the need for the PATRIOT Act and the like giving power to the same people who abused it for political purposes before.
Anyhow me and my friend leave ABC No Rio. We hail a taxi and go about half a mile to Greenwich Village. My friend wants to go to a bar he went to a few months before, but can't find it. Anyhow, he realizes we are headed in the exact opposite direction than we should be, so we both do a 180 degree turn and start walking the way we had been coming. A man in his late 40s who looks very out of place for Greenwich Village on a Friday night was about 10 meters behind us. He sees us loop around and then has a look in his eye for a second, and then he also spins around and walks the other way. All things considered, especially his facial reaction when we both did a sudden 180 and began walking towards him, I know as sure as the sky is blue that he was following us, and that he was following us because we had gone into ABC No Rio. ACLU lawsuits and that type of thing after the WEF protests, and after the Republican National Convention talked about the extent of the surveillance, and fortified in my mind what I already instinctively knew was true. What scared me was the extent of the surveillance. I would dislike, but would not be as alarmed by them monitoring who went in and out of that building (where nothing was even happening! Except for planning a legal political demonstration that even the AFL-CIO was protesting in). But to follow two guys across New York City, through cab rides, on foot, who had very little to do with even organizing the demonstration much less doing anything violent during it, spooked me.
The US civil war had concentration camps (both sides equally and wretchedly, little to no rations meaning starvation, no clothes or shelter winter or summer,just whatever uniforms they were caught in that soon turned to rags, and that's it, disease was rampant, etc) and a lot of generic genocide involved with it, especially the rape of the south, Sherman burned everything, farms, cities, he didn't care, total war as he went, he burned and hung. And both sides used what weapons they had extensively. The only reason they didn't use poison gas is it wasn't invented yet. The weaponry though was still horrific, and medical care started out with no pain killers and went downhill from there. Causalities, direct battle deaths or later on from injuries and disease, was around 600,000 for a combined around 4.5 million soldiers. For comparison, WW1 - 115,000 US deaths, WW2 400,000.
The US civil war was a *big deal* not to be discounted as some little popgun war.
First, the Democratic and Republican National Conventions this year are in VERY different places. Did you consider that perhaps the attitude of the police in Minneapolis might be just a LITTLE different than that of the police in Denver? In fact, I can just about guarantee that they are.
Not to mention the attitude of the FBI. The FBI, after all, has demonstrably adopted the attitude of the governing administration over the last 8 years. It is to be expected that if the FBI overreact, it will be in regard to the Republican convention, not the Democratic. Thus, bias is built into the system by the very people who complain about the "offenses".
Second, if you really, honestly, wonder why Republicans have been bashed so much lately, maybe you should consider the fact that a great many (a majority, in fact) of the American people are PISSED OFF at the Republican Party over the outrageous botch job they have made of our government over that same 8 years.
Do not misunderstand me! I am NOT a Democrat! But any person who pretends to possess some objectivity about the matter MUST admit that the Republicans have gone a very long way to make a hash out of what used to honestly be a perfectly decent democratic republic form of government. They have botched literally everything: foreign policy; domestic social policy; privacy; "the war on terrorism" (what a joke); "the war on drugs" -- an even bigger joke; fiscal policy; education; the economy; taxes; and the personal freedoms of the citizens of this country. Not ONE of those areas is better off today than it was when Bush took office. Not one. And during most of those 8 years they were IN CONTROL over not only the white house but Congress as well.
THERE IS NO EXCUSE. There is nobody to blame. The Republicans have f*cked things up so badly that I despair of things returning to normal within my lifetime.
Once again: I am not a Democrat, and I do NOT trust Democrats to fix everything. But that has NO bearing on whether the Republicans messed things up. They did. Badly, and big time.
The argument that things have been worse at other times in our history won't wash. All of those things were BETTER, 8 years ago. Period. And the Republicans literally have nobody to blame.
So before you go accusing people of discriminating or acting preferentially against Republicans, you should ask yourself: "Do they have legitimate REASONS for doing what they do?"
You might find, if you are honest with yourself, that the answer is "yes".
Tonight, I was coming home from a sign painting party for the Campaign for Liberty, here in the Twin Cities. I stopped at Walgreens and saw a police car in the parking lot. It said, "Federal Protective Services" "POLICE" "Department of Homeland Security". I had never heard of this organization before now. There is an article on them here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Federal_Protective_Service
What I find chilling is the words "Federal" and "POLICE" put together. And this was not any typical FBI-style black unmarked job. It was a police car in every way. Lights and all.
Yes. In eight short years, we have been transitioned into a police state. Mind you, there have been many attempts over the last several decades to in one way or another federalize the local police. These efforts have been resisted by grass roots organizations. Through the Patriot Act, this has now been accomplished. All local police are now arms of the Federal government. And we have bona-fide Federal Police running around.
It Will Only Get Worse. And it does not matter one whit who wins in November. Either candidate will work to extend and consolidate federal power, and further restrict liberty.
Mir tut es leid, Menschen daß Einfältigfehlersuchenbaumfolgendenaffen sind.