Pre-emptive suppression of protest

Monday, September 08, 2008

Pre-emptive suppression of protest

Urbano

I wrote you last Wednesday after 4 days of house raids, mass arrests, tear gas, concussion grenades, and a growing array of "police-state" measures had been deployed against protesters at the Repubican National Convention in St. Paul. Worldcantwait.org is pulling together the whole picture, and Democracy Now covered many of the outrages. http://www.democracynow.org/2008/9/5/ramsey_county_sheriff_admits_local_police

But I don't know that any one source has yet adequately described the suppression of speech that occured last week.

This thought, which someone told me in the chaos last week, sticks in my head. "If you have a doctrine of pre-emptive war on whole countries, you need pre-emptive suppression of protest at home." The $50 million operation run by Homeland Security and the Secret Service had a lot in common with how the US military views citizens in the Middle East: if they're on the street when we don't want them there, they are terrorists.

Thursday September 4, as the Republicans swaggered into the Excel Center for their orgy of McCain love, a few hundred peace activists gathered on the lawn outside the Minnesota capitol, about a mile away. Most were sitting in the grass, listening to bands and speeches for a permitted rally. At 4:05 pm, 8 police on bikes sprinted into the crowd, threw their bikes down, and grabbed two men sitting on the lawn. Press and protesters surrounded them, and within 4 minutes, dozens of police of horses and riot police drove a wedge through the crowd, as cars and an ambulance drove onto the lawn, and the men were extracted and disappeared into cars. It was not impossible to know why they were taken, but it seemed to me the exercise was practice in crowd control, intimidation and provocation.

40 minutes later, a loudspeaker was driven by police onto the lawn, drowning out the program on the stage. Police announced that the permit was over at 5:00 pm, and anyone on the lawn would be arrested. The crowd tried to leave together, marching toward the Excel Center, but was forced by police onto a a bridge across the freeway, surrounded at both ends. Bulldozers with blades lowered were moved into place at one end, looming over the crowd, as if to sweep them up. Dump trucks blocked off streets. Police pulled on their gas masks. 400 people were arrested that night, bringing total arrests to over 800, including 102 outside the Rage Against the Machine concert (a wonderfully great show!) where police were a mile deep, and looking for any pretext to arrest.

Defending the people arrested in St. Paul will be the responsibility of all of us. While the crinminal charges are state of Minnesota, the direction comes from the federal government. These are charges criminalizing political activity. Democracy Now reports, "In St. Paul, Ramsey County prosecutors have formally charged eight members of the group RNC Welcoming Committee with conspiracy to riot in furtherance of terrorism. The eight activists are believed to be the first persons ever charged under the 2002 Minnesota version of the federal PATRIOT Act. The activists face up to seven-and-a-half years in prison. According to the National Lawyers Guild, the criminal complaints filed by the Ramsey County Attorney do not allege that any of the defendants personally engaged in any act of violence or damage to property. Instead, authorities are seeking to hold the eight defendants responsible for acts committed by other individuals during the opening days of the Republican National Convention."

CHEERS to IVAW! Inside the convention, Adam Kokesh interrupted McCain's acceptance speech about 20 seconds after he began, with a banner reading "McCain Votes Against Veterans" and "You Can't Win an Occupation". After 3 seconds, the hall erupted in chants of "USA!" drowing out McCain. The Iraq Veterans Against the War were all over Denver and St. Paul, demanding that the war and occupation be ended. See the video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DOaz7WhkFuo

More on all of this coming soon! Thanks to the hundreds who wrote about Obama's acceptance speech. I've read all your comments and you'll be hearing back from me.