The police were deliberately provocative, probably trying to stir things up. You think that $10 million insurance policy the RNC had against police brutality could have been a factor here? Sort of like a Get Out of Lawsuit Free card, I’m thinking.

But some protesters did throw rocks, smash windows, slash tires. Were they all provocateurs? I doubt it. Cops in any city under any political system would come down hard on that.

The protests were sure spirited. Twin Cities Indymedia, ColdsnapLegal, and many others did an amazing job of getting the news out at doing what they could. However, the protests had no political focus and achieved no discernable goals. To the contrary, most mainstream folks thought those damn kids got what they deserved.

Protest needs focus, it needs to be organized and to have a clearly defined and easily understood message that makes others want to join the cause. The RNC protests were missing that. At the very least, a couple of designated spokespersons holding regular press conferences and faxing out updates to mainstream media could have made a significant difference in the public perception of what happened.

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From Twin Cities IndyMedia

Affidavits released by law enforcement which were filed in support of the search warrants used in raids over the weekend, and used to support probable cause for the arrest warrants, are based on paid, confidential informants who infiltrated the RNCWC on behalf of law enforcement.

Yes, we all know that paid informants are completely and totally reliable.

They allege that members of the group sought to kidnap delegates to the RNC, assault police officers with firebombs and explosives, and sabotage airports in St. Paul.

Horsepucky. Do you think the eight leaders of the RNC Welcoming Committee would say those things in public or even in a meeting, assuming it’s true which doubtless it isn’t.

Evidence released to date does not corroborate these allegations with physical evidence or provide any other evidence for these allegations than the claims of the informants.

Goodness, who would have imagined the police have no evidence.

Based on past abuses of such informants by law enforcement, the National Lawyers Guild is concerned that such police informants have incentives to lie and exaggerate threats of violence and to also act as provocateurs in raising and urging support for acts of violence.

Like I said…

The criminal complaints filed by the Ramsey County Attorney do not allege that any of the defendants personally have engaged in any act of violence or damage to property. The complaints list all of alleged violations of law during the last few days of the RNC — other than violations of human rights carried out by law enforcement — and seeks to hold the 8 defendants responsible for acts committed by other individuals.

I see, Anarchist X tosses a rock through a window so the leaders of the Welcoming Committee are charged with terrorism even though they personally did nothing wrong and don’t even know the rock thrower. Madness.

Prediction: They will be found not guilty or the charges will be dropped. Then they will sue and collect substantial damages.

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Above The Fold has this video, and lots more.

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Police officers used tear gas on a peaceful crowd that was following instructions in St. Paul on Tuesday evening. In an overwhelming show of force, well over a hundred riot police locked down 7th Street between Wabasha and St. Peter, surrounded protesters in the Poor People’s March, media, and bystanders and then proceeded to launch several cannisters of tear gas after the crowd was hemmed in.

Thousands of people, many whom were just there to see the concerts, will be radicalized by this. Nothing works better than good old-fashioned police brutality in getting people to see the violence inherent in the system and how the police too often enforce the political goals of the elites.

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From Danny on the MarxMail listserv. He was there and not happy about what he saw. (If you think you might be offended by Bad Words, then you best not read the whole post.)

As their roadies tuned up and they were all set to go on, however, the fascist police occupation that now rules the Twin Cities during the RNC refused to allow them to take the stage. They even cut the power to the event, though organizers had a permit for it to go until 7pm, well after Rage would have played. They claim that since Rage wasn’t on the permit, somehow they had the right to prevent them from playing, which is, well, ridiculous police state nonsense.

I will say that the RNC has been full of important political lessons for the people of the Twin Cities, including the role of the police, the ends to which the government is willing to go to prevent us from effectively protesting, and the serious gap between the myth of democracy in this country and the reality.

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From Twin Cities Indymedia Live Wire

Tue, 09/02/2008 - 19:53 Police Have Alerted Area Hospitals that they are going to begin gassing the crowd.

Tue, 09/02/2008 - 19:45 RATM/Poor Peoples’ March- one protester snatched, organizers ask ppl in black to leave march or move to back

Tue, 09/02/2008 - 19:41 Taser used at RATM/Poor Peoples’ March

Tue, 09/02/2008 - 19:34 Police use pepper spray at Poor People’s March

Tue, 09/02/2008 - 19:33 7th & cedar 50-100 riot police in front of the march as it heads up 7th. No reported violence.

Tue, 09/02/2008 - 19:32 15+ Jane/John Does have been hunger striking all day to get anemic Jane Doe medical treatment. She passed out, still being denied treatment!

Tue, 09/02/2008 - 19:11 Rage Against the Machine just took 200 people on unpermitted march toward river. They are chanting, “Fuck you, I won’t do what you tell me.” UPDATE now marching with Poor People’s March towards Excel Center, 2-4000 people. UPDATE Tons of riot cops heading east on University.

Tue, 09/02/2008 - 19:01 Riot Cops surround concert at the capital, refuse to allow Rage Against the Machine to take the stage

Tue, 09/02/2008 - 18:56 Mobile Broadcast News (independent media) bus is being raided

This is starting to sound like when the MC5 took the stage at Chicago 68 DNC…

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sole purpose appears to be to intimidate.

I don’t know who is running this show but it smells like the Feds have been taking lessons from the pre-Olympics Chinese to me.

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John Robb

Very cool demonstration from Minnesota of how police forces have been militarized. In addition to the five fold growth in SWAT forces since the 90’s, there’s been a shift in attitude. All likely due to a misdirection of  GWOT [Global War of Terror] Homeland security $$ and thinking towards domestic protest. The side effect: The heavy handed approach here will cause a quick shift protest to the open source/disruption model if things deteriorate. Protest is dead.

Note: Robb means “very cool” in the sense that it proves his point.

What we are seeing now on the streets outside the RNC is the open source / disruption model -decentralized, fast-moving, linked by technology. In Left terms, it’s a mostly leaderless bottom-up anarchist political model rather than the top-down Marxist model with the cadre in control.

Robb is right, protest in the sense of thousands marching in the streets probably is dead. It’s become ineffective and pointless.

FutureJacked (who is no Leftie)

Wow. The Powers That Be have become so insecure that big protests are now considered dangerous and a threat. In the past, huge protests and civil disobedience were a way to vent frustration and send messages - great ways to do that, in fact, that usually kept the property damage at a minimum.

For some reason, the elites seem terrified of any sort of dissent these days. It’s amazing and unnecessary. By crushing these protest groups through pre-emptive strikes, you are are making the same mistake the Forest Service made back in the 20th century [by not allowing controlled burns], you are priming the political landscape with the tinder for a huge firestorm in the future.

Indeed. what are the elites so afraid of? At the police press conference yesterday they actually said police officers were frightened by masked criminals. I am not making this up. A phalanx of cops in riot gear is scared of a few unarmed kids wearing black bandanas over their faces?

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From the San Francisco Chronicle

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How bad is it in the Twin Cities?

Glenn Greenwald

Here’s a woman being pepper-sprayed at close range by a marching legion of police while standing on the side of the road holding a flower.

Yup, she was just standing there holding a flower, and some alleged human of a cop sprayed her in the face with a mega-dose of tear gas for no reason.

The police and the RNC are out of control. Of course there will be lawsuits and the police will end up paying millions. In the meantime, we need to make sure this story gets into mainstream media and stays there.

Let’s make a lot of noise about this. We need to make an issue about it.

PS News sources from the Twin Cities (for those who may have missed them.)

Theuptake Live video from cell phone cameras as it happens via Qik. (Quite amazing technology, isn’t it?)

Twin Cities Indymedia Lots of breaking news. One of the best organized Indymedia sites I’ve seen.

Coldsnaplegal On the streets, twittering the news as it happens.

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Amy Goodman of Democracy Now arrested, charged with conspiracy to riot.

From Democracy Now

Goodman was arrested while attempting to free two Democracy Now! producers who were being unlawfuly detained. They are Sharif Abdel Kouddous and Nicole Salazar. Kouddous and Salazar were arrested while they carried out their journalistic duties in covering street demonstrations at the Republican National Convention. Goodman’s crime appears to have been defending her colleagues and the freedom of the press.

Coldsnaplegal twitter approx 30 minutes ago

Code Pink is w/ Mothers Against the War. They’re being pushed against Wabasha Bridge by 150 riot cops now.

The police are out of control.

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Cell phone video live from the tear gas zone of the RNC protests.

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ColdSnaplegal is twittering directly from the streets.

The Uptake has live video (via Qik, which streams live video from a cellphone)

Update: The National Guard is being called in.

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From the Twin Cities Indymedia LiveWire

Mon, 09/01/2008 - 13:16. ~20 pagans at kellogg/cedar stopping delegate busses. successful blockade at 8th and wall. cops moving in.

Mon, 09/01/2008 - 13:13. windows OF DELEGATE BUS SMASHED ON KELLOGG

Mon, 09/01/2008 - 13:11. New 7th and wall hard blockade. on 94 offramp

Mon, 09/01/2008 - 13:09. Sherrif Bob Fletcher is personally on site at John Ireland and Kellog confronting black bloc

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Abraham Lincoln Brigade Memorial. San Francisco. Detail from the memorial. it was dedicated on March 30, 2008 and is the first such memorial in the US.

(View much more of it full-sized on Flickr.)

I took this photo at the 2004 RNC protest march in NYC. At least NYPD mostly respected freedom of speech and assembly unlike Twin Cities police currently at RNC 2008, who clearly haven’t a passing acquaintance with the concepts.

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Oh yeah, the worms in the permaculture on the bus might have little bitty machine guns and be terrorists. So let’s dump all the people and animals on the highway and tow the bus away for a bogus “inspection”.

Not only is the Ramsey County Sheriff a thug deliberately trying to intimidate political protesters, it’s also clear he is incompetent. Look at the facts. He’s been raiding those dangerous granola-eating pacficists at Food Not Bombs and now the New Agey Starhawk. So I can’t imagine he’s been investigating anyone who might actually have serious disruption plans for the RNC. Nor, I’m guessing, would he know how to find them if he was. Talk about looking for things in all the wrong places…

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The FBI used informants inside the groups, yet the charges are bogus. Thus the raids were clearly coming from the federal government and were meant as political intimidation.

So here we have a massive assault led by Federal Government law enforcement agencies on left-wing dissidents and protesters who have committed no acts of violence or illegality whatsoever, preceded by months-long espionage efforts to track what they do.

Twincities Indymedia has been doing a stellar job of reporting what’s happening with their Live Wire instantaneous news on the home page.

PS “Those in Twin Cities still going ahead with plans to stage massive civil disobedience on the 1st”, they say.

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Police grabbing people at random off the streets, as reported happening yesterday in Minneapolis, is not a new tactic.

It happened at the FTAA protests in Miami in 2003 too, and we blogged it then.

PS. In the process of finding that post from 2003, I realized that images and photos from 2002-2005 weren’t online. They are now.

(Polizeros started on the Radio UserLand platform in 2002, then switched to Wordpress in mid-2005. The Radio UserLand images were in a different folder from where Wordpress puts them, and I forgot to upload that folder when we changed hosts a few weeks back. However, all 13MB of them are now online.)

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The raids were ordered by Bob Fletcher, sheriff of a St. Paul suburb. He probably didn’t have jurisdiction or legal power for some it and some St. Paul council members are not happy.

From FireDogLake.

Bob Fletcher is a Republican from the formerly lily-white St. Paul suburb of Maplewood, which has for decades had an uneasy relationship with its southern neighbor. Bob Fletcher is also on the verge of losing his job, as a long-standing FBI corruption probe that has already taken out two of his buddies is drawing its net around him; he may well feel that he has nothing to lose and everything to gain by using extralegal methods to please his RNC pals.

Did anyone in the RNC know? How high up the food chain does this go? It’s difficult believe this thug was acting completely on his own.

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Twin Cities Indymedia has continuing breaking news on the increasing number of raids by police in advance of the RNC. There have been multiple police raids and arrests for unexplained, probably bogus reasons and the RNC hasn’t even started yet.

Food Not Bombs raided? C’mon, they’re peaceful granola eaters. Another raid was on an anarchist meeting. Even a city council member there is leery about what the cops are doing.

St. Paul City Council member Dave Thune said he was trying to find out who ordered the building locked up and on what grounds. “This isn’t the way we do things in St. Paul,” Thune said. “I don’t want the city to get sucked into something that the sheriff’s office is concocting.”

Sounds like the police are out of control. These raids are a deliberate and probably illegal attempt to stop dissent at the RNC. It won’t work and will undoubtedly make things worse and more polarized.

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