I will add, since things here seem to be settling down for the night, that it's hard to underestimate how weird and stressful this all is. I assumed beforehand that I'd either be self-dramatizing ("Oh the danger! Oh the oppression! Oh how upset I am") or else I'd be really blase about it since I've been in big mobilizations before and realistically I'm doing only stuff that's pretty safe, most of my friends (even those involved in heavier stuff) are pretty safe, it's unlikely that anyone will be badly hurt, we've got fantastic communications, etc. But no, when you don't know where your friends are or when you'll see them again or how to get in touch with them (even though you know, more or less, that they're more or less okay) and when you know the cops are around a lot and you're constantly responding to stuff on the fly...It's depressing and a bit scary. I'll be glad when it's over.
This summer has really been a transformative one, though. If you ever have a chance to do sustained movement work with good people, I really recommend it.
I will add, since things here seem to be settling down for the night, that it's hard to underestimate how weird and stressful this all is. I assumed beforehand that I'd either be self-dramatizing ("Oh the danger! Oh the oppression! Oh how upset I am") or else I'd be really blase about it since I've been in big mobilizations before and realistically I'm doing only stuff that's pretty safe, most of my friends (even those involved in heavier stuff) are pretty safe, it's unlikely that anyone will be badly hurt, we've got fantastic communications, etc. But no, when you don't know where your friends are or when you'll see them again or how to get in touch with them (even though you know, more or less, that they're more or less okay) and when you know the cops are around a lot and you're constantly responding to stuff on the fly...It's depressing and a bit scary. I'll be glad when it's over.
This summer has really been a transformative one, though. If you ever have a chance to do sustained movement work with good people, I really recommend it.
Thanks, John and Frowner, both for the work and the updating.
And I feel like a little bitch for pointing this out, but, I'm pretty sure you mean "overestimate" in the first sentence.
Frowner!
Thanks so much for the report. That's very dramatic.
Keep up the good work, Frowner, and good luck.
So, question. To what extent is the character of the security surrounding a convention a result of the character of the party hosting it? I assume this sort of report wouldn't be associated with a DNC convention, right? Why not?
Jesus. I'm glad you and Mpl'n are holding up okay, Frowner.
I think the reality is that the DNC gets less protestors.
6: Surely it's not an indirect matter of character - the RNC makes it known by whatever method that it wants protests hamstrung by any means necessary, and the local police go along with it. (Why the police seem to go about it so gleefully is another can of worms.)
This is the kind of shit that really does make you wish we had a viable domestic terrorist movement. It's fucking upsetting to watch us tiptoe closer and closer to an authoritarian state.
....and even more upsetting not to really trust the Democrats to stop this when they get in power.
P.S. to homeland security -- I didn't really mean 12! Don't break down my door, please!
I really don't think that the existence of a viable domestic terrorist movement would resulted in less of the police activity in question, or would move us further from an authoritarian state.
Yeah, I know, it's an irrational emotional reaction --hearing about cowardly bullying makes me fantasize about violence.
Frowner--I shot you an email. Anything I can do?
Emerson's blog damn near broke my computer.
And changed your pseudonym to look more Scandinavian!
Frowner! It takes a nation of millions to hold you back. Further Frowner!
I just came back from Beijing, where my overriding thought was, "Sure, they built a neat stadium, but at least Americans can protest the government without getting rounded up and thrown in jail."
Sure, the situation in China is still about 100 times worse in that regard, but man, this sucks. These BS raids and strong-arm tactics must be stopped.
#11: There was similar stuff going down at the Democratic convention. It's pretty much a bipartisan move in favor of pre-emptive crackdowns on protesters.
That said, naming your protest group "Re-create '68" does not speak well for your intentions to stage a political protest, as opposed to a violent riot. I think a hot area of first amendment law over the next decade or two will be what limitations on protester conduct (i.e., time-place-manner, etc. apart from the content of the protesters' message itself) are constitutional.
The mayor of St Paul is a Democrat and has supported the police's actions. In practice, Democrats aren't tremendously better than Republicans on the average in this regard so far, though the most authoritarian proposals come from Republicans. Both parties want to keep the lid on things, except when Republicans think that they'll benefit from chaos, and most demonstrators support neither party.
The tendency seems to be to clamp down on all forms of unofficial, public, group expressions, no matter how mild. For example, the "free speech area" is often far from the place where things are happening, perhaps in a parking lot surrounded by a chain link fence.
"free speech area"
You know what I should put up a post about? Something listing horrendous Bush innovations that we expect to be changed back on day 1 (or, before day 20, anyway) of an Obama administration. Things which there's no excuse for and shouldn't need to be any debate about. This is really the time to be building expectations.
First thing on the list is that free speech zones have to go. The country is supposed to be a free speech zone.
Absolutely, LB. Put up a post, and we can brainstorm it and come up with a relatively complete list.
At this point, even though he may have destroyed the Republicans for a decade, Rove and Bush have transformed American government, and that was their goal. There will be no automatic reversion when Obama takes office. A conscious effort needs to be made.
I should add to 24: I am more hostile to the Clintons and the Clinton team than PGD is. The best thing Obama has done is getting them out of there.
At least as far as party organization as strategy goes. I'm hoping and praying that Obama is better on policy too, but at least he's gotten away from the media-and-consultant, big-money, Republican lite campaign strategy.
Just a thought, PGD: I wonder whether the DLC's electoral strategy (50% + 1) is unduly influenced by marginalism. The only really important single vote is the one that puts you over the top; it's a waste of money to buy more than you need. (There are multiple problems with this thinking, for example WRT down-ballot effects and long-term party-building. I'm just wondering whether marginalist thinking motivated their error).
Rove plays somewhat that game, too, but he won up until 2006, perhaps because he had such a tremendous voter database. Rather than economics, his motivation seemed to have been ideology: if you get 60% of the voters, it means you've been trying too hard to please everyone, and as a result you will accomplish less. That seems to have been Jesse Helms' strategy.
You described the Rove ideological dynamic. The DLC dynamic seems to involve watering down the ideology but focusing campaigning and spending on the 50%+1 voter.
Hello all,
I've been without a computer recently, so most of my information has been 2nd or 3rd hand. Frowner knows a lot more about this stuff than I do anyhow. Mostly, my contribution has been as a presence at my own volunteer commitment (hugely stepped-up police patrols everywhere! people freaking out that we're next! oh noes!) and I went to the mass meeting after the arrests/raids on Saturday. Did you know there was one small child who had the bad luck to be at both the raided convergence center AND at an activist house that was raided? That's the start of a great radical autobiography, but it was horrible and scary for the people who care about the kid. Folx at the raided convergence center helped calm him down during the raid by starting a round of "Row, Row, Row Your Boat" while they lay handcuffed on the floor. Our revenge will be the laughter of our children!
As Frowner says, people are going to be in court about this for-evar. But it's all good. Our lawyers have made the Hennepin Cty. ADAs *cry* in the past. How badass is that?
We have not yet begun to fight.
-Mpltn
22: naming your protest group "Re-create '68" does not speak well for your intentions to stage a political protest, as opposed to a violent riot.
I'd wanted to mention earlier to Gaijin Biker's various thoughts along these lines that, at least according to the Democracy Now half-hour long report from St. Paul I heard today, a number of the raided houses were those of independent video journalists. They were there to record police interactions with protesters, which projects have in the past led to many, many people's court cases being dismissed in the face of video evidence belying police officers' testimony against protesters detained and arrested.
In other words, it's not at all clearly a case of police preemptive action against groups suggestive of violence.
Of course, this is all probably covered by the updates and links Emerson's providing.
I just threw a few bucks in the kitty for iwitness video. Might help 'em line up some replacements for their confiscated equipment.
I don't know if these were the same folks who were harassed/had equipment confiscate in NE Minneapolis last week. I harassed an acquaintance in the Minneapolis Mayor's office--at the time he didn't know anything about it because he and the rest of senior leadership were all at the DNC. I'm livid, and I hope a whole lot of people lost their jobs by the time this is done.
I get no on-the-spot info but I was glad to see a local account of the riot police with billy clubs arresting seven protesters who stepped onto Xcel energy property. Two of the protesters were 78-year old nuns who said "We told police before the walk that we intended on ending it by stepping on Xcel property. That was if we could make it. We didn't know if our backs would hold out."
God I would have loved to scorn and shame those cops in person.
OH, and for some more local color, I was very happy to see Michele Bachmann, some GOP "veteran" of less that two years from MN get smacked down on Larry King live has night when she tried to defend the GOP VP pick. She claimed some kind of disdain for Hilary and said the Alaskan had as much experience as Obama and said that questioning the Alaskan Mom's credentials was sexist.
helped calm him down during the raid by starting a round of "Row, Row, Row Your Boat" while they lay handcuffed on the floor
That's good thinking and quite touching, but holy cow does that situation make me angry.
I can't imagine what I would do from here to help but if there's anything we can do, Frowner, mnpln, etc., please let Rah or myself know.
Please let us all know (and thanks for the updates so far).
Hey all! I'm back again. It's crazy busy here and I have irregular computer access, but I thought you'd appreciate the word from the street. Right now, what's going on is small crazy stuff and messing with people who are in jail. ICE (how I hate that name!) has been going through the jail looking for people with "foreign sounding" names. Last night there was a really heavy-duty raid on the Bedlam Theater--at, basically, a very Bedlam social/drunken/theater event--where they arrested two people, busted into the theater (and were kicked out by brave legal observers!) and slapped a woman across the face, unprovoked, when she was cuffed. (Bedlam has been organizing a lot of the puppet-level stuff). Two cops came to the bookstore and threatened to arrest the volunteers because unspecified text messages had been sent from here. (!?) There have been lots of sort of hit-and-run raids and harassment.
What's worst, to me, is the way the cops are settling scores. They've pulled in a few people and groups that they've hated for a long time (like Food Not Bombs, I've never understood what's to hate about Food Not Bombs, honestly, even if you don't like dirty hippies). They've got people in jail who aren't allowed to wash off pepper spray and teargas and have serious chemical burns. They're denying people meds--and the really bad thing is that they've confiscated meds from people at arrest so they have to call out and desperately try to get things represcribed and brought in . (And hey, on Monday I was in a situation where there were lots of chemical irritants and didn't get it washed off and I have a yucky burn on my shoulder)
It's come out that--no surprise--there were a couple of infiltrators in some of the main organizing groups. Apparently some of these were obvious and didn't get anywhere, but a couple weren't. However, the organizers were (intentionally, I think) very, very transparent about their plans and aims, so there really weren't a lot of secrets to keep. This was actually incredibly smart.
My position vis-a-vis the whole "rioting" thing--okay, when protesters are trying to block (de facto significantly slow down) traffic and stuff in downtown, something is going to happen with the cops. That's only to be expected. But what I saw personally was cops upping the level of violence when they didn't need to. I also saw cops target legal observers and medics, legal observers particularly. None of this was about actual concerns about civic policy or access and there was consistently an escalation of force over and above what was necessary to, say, get a group of people out of an intersection.
Also, just on the dirty hippie front--I know a lot of activists, ranging from young middle class college kids who are maybe a little self-dramatizing through immigrant activists who are mostly concerned with basic civil rights through life-long activists who have made genuine sacrifices of wealth and comfort to stay with the movement...and of course many, many more types of folks. And in general people are sincere and thoughtful. It's easy to see the news and see only the most dramatic images and think 'what kind of tactics are those?" (which isn't what I think, though) but actually, all that stuff is part of a fabric of everyday activism that may be about policy or community organizing or food distribution or pro bono legal stuff, etc.
I have more to say about Seattle/WTO in this context, but I'm tired and hungry. Further later.
Cops are raiding the legal collective office right now! I can't believe it, those motherfucking bastards!
Cops left, didn't take anything. Whew! Intimidation, but worrying, this is how the raids on the communications office and the convergence center started, with a short visit.
Frowner, I've found that when dealing with cops, it's best to forcefully state right up front that you pay their fucking salary and, as a result, won't put up with any shit. They respect that.