Police Illegally Rounding Up GOP Convention Protestors

@nicole415,

Whats your point?
Are you suggesting that this only happens at the repub convention?
Why didnt you post anything when it happened at the DNC?

http://www.voanews.com/english/2008-08-26-voa40.cfm

http://www.rockymountainnews.com/news/2008/aug/25/police-take-protesters-be-detained/

http://www.vimeo.com/1623674

Yet there was not one word of protest or concern about these events from you.
Why not?

Are you so partisan that if the dems do it its ok but if the repubs do it then its wrong?

1 Reply

@nicole415,

Post some threads to highlight the problems you face in your local community.
Take my job to expose the hypocratical system
read and relax.
be not parochial and partial.
Let the simple problems be solved and then let us globalize the world according to our vissions or ambitions.

0 Replies

firedoglake.com

We are now hearing that "snatch squads" are picking up random people off the streets in the Twin Cities, and someone from Democracy Now has been detained.

We interviewed Bruce Nestor of the National Lawyer's Guild when we were at th 17th Street Raid. He lives in the neighborhood and is representing one of the people who was arrested there. I'm including part of the transcript of the video because I think he contextualizes well what is happening:

Glenn Greenwald: So what were they charged with?

Bruce Nestor: They were charged with conspiracy to commit riot, which is about as bullshit a charge -- about as thin a charge -- as you could possibly come up with. And I say that as a lawyer.

Glenn Greenwald: How do you distinguish between that and a protest?

Bruce: You can't. It basically criminalizes political advocacy. I mean, the essence of conspiracy law is if a single individual takes an overt act towards accomplishing an illegal goal such as purchasing a brick, and the police then claim that someone else in his group has an intent to throw that brick, then everyone who advocates that you attend that demonstration...

Glenn: Even if you're not intending to commit that crime...

Bruce: ...even though you're not intending to commit the crime, could all be charged with conspiracy.

Glenn: Is that a very rarely used statute in Minnesota?

Bruce: In Minnesota it is hardly ever is used in state court. Conspiracy is a popular charge of federal prosecutors, because it expands the realm of evidence.

Glenn: But this specific conspiracy...

Nestor: I've never seen it before.

Glen: And you're a lawyer in Minnesota.

Nestor: I'm a lawyer in Minnesota.

Glenn: And you've never this seen it until this convention.

Nestor: That's right. I will say that in 1968 the Chicago 8 were charged with conspiracy to riot. Roundly criticized, in the however many years since now, thirty forty years, as a politically motivated prosecution -- as the type of charge that really is criminalizing free speech activity, and putting people on trial..

Glenn: I mean it clearly seems like it's clearly intending to intimidate. You break into a house with 25 officers with submachine guns drawn and put them all on the floor and handcuff them, it's clearly sending a message that they might want to think twice about participating.

Nestor: I do think....We're not in this country yet where we're having mass detentions of people like this, so it really is about sending a message. I think what it really is designed to do is to send a message to people who agree with some of the viewpoints of people organizing activity and to say - you know what? You can write an email, it's okay to write a letter, to vote, but don't go out in the street, don't organize public activity, because do you want us bursting into your house? Do you want to be associated with people who are getting arrested? It's designed to somehow say these aren't citizens engaged in the exercise of political freedom, but that they're kooks, they're freaks, they're dangerous, stay away from them, don't get involved.

Glenn: And there's been no evidence that any actual violence or illegality has been committed, this is all preventative right, it's all anticipatory?

Bruce: That's right.

During the 2000 RNC, police also targeted protesters. And the Minnesota Independent has been reporting that the $50 million security budget for the Minneapolis RNC was redacted by the Department of Justice for "security reasons." This isn't about breaking up a legitimate threat, it's about intimidating people from engaging in their right of assembly.

Twin Cities Indymedia is covering these raids as they happen. The Uptake is also supplying good coverage. And as I type Glenzilla is also talking to lawyers from the National Lawyers Guild.

0 Replies

@nicole415,

Are they paddling them or doing any other sort of S/M thing with them? Any pictures available??

0 Replies

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/6/60/Minority_Report.jpg

Quote:

"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances."

last i heard, the entirety of the united states of america is a free speech zone.

any infringement by any political party or branch of government is unacceptable.

that doesn't excuse bad behavior by protesters, but in the u.s. it's customary to arrest someone that has actually done something bad.

Quote:

Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety.- b. franklin

for the citizens of the u.s. to allow this kind of stuff to continue makes us guilty in perpetuity.

0 Replies

@mysteryman,

Quote:

Whats your point?
Are you suggesting that this only happens at the repub convention?
Why didnt you post anything when it happened at the DNC?

http://www.voanews.com/english/2008-08-26-voa40.cfm

http://www.rockymountainnews.com/news/2008/aug/25/police-take-protesters-be-detained/

http://www.vimeo.com/1623674

Yet there was not one word of protest or concern about these events from you.
Why not?

Are you so partisan that if the dems do it its ok but if the repubs do it then its wrong?

The Denver police arrested citizens en masse on Denver's streets by saying they resisted orders to disperse the Minneapolis police arrested kids in their own ******* houses after kicking down the doors without proper warrants for "conspiracy" to riot violently based upon remarks from paid police informers. That smells of the same tactics used in the 60's by COINTELPRO.

The FBI used four main methods during COINTELPRO; in Minneapolis it sounds like the same thing happened.

That is the difference.

1. Infiltration: Agents and informers did not merely spy on political activists. Their main purpose was to discredit and disrupt. Their very presence served to undermine trust and scare off potential supporters. The FBI and police exploited this fear to smear genuine activists as agents.

2. Psychological Warfare From the Outside: The FBI and police used myriad other "dirty tricks" to undermine progressive movements. They planted false media stories and published bogus leaflets and other publications in the name of targeted groups. They forged correspondence, sent anonymous letters, and made anonymous telephone calls. They spread misinformation about meetings and events, set up pseudo movement groups run by government agents, and manipulated or strong-armed parents, employers, landlords, school officials and others to cause trouble for activists.

3. Harassment Through the Legal System: The FBI and police abused the legal system to harass dissidents and make them appear to be criminals. Officers of the law gave perjured testimony and presented fabricated evidence as a pretext for false arrests and wrongful imprisonment. They discriminatorily enforced tax laws and other government regulations and used conspicuous surveillance, "investigative" interviews, and grand jury subpoenas in an effort to intimidate activists and silence their supporters.

4. Extralegal Force and Violence: The FBI and police threatened, instigated, and themselves conducted break-ins, vandalism, assaults, and beatings. The object was to frighten dissidents and disrupt their movements. In the case of radical Black and Puerto Rican activists (and later Native Americans), these attacks"including political assassinations"were so extensive, vicious, and calculated that they can accurately be termed a form of official "terrorism."

Maybe we just have different ideas about the First Amendment, meaning I believe in the right to free speech and public assembly and you don't, but to arrest a man for alledging to protest even though there has been no actual protest, let alone violent one sounds like something that the communists did in Russia and the Chinese do today.

Here's the text it was in the constitution you alledged swore to uphold

Quote:

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances. ”

What appalls me about you right wing whackos is that you applaud this type of behavoir ONLY IF it is done to your political foes, but scream like murder about when it is done to you (see Ruby Ridge, or Waco). The point being that in a republic that which the state can readily do to one side it can also readily do to the other. Yet for political infighting you have lost track that the real enemy is NOT your political foe but the abuse of power by the state itself.

That is the fundamental reason why that the ACLU, chocked full of New York Jews decided to support the Nazis who were banned from marching in the Village of Skokie, Illinois.

1 Reply

@kuvasz,

yup. if they'll do it with ya, they'll do it to ya.

0 Replies

@nicole415,

Glenn Greenwald tells a harrowing tale of police-state tactics in Minneapolis, with armed security forces conducting Baghdad-like raids on the houses of activists, terrorizing many and arresting some for thought crimes -- such as "planning to cause a riot" -- and other bogus charges. The sweeps -- guided and aided by the federal government -- are designed to "ensure domestic tranquility" during the imminent Republican convention in the city. As Greenwald points out, not one of those who were shackled, arrested and hauled out at gunpoint had committed any crime whatsoever.

Heinous indeed, and entirely worthy of the anger that Greenwald marshals in his reports from the scene. But we must disagree with him on one crucial point: his repeated declaration that these incidents are "extraordinary." On the contrary, there is nothing at all remarkable about them. They are all of a piece with the similar tactics employed to cleanse the city of Denver of any unseemly expressions of old-fashioned, long-gone American liberties during the Democratic convention, where any protests that escaped the grotesque official "cage" set aside for them were strangled by militarized police and mass arrests.

Such tactics are not confined to major political events with "national security" implications -- i.e., the presence of afflatus-bloated muckity-mucks who must be spared the slightest confrontation with their crimes and complicities. They are now simply part and parcel of modern American societyhttp://www.chris-floyd.com/

0 Replies

I don't believe what I am seeing. The police roughed up and illegally arrested Amy Goodman, of Democracy Now, a nationally syndicated TV and radio program.

Watch the video.

www.democracynow.org

Quote:

Update: Democracy Now!’s Amy Goodman, Sharif Abdel Kouddous and Nicole Salazar Released After Illegal Arrest at RNC

September 1, 2008

Contact: Mike Burke

UPDATE

Democracy Now!’s Amy Goodman, Sharif Abdel Kouddous and Nicole Salazar Released After Illegal Arrest at RNC

Goodman Charged with Obstruction; Felony Riot Charges Pending Against Kouddous and Salazar

ST. PAUL--Democracy Now! host Amy Goodman and producers Sharif Abdel Kouddous and Nicole Salazar have all been released from police custody in St. Paul following their illegal arrest by Minneapolis Police on Monday afternoon.

All three were violently manhandled by law enforcement officers. Abdel Kouddous was slammed against a wall and the ground, leaving his arms scraped and bloodied. He sustained other injuries to his chest and back. Salazar’s violent arrest by baton-wielding officers, during which she was slammed to the ground while yelling, “I’m Press! Press!,” resulted in her nose bleeding, as well as causing facial pain. Goodman’s arm was violently yanked by police as she was arrested.

On Tuesday, Democracy Now! will broadcast video of these arrests, as well as the broader police action. These will also be available on: www.democracynow.org

Goodman was arrested while questioning police about the unlawful detention of Kouddous and Salazar who 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.

Ramsey County Sheriff Bob Fletcher told Democracy Now! that Kouddous and Salazar were arrested on suspicion of rioting, a felony. While the three have been released, they all still face charges stemming from their unlawful arrest. Kouddous and Salazar face pending charges of suspicion of felony riot, while Goodman has been officially charged with obstruction of a legal process and interference with a “peace officer.”

Democracy Now! forcefully rejects all of these charges as false and an attempt at intimidation of these journalists. We demand that the charges be immediately and completely dropped.

Democracy Now! stands by Goodman, Kouddous and Salazar and condemns this action by Twin Cities’ law enforcement as a clear violation of the freedom of the press and the First Amendment rights of these journalists.

During the demonstration in which the Democracy Now! team was arrested, law enforcement officers used pepper spray, rubber bullets, concussion grenades and excessive force against protesters and journalists. Several dozen demonstrators were also arrested during this action, including a photographer for the Associated Press.

Amy Goodman is one of the most well-known and well-respected journalists in the United States. She has received journalism’s top honors for her reporting and has a distinguished reputation of bravery and courage. The arrest of Goodman, Kouddous and Salazar and the subsequent criminal charges and threat of charges are a transparent attempt to intimidate journalists.

Democracy Now! is a nationally-syndicated public TV and radio program that airs on over 700 radio and TV stations across the US and the globe.

1 Reply

@nicole415,

In the months leading up to the Republican National Convention, the FBI-led Minneapolis Joint Terrorist Task Force actively recruited people to infiltrate vegan groups and other leftist organizations and report back about their activities. On May 21, the Minneapolis City Pages ran a recruiting story called "Moles Wanted." Law enforcement sought to preempt lawful protest against the policies of the Bush administration during the convention.

Since Friday, local police and sheriffs, working with the FBI, conducted preemptive searches, seizures and arrests. Glenn Greenwald described the targeting of protestors by "teams of 25-30 officers in riot gear, with semi-automatic weapons drawn, entering homes of those suspected of planning protests, handcuffing and forcing them to lay on the floor, while law enforcement officers searched the homes, seizing computers, journals, and political pamphlets." Journalists were detained at gunpoint and lawyers representing detainees were handcuffed at the scene.

"I was personally present and saw officers with riot gear and assault rifles, pump action shotguns," said Bruce Nestor, the President of the Minnesota chapter of the National Lawyers Guild, who is representing several of the protestors. "The neighbor of one of the houses had a gun pointed in her face when she walked out on her back porch to see what was going on. There were children in all of these houses, and children were held at gunpoint."

The raids targeted members of "Food Not Bombs," an anti-war, anti-authoritarian protest group that provides free vegetarian meals every week in hundreds of cities all over the world. They served meals to rescue workers at the World Trade Center after 9/11 and to nearly 20 communities in the Gulf region following Hurricane Katrina.
http://www.counterpunch.org/

0 Replies

This is a classic example of the banal shallowness of the Left.

I would like to write "depravity," "insanity," or "nihilism," but the reaction just doesn't rise to such rich flaws.

The punks in St Paul that are breaking store front windows, overturning public plantings, throwing bottles at community police and setting fires to vehicles are not resolute anarchists or self-aware nihilists.

If they were, they wouldn't be crying like babies in the streets of St Paul when the police, rightfully, use force to confront them.

If they were, they wouldn't be whining about how their "rights" have been violated.

However, at least these fools have the guts (or stupidity) to actually live out their inane fantasies: Hooded idiots on the streets of St Paul are the equivalent of freedom fighters in places where they actually kill protesters.

The vacuous fools who sit back in their living rooms and dens and scream "Power to The People!" and rail against the "Police State" in St Paul are that much more pathetic.

I can understand this silly thinking among young people and even, to a certain degree, can extol it, but when I see it expressed by those who should be mature individuals, I am sickened.

3 Replies

@Finn dAbuzz,

More rich sourcing. How do you maintain this level of research without droves of assistants, Finn?

1 Reply

@JTT,

Idiot

0 Replies

@Finn dAbuzz,

Government crackdowns on journalists are a true threat to democracy.
As the Republican National Convention meets in St. Paul, Minn., this week, police are systematically targeting journalists.
I was arrested with my two colleagues, "Democracy Now!" producers Sharif Abdel Kouddous and Nicole Salazar, while reporting on the first day of the RNC.
I have been wrongly charged with a misdemeanor. My co-workers, who were simply reporting, may be charged with felony riot.
The Democratic and Republican national conventions have become very expensive and protracted acts of political theater, essentially four-day-long advertisements for the major presidential candidates. Outside the fences, they have become major gatherings for grass-roots movements - for people to come, amidst the banners, bunting, flags and confetti, to express the rights enumerated in the Constitution's First Amendment: "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press, or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances."
Behind all the patriotic hyperbole that accompanies the conventions, and the thousands of journalists and media workers who arrive to cover the staged events, there are serious violations of the basic right of freedom of the press. Here on the streets of St. Paul, the press is free to report on the official proceedings of the RNC, but not to report on the police violence and mass arrests directed at those who have come to petition their government, to protest.

Nicole was videotaping. Her tape of her own violent arrest is chilling. Police in riot gear charged her, yelling, "Get down on your face." You hear her voice, clearly and repeatedly announcing "Press! Press! Where are we supposed to go?" She was trapped between parked cars. The camera drops to the pavement amidst Nicole's screams of pain. Her face was smashed into the pavement, and she was bleeding from the nose, with the heavy officer with a boot or knee on her back. Another officer was pulling on her leg. Sharif was thrown up against the wall and kicked in the chest, and he was bleeding from his arm.
When I asked St. Paul Police Chief John Harrington how reporters are to operate in this atmosphere, he suggested, "By embedding reporters in our mobile field force."
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article20686.htm

0 Replies

@Finn dAbuzz,

Use of Force Against RNC Protesters 'Disproportionate,'
Charges Amnesty International
http://www.commondreams.org/newswire/2008/0905-9
So those who wish to uphold decency were on the street and not in the corporate sponsored lobby.
Rama

1 Reply

@Ramafuchs,

What i feel is this.
This A2k forum should attract the new members to air their views.
Whether logical or.
does not matter.
As a humanist and die hard communist with nonvoilence
i humbly request the regular members of this forum not make a nightclub or relaxation center.
Able to know is this .
I am unable to know who so many members are afraid/shy to put forth their views.
My name is Rama Fuchs and i live(still) in Germany.
Namaskar

0 Replies

Police Illegally Rounding Up GOP Convention Protestors

Related Topics

Quick Links

My Account

able2know