http://tcsidewalks.blogspot.com/2008/08/ramsey-co-sheriff-bob-fletchers-makes.html

can’t. stop. laughing.

I’m not saying protests are a bad idea, but I don’t think they’re as effective as people would like to think.

I’d like to see some evidence of sandbags being dumped off over-passes, etc…. that you mention.

Anyone can tell a story.

I’m not sure what your friend’s point is precisely. By all means, arrest people throwing feces, slashing tires, etc. But how does that justify arresting journalists who are taking pictures or who ask questions like ‘why did my production assistant get a busted nose’ or ‘why are those people being arrested’?

See here:
http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/2008/09/01/protests/index.html

I agree, the cops there have a difficult job, and it’s important that someone is there protecting people from real threats and real violence. But the mentality that the bad actions of some justify harassment of the media, intimidation of protesters, preemptive arrests, etc is just dangerous.

Compare what our government is doing in St. Paul to the things we criticized China for doing during the Olympics. How can we as a nation stand for this? How can your friend – who is putting his life on the line protecting this country’s leaders – stand for this?

http://www.bergen-filmklubb.no/images/Dystopi_THX_1138.jpg

http://wileywiggins.blogspot.com/thxlego.jpg

We’re still sorting out information coming from Minneapolis/St. Paul. Part of the problem appears to be that there were multiple police and other peacekeeping forces there, heavily armed and operating under different rules. Ramsey County police officers were rougher than (f.i.) St. Paul city police.

A fraction of the protesters appear to have displayed less judgement than your average rock. Unfortunately, the ones who made the dumber and more alarming-sounding plans tended to also have no grasp of operational security.

If I were working for the forces of evil and repression, I can only hope I would come up with something as perennially useful as FRPG anarchists.

I’ve read some of the plans for improvised weapons. Those people didn’t know what they were doing. They also weren’t clear on their objectives, and how their actions were supposed to address them. The award for thickest plan goes to the group(s) whose aim was to keep the delegates from getting to the convention. You don’t protest on behalf of democracy by keeping duly elected delegates away from the convention. It just makes you look bad. Also, it has zero effect on the outcome.

All that said, the police still overreacted.

Everyone would like to know the identity of that guy who smashed the Macy’s window. Someone got a photo. Questions are being asked.

And to #16 and #17, yes, policemen and guards sometimes abuse their power. The corollary to this is that sometimes people take advantage of general chaos to do stupid, violent, and destructive things (case in point: looters during riots, disasters, and blackouts).

At least entertain this scenario: There is a large group of loud protesters. 99% percent of them are carrying signs, singing, and yelling but otherwise following the “rules”. Within this group is the 1% immature asshole faction that are doing the things my friend described above (which are also documented on several news sites). You are a policeman who firmly believes in the crowd’s right to protest (for that matter, you may agree with them), but things start to get out of hand. You obviously don’t immediately resort to heavy weapons, because you’re not stupid. Yes, you have all the weapons (or the “power”, supposedly), but you are heavily outnumbered and have no desire to turn this into a lethal event. As you try to restrain the real troublemakers (the idiot 1%) everyone sees what you are doing and starts yelling “police brutality!” and the mob surges forward. At this point, you can give up and go home and turn the streets over to the mob, go Kent State on them, or use tear gas and restraints to try to control them as much as possible while hopefully only detaining the troublemakers and the ones who don’t cooperate. Do any of you know a third option? While exercising this option, people are coming up to you and yelling in your face, refusing your instructions, jumping the barricades and saying they are press and photographers (when 90% of the crowd has a camera, too), so you risk your professional career (after all, your bosses are politicians, too) and arrest them all and try to sort it out downtown.

A bit contrived perhaps, but it is fair in the sense that it neither requires the policemen to all be jackbooted thugs or all of the crowd to be rabid bomb-throwing anarchists, it’s just a fairly predictable sequence of events. Even if 1% of the security force are also power-mad fascists, the outcome is the same and they’re still outnumbered 10-1.

The secret to having a peaceful protest isn’t to tell the police and riot squads to stay home, it’s to tell the assholes to stay home. After all, aside from providing a self-fulfilling prophecy of being suppressed by the cops (gee, what a surprise), are they really doing our cause any good?

On the cynical side, though, isn’t it a *great* story when a reporter gets arrested at an event like this and 100% of their audience is on the side of the protesters?

But I was in downtown St. Paul on Monday hanging near the Macy’s with my sister waiting for some friends we had gotten separated from during the protest march. We had no idea what was going on with all these people coming towards us until they started throwing shit. My sister and I turned to get out of the way and hello, line of riot cops coming our way. We skittered around the corner and went up into the skyway so we wouldn’t get accidentally thought to be part of the group since we had protest signs and whatnot.

My sister said it was when she was living in Santiago, Chile during college while there were riots and the streets where full of tear gas and police beating protesters.

Whether or not the police used exessive force, people throwing sharp objects, breaking windows, slashing tires, and attempting to light fires in an area with civilians is ridiculously stupid and dangerous. There’s plenty of ways to non-violently get your point across (and get arrested while doing it, if that’s your goal).

Also, I hope that picture wasn’t taken on Monday. It was horribly hot and muggy. One of our group got really badly dehydrated and everyone was drenched with sweat by the end of the day. I’m wearing riot gear would just be torture.

http://www.opednews.com/articles/CRACKDOWN-BEGINS-Food-Not-by-Keith-McHenry-080901-646.html

Which sometimes tastes like feces, or perhaps the cops were just peeved that there weren’t also vegan donuts on the premises.

f th plc wrn y t dsprs, prhps y cld pt dwn yr sgn fr lttl whl nd rcnvn ltr. s tht t mch t sk? f y fnd yrslf n th cmpny f ppl wh dn’t knw hw t prtst pcflly, y cn ) sk thm t lv b) lv yrslf r c) wt t b dlt wth. Srsly, ths sn’t tht hrd.

This includes the cops, who have had special training that the civilians with the signs have not. That training means cops are more liable for their actions.

Moreover, preemptive tear-gassing and/or arrests are not a matter of safety, they’re intended to discourage everyone from showing up. Blaming the people who want to hold signs and demonstrate that they are upset for both the people who are trying to riot and the poor judgment and abuse of power of police forces is also intended to shut people up and make them somehow liable for bodily harm for daring to say anything.

If the police want the sympathy of protesters, it would help if they were not in the business of oppressing or harassing them. Your average hippie-protester is actually trying to be obedient to some degree of law and order, and this kind of behavior erodes the participation you’re dictating. The police are being used as political tools to discourage dissent, and the reason it looks so scary out there is because everyone knows it.

They ain’t keepin’ the peace by treating everyone like suspects.

Women, black people and gay people would disagree. Women didn’t get the vote by sitting quietly at home, they chained themselves to fences and smashed windows to draw attention to their cause. Emily Davison, died when she stepped in front of George V’s horse at the Epsom Derby in 1913.

Police always support the status quo, that’s their job; if the status quo says “gay people are reprehensible” then the police raid gay bars on a regular basis, which was what provoked the Stonewall riots in 1969. Those riots are celebrated today as a signal moment when gay people began to fight in a more determined way for their rights.

As far as voting is concerned, that’s not an option for all the people in American who’ve found themselves disenfranchised on polling day due to various legal (or illegal) manoeuvres in Florida and elsewhere.

And the individuals with dual memberships…where do they go in your plan?

http://www.flickr.com/photos/diversey/
http://flickr.com/photos/waitingline/

They are _definitely_ worth your time browsing through one by one.