Which is not to say that they couldn’t be newer issue cop boots, just that they don’t really match on close inspection.

They and the CRS will create the damage they need to justify violent reprisals.

Protesters and protest organizers know this, and they know they will get blamed by the media and authority if anything goes wrong. Hence, they’re extra careful. Doesn’t always work out…

But I fail to see what the police get out of inciting violence. It usually results in a ton of negative press for them and the only possible- and dubious- benefit is a short term license to crack heads. Seems like a lot of work to little real value

I mean every last person.

Every.

Last.

One.

It should be absolutely standard issue.

Every single march or rally inevitably suffers from these window smashings and vandalism. If it’s agents provocateurs, FILM THEM. If it’s members of the community, find them and root them out.

This is ridiculous.

Any mildly disciplined protest group will perform this most basic vetting to make sure they are not tarred as violent or criminal.

Get your house in order, people.

Guy had cop written ALL over him….

Organize into groups of three, all armed with video cameras and all standing apart by a good twenty feet such that any assault, arrest, or action taken against the other members of your team would be caught on film and one or two would escape with video footage intact. This is some basic stuff.

These protest groups need to stop this barefoot hippie bullshit and get organized. Fucking giant puppets and “this is what democracy looks like” sing-a-longs aren’t going to turn this around.

Lets return America to the land of the free….

At the G-8 summit in germany there have been numerous accounts of staged events, blunt lies or agents provocateur over the course of the events.

Alleged “beaten bloody cops” vanished into thin air, never arriving at any hospital, nor popping up on official ‘injured roosters’ afterwards, but making the headlines during the ‘Action’ for days.

The Clowns Army getting defamed by telling they have been squirting acid with their waterguns, only to be corrected (weeks later, when nobody noticed and the media coverage was over) by doctors attending the ‘victims’ that the policemen sufferd from the own extensive use of CS and pepper spray(Don’t pee towards the wind!).

Alleged stone throwers were ‘cornered’ by peacfull protesters in order to calm them down only to experience that those thugs go directly towards the police cordon which magicly opens and lets the previously agressives in but arrests the rest because of attacks against the police.

Of course: All charges were dropped, all investigations ‘dead-ended’… It’s never to be talked about… or only weeks later in some minor media or in the web…

It’s propaganda, it’s all about discrediting the cause… Every ‘normal’ citizen who had even the slightest sympathy for the protesters will back off after seeing this stuff in the news. So the protest will always be connected to ‘criminal renegades’ in the mind of the public!

It’s propaganda, it’s all about discrediting the cause… Every ‘normal’ citizen who had even the slightest sympathy for the protesters will back off after seeing this stuff in the news. So the protest will always be connected to ‘criminal renegades’ in the mind of the public!

As said above, organizers need to be ready to document and stop violence before the police act. Use cell phones to photograph the event and call 911 as all calls are recorded. Give a complete description of the event and perpetrator. Using the cell will better document the time of both the pictures and your call, and also the call’s duration.

I wonder if our idea of 9/11 and possibly even the outcome of the 2004 election would be different if there had been twittering on that fateful day.

While a minority did commit violence against property, the only ones committing violence against people were the police – who used a disproportionate amount of force, including peppery spray, tear gas, clubs, concussion grenades, horses, and bicycles (they picked them up and smashed them into people). There were also a good number of people tazered.

If you check out the news stories on the websites of our local Minneapolis/St. Paul newspapers (Star Tribune and Pioneer Press) the comments are horrifically in favor of police violence to an overwhelming extent.

I have to wonder how many of these comments are submitted by the police themselves or other agents of the state.

Current live coverage of what’s happening in downtown Minneapolis RIGHT NOW… police confrontation with people leaving Rage Against the Machine concert booked at major venue:

http://twitter.com/MnIndyLIVE

The cops and TV news media were just waiting in a heavy presence outside of the RATM concert at the Target Center. There were about a dozen cops with large wooden sticks and black fatigues waiting outside the concert, a large group of bicycle cops doing laps, a small group of motorcycle cops doing laps, and then three unmarked minivans of riot cops parked four blocks away at the Capitol Grill.

If there hadn’t been such a strong police presence I have to believe these concert goers would have simply gone home.

These people could be cops, they could be Black Block anarchists, GOP operatives, or Democratic Party members. No one knows.

This sort of violence is probably going to happen at protests. If you’re organizing, you should expect it, plan for it, and react while it’s happening. Not after.

This isn’t criticism of Elise, who AFAIK, wasn’t a major protest organizer. She’s asking the right questions.

SKR @20, do some reading. If you don’t fancy Marja’s recommendations, start with Wikipedia and go on from there.

28-29: The pertinent question about Infowars, like any other site, is how reliable it is.

Luckily, there were many people not engaging in any actions who had recording devices, both in the media and independents. A perfect example is this video, taken by a random passerby:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YNc9ImWpNT0

I have seen footage of provocateurs driven out of the Tuesday march, and have heard reports of others being identified and chased off that day as well.

Unfortunatly, the protesters were not one group – it was a number of different, unconnected groups throughout the city. So when one group committed an act of property violence, other groups had no way of stopping them. Most groups didn’t commit any violence, but those few that did gave the rest a bad reputation. That, and the coverage of the situation by the media.

Yes, I believe we had a bit of that going on here as well.

Exactly.

We’re conditioned to ignore the ramblings of the insane, and with good cause.

You can hide a basket-ball dribbling gorilla in the glitches of human psychology.

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Hmm. When every single protestor has a camera, you could probably stitch together a partial 3D model of the entire timeline. Surveillance societies can work both ways.

Might want to form a lobby group to get special protections written into the books for people carrying cameras at protests.